1. Physical notebook: still using, but some times my notebook is in my backpack/left at home/in office 2. Evernote alike: never works for me. I hate the constant changing features/UI and the overhead of simply opening it 3. (My pick) use instant IM to send messages to myself: the IM tool really doesn't matter. It could be mail app, facebook messenger, slack. Laptop and phone syncing is free and always reliable.
I know these are my throw away thoughts. I am wondering whether there are some amazingly good solutions that I didn't know of. Otherwise I am planning to create one for myself.
Thanks!
Ultimately what I realised is that it is all useless if I don't have a periodic review session for these ideas.
So, what I am doing these days (not with much success due to lack of discipline) is to have 2 or 3 different sources for such ideas - notebook, onenote, email, bookmarks, Google Keep etc. But spend sometime during the weekend to organise these week's ideas into the correct container. In my case the 'source of truth' is OneNote, so I have several notebooks and sections within each notebook and I file things there.
Even though this is tedious and repetitive I find it to be absolutely necessary if anything good has to come out of those ideas. It also gives me a chance to revisit old ideas and file my new half-baked ideas into a section where it fits in with some other idea.
The other important task is that I need to plan some small action items with these ideas or else it will just accumulate there and cause lot of stress eventually.
P.S. It will be great to hear your thoughts on the tool you plan to create. Like what features you find missing and how you plan to accommodate the user's laziness in your UX
It is a little surprising to see a handful of recommendation for OneNote. I have never used OneNote before, but will definitely give it a try.
I think one's idea tracking system should cover two parts: fast and slow. The slow part is as you mentioned we should periodically review ideas. For this part, I am almost 100% happy with Github issues/wiki/projects.
For the fast part, like you, I used notebook, IM, Google Keep and a bash script at the same time (whichever that is most handy). I am 90% happy with the process. Given the high frequency of the day I am spending tracking ideas (~10 times per day), I am willing to spend some time to fine tune the practice until I am 99% happy.
The idea I have in mind is to write a IM-like note taking app for iPhone and Mac, which stores plain-text and image in iCloud drive. The app should utilize platform features such as Siri, 3D touch, Mac status bar to enable fastest idea capturing.
This sounds boring to me, but I believe if it is done right, it could be my most efficient zero-effort idea tracking solution on the go. (And review ideas using the plain-text db in iCloud)
I love to write on clean sheets of copy paper. Most notebooks don't lie flat and the ones that do seem to fall apart with travel. I used to have tons of loose copy paper floating around my laptop bag, desk, folders, cabinets, etc... It was getting lost and damaged so I bought an iPad Pro and got used to writing on it. I still prefer paper, but at least I'm not losing my ideas now.
Two years ago I printed everything out (including all the scanned copy paper from older notes). It was about a ream of paper.
I started going through it, it was surprised at how many amazing and prescient thoughts I'd had and later forgotten about. There were thoughts that, combined with newer thoughts, created powerful insights that have benefited my clients and made me more money.
I have not done a review of my notes since then and I sorely need to, but I can say with absolute certainty that periodically reviewing your notes will bring you great value.
I carry a small spiral-bound memo book with me all the time for short-term notes. In the case of random thoughts, it’s generally just a title.
Every morning, I move everything from the memo book into other systems and tear out the used pages. For ideas, this means putting the title at the top of a blank sheet of paper and free writing until I either run out of things to say or reach the bottom of the page.
About once a week, I file all the new notes in a binder sorted by title and put an index card for each one in a Leitner box for reviewing in the future.
When working through reviews, if I find a note interesting it gets promoted all the way to the front section of the box, and otherwise it gets pushed back one, so that its review cycle gets longer. I also use the review as an opportunity to ensure the note is recorded properly in a topical index.
That said, I capture critical ideas and project and research info in OneNote, but still use a plain old notebook (using a system I made up myself similar to the old Franklin planner and Bullet Journals) to do much of my ordinary day-to-day notetaking, planning, and task management. The truth is, there is NO electronic "day management" system available today that is even close to as good as what Palm had 20 years ago.
