Preparation and thinking things through are critical activities on the way to being highly effective and super productive. One way of making sure you get to these essentials is to identify where your favorite places are–locations that allow you to do your best work. Your places for planning and mulling things over may turn out to be different from where you think. That’s because some of them are not places at all, but tools that you can take anywhere and wherever you turn up, they’re right there with you to help your mind get into gear. Here are a couple for you to consider.

A trusted journaling notebook. Personally, I favor the old-fashioned college lab notebooks, narrow ruled, sewn binding variety (The Original Marble Cover-80 sheets, retails for $2.19 at my local university bookstore). I buy them by the half-dozen, and stash the current version in a leather cover (from Levenger, a lot like this one). This has been my best place to think and prepare for years; I’m on Volume XXIII.

Mindmapping tools. Paper and pen, MindManager, PersonalBrain, MindMeister–the list goes on and on. One thing they all have in common is turning anywhere into a dynamite spot for brainstorming and organizing your thoughts. I use two tools that work differently and stimulate very different kinds of thinking: MindManager for brainstorming, organizing a lot of thoughts, and mindsweeps; PersonalBrain for exploring all my horizons of focus, linking roles and areas of responsibility to projects, goals, and my sense of purpose and meaning.

[Many thanks to @rbarberi for the tweet that inspired this post.]