And sometimes if you keep your head up, you find just the right image. ((Photo by Gopinath KM on Unsplash)

There’s a pile of notes to myself on my desk, reminders that I scrawled quickly and stuffed into my pockets, then dumped out to be used as starting points for some future column. Some of them have been waiting months for their chance to get lucky.

Better organized writers keep neat notebooks and transfer the material quickly to a digital file. I can’t. I’ve tried. But I have manilla folders stuffed with ideas, because I’m a committed note-taker, like every journalist I know. Taking and keeping notes is a trait that anybody who wants to write thoughtfully ought to pick up.

Last week I pulled out a little scrap of paper headed “UpsAm10.01.22,” meaning I wrote it to myself at the end of September, planning to use the idea that weekend. Deciphering my handwriting was hard, but I finally figured it out: “GDP growth does not include depreciation for natural capital. Economists affected by post-WW2 growth hinged on tech/indus innovation.”

If that doesn’t strike you as something you’d be excited to read about on a Saturday morning, well, gosh: Why do you think it stayed on my pile for so long?