Carrying notebooks

People have given me a Blackberry and all kinds of electronic devices over the years but I have always written everything down in school notebooks. I jot down key words in my notebooks and later I can find a previous note and recall entire conversations. This has benefited me a great deal when I needed to prove a point later. But my notebooks aren’t just conversations. I also jot down my thoughts. Anything I see and hear can spark an idea in me. I write it down at once and often look back through old notebooks to gain fresh ideas to to see what I might have missed. I would advise people to keep a notebook with them at all times. It’s a great habit to get into.

Richard Branson is one of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs, present and past. Richard left school at 15 to Student magazine and later in his teens started Virgin Records. He then started businesses including Virgin Airlines, Virgin Mobile, Virgin Fuels and Virgin Galactic, a private sector space tourism company. He is the first man to travel the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by balloon. Also, in collaboration with Peter Gabriel and Nelson Mandela, Richard founded The Elders, a group of world leaders working objectively to help solve global conflicts. In the early 1990’s, Richard helped negotiate the release of Western hostages held in Iraq by writing a letter to Saddam Hussein which was delivered through his friend, the former King Hussein of Jordan. Richard has been married 18 years to his wife Joan, and has two children, Holly and Sam.