On NYE I went through my books of 2018 and it was a great experience -- both reiterating all the things I've actually accomplished and refreshing various thoughts and ideas that I had stored and sort of let go. https://www.instagram.com/p/BsDWesbnkDI/
It gives me something to show my kids someday.
The general point being that this tool has helped me in my goal of shifting from simply aggregating lots of thoughts and ideas, towards having the structure to make that next step and actually do something with them.
Here is (I think) their web site: https://www.notion.so/mobile
It doesn't seem to have a web or Linux desktop app, though.
My preferred way to keep notes of thoughts that I have on the way, is "Simplenote". I've tried other Note taking Apps, but so far Simplenote feels the most solid when it comes to syncinc the content. Syncinc NEVER blocks the App, it happens automatically and quickly in the background, I Never had to wait for the sync, or press a button or refresh anything.
Other than that, "Simplenote" feels very lightwight and fast, exactly what I want, when I want take a note when in hurry.
I have a board called Ideas for collecting. Usually I just put the thought in the card title.
From there more details can be added in the description, and eventually the card can be moved into its own list or board for further expansion.
Since I'm on Android, I have the Add Card shortcut on my home screen, which means there's very little friction to adding new ideas.
- Google Keep for quickly jotting down new ideas on the go (usually just a line or two so I can remember). This is my temporary record.
- Then, when I have time at the end of day, I add to to my document in Google Drive with more details, description, etc. This is my permanent record.
- When I'm ready to work on something, I add it to Trello with specific tasks, deadlines and reminders. This is my task manager.
One thing I'm failing to consistently do is to revisit old ideas periodically and remove the old ones I no longer deem worthy exploring.
I have an email address that is bound to AWS SES. SES listens for incoming emails and writes them to an S3 bucket. I then have a lambda hook which listens for writes to this bucket and processes the email content. This usually means writing an emacs org-mode record on dropbox. Which is then added to my emacs agenda.
If you use it for general email stuff, just have a Cron job pulling your email down and append new stuff to a file that gets synchronized.
I don't really get why AWS, S3, or lambda are involved, unless you just wanted to see if you could do it.
I organize everything in it, and I have also a daily journal in zim, it is synchronized with syncthing https://syncthing.net/ on all my computers and my phone.
When I have something quick to add and don't have access to my computer, I send to myself a message and slack, or on whatsapp and I add it later to my notes
The notepad is a shirt pocket sized 3"x4" piece of cedar shingle with a standard size (letter or A4 about) piece of paper folded 3 times to make 8 sub-pages per side, held on with a mini binder clip. This is mostly for shopping lists, but also for ideas I want to capture right away. When one sub-page fills up, I refold the sheet to get another blank page. I also put sticky notes on it.
I use OneNote synced on my phone, home, and work PCs to capture longer format notes, brain-dumps, links to web sites, images, etc.
Quire is a really nice hierarchical todo list that I use to break ideas down into steps and keep track of progress on projects. It also syncs between my devices. https://quire.io , https://quire.io/tutorial
I'm in my late 20s and I face a constant struggle in organising myself. Your blog post seems to be a nice window in how I should approach this issue. Thanks!
My answer is - I don’t. I’m reasonably creative and also get ideas in inconvenient situations. But I try to remember and it actually works. Since it’s an “idea” it’s usually such a small piece of information that is key anyway “if I process everything backwards I can do it in constant time” or whatever. Obviously if your creativity is grapical you need to draw, if it’s musical you might need to record. But for problems I’m stuck on, it’s usually a tiny thought that unlocks the whole thing I’m stuck on.
I keep track of tasks with taskwarrier [https://taskwarrior.org/]
For both of the above, I use Dropbox to share data on multiple devices. The only downside with the above can be the lack of mobile app support. (Personally, I do not miss this)
Edit: My daily journal is on paper, which I write at the end of the day. The jrnl command line app above is to record any notes through the day (work or home) when I am using a computer.
