# The Capture Habit The capture habit is a recommendation that states that **you should always have reliable systems in place that allow you to easily capture any new ideas, because your brain is very good at having ideas, but not so good at storing them**. This closely relates to our [[Short-Term and Working Memory]] capacity. This was first introduced to me by David Allen in [[Getting Things Done]]. **Allen stipulated that our open tasks (or loops) will constantly gnaw at our attention unless they are stored in a trusted system**. That way we can fully focus on what we are doing at the moment, and stop our subconscious mind reminding us to buy milk when we are nowhere close to the supermarket. **The system needs to be reliable enough to ease our subconsciousness i.e. we need a habit to check the system at the supermarket.** Collection rules for a successful capture habit: 1. **Every open loop must be captured in a container** 2. **You should have as few containers as possible** 3. You must empty **(process and organize) all of your containers regularly**