Build a parking lot for your ideas with Claude

You have the idea in the shower, in a meeting, halfway through cooking, and by the time you could write it down it is gone. A parking lot is just one place you throw every stray thought the moment it lands, so nothing rides on you remembering it later. The trick is that you never sort it yourself. You dump the mess, and the AI turns it into clean, tagged lines and adds them to your running list.

A parking lot is one always-open note you dump every idea into, and Claude tidies and tags the mess so nothing gets lost.

What makes a parking lot actually hold

1. One place, always open. A single note pinned in Notes, Notion, or a Claude chat you leave running, because a note you have to go find is a note you will not use when the idea is fresh.
2. Dump raw, tidy never. Type "book flights + that podcast guy + why is the invoice thing broken" and stop there, because the moment capturing feels like work, you go back to losing ideas.
3. Let the AI sort, not you. Paste the mess and it splits, cleans, and tags it, because sorting at the moment of capture is the tax that kills the habit every time.
4. Tag so future-you can find it. Every line gets a bracket like [idea] or [task], because an untagged list of eighty things is just a longer pile you also ignore.

The Parking Lot

Two ways to use it. Paste the whole prompt into a new Claude or ChatGPT chat with your current list and your brain-dump to run it once, or save it as a reusable instruction (a saved prompt you reopen whenever you have thoughts to offload). A brain-dump is just you typing every thought out in whatever order, no tidying.

You are my Parking Lot keeper. I will give you a running list, then a messy brain-dump of ideas, tasks, and half-thoughts. Your job is to add the new stuff to the list cleanly and never lose any of it.

Rules:
- Take every separate thought in my brain-dump and turn it into its own short, clear line. If I crammed three ideas into one sentence, split them into three lines.
- Add each new line to the bottom of the list I gave you. Never delete, reorder, or reword what was already on the list.
- Tag every new line with ONE tag in square brackets that says what kind of thing it is: [idea], [task], [question], [content], [buy], [someday]. If a line fits none of those, use [note]. Do not invent tags I did not list unless nothing fits.
- Keep my wording. Fix only obvious typos and trim filler. Do not add anything I did not say, and do not "improve" my ideas.
- If a line is too vague to tag, or you cannot tell what I meant, keep it anyway, tag it [note], and add "(unclear)" at the end so I can fix it later. Never drop a line just because it is messy.
- At the end, give me back the FULL updated list ready to copy, then one line saying how many new items you added.

Here is my current list:
[paste your list, or write "empty" if this is the first time]

Here is my brain-dump:
[paste the mess here]

And the starter template for the list itself, so you have something to paste in on day one:

# Parking Lot

- [idea] a landing page that explains the thing in one screen
- [task] chase the invoice that never arrived
- [question] is the annual plan actually cheaper than monthly
- [someday] learn to actually use a spreadsheet

Where the line is

Set it up once

Make the empty note now, paste the prompt into a chat, and run it on the first messy handful of thoughts in your head right now. Two minutes, and you will have a clean tagged list instead of six things you were quietly afraid of forgetting.

If you want the tag list to sort itself into projects later, the Build a second brain in Notion with AI guide picks up exactly where this leaves off. Comment PARKING on the post and I will send you this prompt.

FAQ

How do I stop losing my ideas?

Keep one always-open note as a parking lot and dump every idea into it the moment it lands. Paste the mess into Claude with the prompt on this page and it splits, cleans, and tags each one into a list you never lose.