Nothing particularly special about Keep itself, but I find having a mobile app handy as I get to sleep easier if I simply grab my phone off the beside table and jot down notes. Otherwise I lay awake worrying I'll forget in the morning.
If it's an actionable thing I then categorize and schedule it, but I also have a large 'Maybe' list for unwieldy project ideas (52 items and counting).
For random daily or project notes I use a small shell script (and Dock application, via Automator) that creates a daily file and opens the containing folder in an editor:
touch "~/notes/$(date +%Y%m%d).txt"
$EDITOR ~/notes 1>&2 2>/dev/null &
So whenever I make a note, it goes to ~/notes/$date-$1.txt which I then come back to later either manually or with "enote" (which opens emacs for the latest note matching $1 via ls -t). Having the name really helps me see visually what I'm looking for, roughly remember (like any title) what important enough things happened in the last while, and so on.
As for daily notes/TODO, I've long given up on a single TODO.txt, but do have several years of weekly status entries in the "Google snippets" form of "this week, next week". For 2018, I finally gave in and switched to Markdown rather than my own sort of format ("dash means done as planned, X means didn't do it, + means something unplanned happened").
Edit: phone typos.
Apps like these tempt me to buy a MacBook.
It's one step above text files, and purposely no more than that. Hyperlinking and availability on different devices is important to me.
It started as something like this (which amazingly is still online) http://infomesh.net/pwyky/
After 14 years, I have 3017 wiki pages of notes, and still use it every day!
Allows you to organise cards, colour code then, pin them and share them across devices.
Anyone else use this? I find it's simple and restricted UI reduces distraction; just you and the idea.
Also good for check lists, links and reminders.
It lets me create searchable yet unstructured notes, lists, and photos. It's unbeatable in terms of simplicity and functionality.
Things synchronizes between iPhone and macOS so it's pretty convenient for short textual notes. More complicated drawings and plans I put in Google G Suite.
I use to write creative thoughts in a text document or Notes on iOS. I never revisited these notes. The most important thing is having a dedicated system that you revisit daily to revise and refine the ideas / tasks.
That meant that the system I used needed to meet these criteria:
1. Accessability: I do my planning throughout the day, in bed, on the train, at work, etc. A physical notebook doesn’t work for me because there was too much friction in getting a notebook and pen out while in bed or on the subway.
2. Synchronization: Working on Mac / iOS. Thorough notes are taken on a laptop while on-the-go notes are needed for quick scribbles.
3. Indexing: Having a proper file system to organize and categorize thoughts. I’ve found that Things works good enough for 90% of notes. For other uses, I supplement it with Quiver for code related notes or food recipes.
4. Thoroughness: Having ability to write quick one-line notes or in-depth notes that sufficiently captures my thought is important.
I'm hoping to make a GUI editor for working with the org-mode files produced by Orgzly, as Orgzly is wonderful and learning Emacs is pain.
Lots of things sound stupid in retrospect.
- a physical notebook (I always carry it)
- nth-priority-ideas.md file (I write down ideas)
- I have an on-and-off relationship with Evernote (as it is easier to sync it with phone and other stuff; though, cannot draw as easily as in my notebook, and not as distraction-free as a single Markdown list)
Most importantly, if I have no time for an idea (the best ideas stuck me when I am busy) I write it down and forget.
I am someone who despises the modern human reliance on technology for just about everything, which IMO is weakening our abilities, be it innate or cultured, and I have been on an extended detox. Given that writing is one of the most pervasive technology ever invented, I am shunning it as well as much as possible. Now, in modern society, writing as a means of knowledge transfer, and thus reading, is inevitable, but it need not consume us and make us its slave is what I am saying. For instance, I do all the private software architecture design in my head and rarely use the large whiteboard on my home study wall. But that technology is so ingrained that I, like most people, involuntarily visualize written things even when just using my mind to engage in ideas. I just can't imagine how it would have been had humans never invented writing. I mean not just related to tech, which probably wouldn't have existed as we know it, but in general.
