Record Even If You Don’t Publish Right Away

Joe Still
2 min readJan 12, 2023

The best content is generated while in a flow state. Organic capture is basically the practice of leaving a recording device on near a flow state. I realize now I have a growing list of Writing Prompts I am not inspired to go back and expand upon because at this point the excitement I had about the prompt is stale. I was only able to get through writing this blog post because I was in the middle of thinking about it and decided to do my thinking in text as it came to me.

Since I started the Pattern Practice podcast with my buddies, this methodology has really been shining. I now find myself having the same exciting conversations as I always have off the podcast, but I notice halfway through that all this brilliant golden content flowing organically from who I am talking to or from myself is lost forever with zero chance of being recreated in a way that faithfully serves the brilliance of the original creation. So now when I recognize an opportunity to talk to someone who is very passionate about a subject, I am careful to schedule the discussion in a way that we can record it.

I was talking to someone who is very excited about applying ChatGPT and other related generative solutions. I asked if we could record the discussion and he was hesitant because it was too soon to publish the ideas he wanted to capitalize on. It got me thinking more on the subject of organic capture and now on the subject of recording information you don’t want to be made public.

Here is what I said in response:

Fair enough. … Even if we don’t publish the dialogue the day we record, please let me know if you are interested in having a recording of all the great explanations you are likely to provide. Wish I recorded talking to [my other friend] when he shared so much about recent happenings in AI last month.

Side Note: I didn’t write that reply for the blog. I just realized while writing this that I already explained the value I wanted to share. Behold the value of organic capture in action!

He agreed to record given my commitment to withhold publication or delay whatever his preference. I think he will find that he provides a ton of excellent and passionate explanation he will be happy to have recorded for later publication or reference in his own uses beyond just being featured on our humble podcast.

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