Take a screenshot

How to remember random things

Apr 08, 2026

How do you remember random things you come across? If it’s a quick idea (like the name of a restaurant to try) you can always email yourself. But for anything more complicated, one easy way is to take a screenshot (or a picture).

For instance, if I’m reading an article or ebook, and come across a quote or statistic I’d like to refer to later, I take a screenshot. If I see an interesting post on social media I’d like to remember, I take a screenshot. A moment in a podcast I’d like to refer to later? Slightly more complicated, but you can take a screenshot of that moment in the podcast player, so you know the time stamp for later.

As a screenshot is really just a picture, this same concept works for things not on the screen as well. I take a quick picture of a description of a work of art I’d like to refer to later when I’m in a museum. I take pictures of my planner pages and calendar pages when I’m traveling (I travel with my paper calendar but I want a record of the next few weeks in case I lose it…and I don’t travel with my large weekly planner.) I take a picture of my hotel room number so I don’t get confused and try to go to the room where I stayed at in the previous hotel.

I just took a screenshot of the email from a place where I’m driving that has some complicated logistics. As with all these things, I could just find the email again — but a recently taken photo is easier in several ways. Sometimes the reception isn’t that good and it’s hard to pull up an old email. I know you can take notes in the Kindle app but then I have to go back in there, whereas the recent photos become a repository of everything I’m interested in currently.

Now of course, the photos can become unwieldy too. It’s good to treat these screenshots like any other inbox. At some point you process them, and either act on them, assign them to a future time, archive them, (a “random ideas” file would be fine here) or delete them.

But a picture is a very easy way to remember things you’d like to reference later, including more complicated things than you could easily remember. So it’s worth using this tool frequently.

Do you take a lot of screenshots?