I try to walk on my treadmill for thirty minutes every day. There are weeks when I do very well with this and there are weeks when, well… not so good. I do not like to exercise. I’m not an athlete – and have no desire to be one. I just want my jeans to fit and not to die of a heart attack before my time here on earth is up.

I usually head up to my den at 8:00 a.m. after dropping my daughter off at school. I walk into the house, grab a bottle of water, walk up the stairs, turn on the TV to one of my favorite inspirational programs and off I go.

I start out for five minutes at a speed of three and slowly work my way up to a four during the final five minutes. I typically burn between 250-275 calories. Not monumental, but not bad either.

It is inevitable that during this time, a million ideas come to me. Ideas for blog posts, ideas to help my mompreneur friends in their businesses, or ideas to connect people…you name it, I’m an idea machine. A friend of mine once said to me, “You’re like a think tank. You should figure out a way to get paid to share your ideas.” Yes. I probably should.

In the past, I would simply pray that the great idea or inspiration that came to me during these 30 minutes would stay in my head long enough for me to write it down after my workout. Sometimes this happened, sometimes not. I tried to use my iPhone’s voice memo app to record my ideas. That didn’t work because I was constantly being distracted by the dinging of emails or texts coming in which blocked the flow of inspiration.

I’m a writer. I write. If I’m not writing, I feel like I’m not breathing. So I decided that the best way for me to record these moments of brilliance was to go back to what I know how to do best – write the darn things down! Check out the picture above. There you will see a piece of Post-It note paper stuck to my treadmill.  You’ll notice that it is perfectly placed at the speed of 4 – my ending speed.  (Note: I hope Jillian Michaels from the Biggest Loser does not see this post. I don’t want to get yelled at to push it up to the 5 speed or higher!)

Now, whenever that spark of inspiration comes to me, I grab my trusty pen and jot it down. Yippee! I have killed two birds with one stone. Getting in my daily workout and recording my moments of brilliance. Perfection!

Whenever I teach my small business marketing classes to new mompreneurs, I encourage them to keep a notebook or some type of recording mechanism with them at all times (especially at night when it seems the best ideas come at 3:00 am!). I do this because ideas and inspiration can come to you at any time, anywhere and we’re all so busy these days, it’s easy to let those great ideas slip away.

Your kids have great ideas too. They get inspired and guess what? You need to record these ideas – either yourself or have them do it. Who knows? Their idea may very well change the world one day. Don’t let it slip away.

Jen’s Gem: Great ideas can come at any time from any source. Be ready to capture them.