Put a name on something that you're seeing for the first time. The next day you will see it again.

Saturday, I came up with the term "hipster homophobia." Sunday, the thing to which the term applied popped up again. I didn't search for anything. It simply came up in the ordinary course of reading and blogging.

This reminds me of something I used to experience as eerie when I was in my 20s. I'd notice a new word and then within a day or so, I'd encounter the same word, and often I'd see it again and again. How could I have gone all my life without noticing the word and then it would come up repeatedly? The best answer — dispelling the eeriness — is that the word had been coming up all along, and it was the noticing of it for the first time that gave future appearances of the previously unnoticed word a specialness that made me notice it every time.

Here's the lesson I learned back in my 20s and followed successfully ever since. When you notice a new word, look it up in the dictionary. Don't just let it go, because it will come up again, and you'll have to think, if I'd learned that word the first time, I'd understand it now. There will be a next time, and soon, so take the trouble to learn it now. I did that back in the days when you had to get up and walk over to a book called the dictionary and flip through pages while thinking about the details of alphabetical order.

It may seem inefficient to stop the flow of whatever you're reading or listening to, and it's inconsistent with the way you learn words as a child — when you roll with so many unknowns — but it's efficient in the long run and suitable for a nonchild going forward using a language where you do know most of the words.

But words are specific. You know when you're hearing that same word again. An idea is different. Having an idea once doesn't necessarily set you up to think — when it glimmers to mind on another occasion — there's that same idea again. You need to give that idea a name, so it becomes like the new word that heightens awareness and causes you to see the recurrence.

Ideas are unlike words, though, in that you don't have to name words. Words are already words. And there are far too many ideas to name them all. You choose what to give a name. Name something that you want to know when you see it again. And you will.