All that said, the only problem for me is wrt music. Quite frequently I generate beautiful melodies in my mind that I engage by humming, but quite often I lose them after half an hour of other activity. So I preemptively use my cell phone to record the melodies to work on them later. I kid you not, when I browse the list occasionally, there are many in my list from years ago that I don't at all remember had occurred to me. And even after listening multiple times, apart form a few melodies, I forget most of what I hear. It has baffled me no end. I will crack this case one of these days.
I was taught this technique that helped me strengthen my memory. In the afternoon and before going to bed, take 10 mins to mentally recall (and maybe write down) the day's events and thoughts.
Another helpful technique is to consolidate your thoughts on a topic by writing it out (or with a blog post). Turns out that there are only a handful of topics we think and learn about - so this simple solution works.
That said, this is a perplexing comment. Surely shunning writing "as much as possible" would include shunning HN comments.
First, address the qualities of the top of your ideas funnel. Needs to be quick, always available. Organization doesn't matter much here because ideally you'll be reviewing this with enough frequency that a giant list of random things isn't overwhelming. Whatever works for you, IM sounds like a fine idea. Sometimes i use Siri reminders because voice interface.
Second is organizing. The basis way to represent ideas and info is relational, and generally a hierarchy is necessary for compressing into bigger digestible thoughts. So something that can help you model in that way and do it easily. I use Notion because it is naturally hierarchical with it's pages embedded in other pages and the ability to dump in any kind of content. When the page gets too much content and it gets hard to organize I break it into subpages.
Occasionally I'll want to reorganize things and that's straightforward too. For me these tools work really well but like many people are saying it's important to recognize a good process too.
Evernote was good, but I felt like my notes went in and died. A graveyard of creative thoughts.
Lately, I’ve been spending more time trying to figure out how to revisit and make use of my creative thoughts captured in note form.
I use trello for that reason, with different boards for different categories of ideas (fiction, startup/project ideas, gaming, etc)
Trello’s UI always feels very inviting to look back and restructure, reconsider etc.
Instead of feeling like you are just amassing a pile of trash, it feels like slowly building up and structuring my own personal encyclopedia of ideas and thoughts. A bit closer to the analog feeling of a scrap book.
I do organizing once a week to organize it at one place.
Scripts andi$ cat idea.sh #!/bin/sh
IDEAS_PATH='/Users/andi/Google Drive/ideas'
ARGS=$@ FILENAME="${IDEAS_PATH}/${ARGS// /-}.md" echo "--- date: $(date +"%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M")
type: FILL THIS IN
---
A great new idea." >> "$FILENAME" macdown "$FILENAME"
Usage (aliased): Scripts andi$ idea my great new idea
Results: A markdown file in my ideas folder titled my-great-new-idea.md with automatically generated front matter (date/type). If I wanted to keep track of more things (like the weather or something) I can just script its addition into front matter and then query by type through grep or something similar. Also, the file automatically opens in Macdown (https://macdown.uranusjr.com/).
Note pads and text files are great for getting ideas down, but bad for organising them
If you can’t organise the ideas later, the whole system breaks down and you stop using it
I looked into different SaaS apps etc but they all had some features I didn’t like or were extraneous for me.
I realized the only way to do this was to create my own note taking app with a UI that was optimised for my way of doing things and would contain as few bottlenecks as possible for recording and organising
The result is an app where I can type something out in markdown format, apply tags, and then filter all my notes by tags
I uses local storage because I hate the idea of a login getting in the way of recording the idea
I also have a nice notebook with dotted grid paper that I use when I’m feeling more precise with my thoughts and want to capture them more permanently, or just more elegantly.
Other than that I’ll use TextEdit or Notes.app on the iPhone, but often will transcribe that stuff to a card so I have everything together. Some stuff I’ll leave digital if I know I’ll need to keyword search for it later. But, generally, physical cards are pretty easy for remembering where things are.
On those days when you are wondering what to do next I get them out and go through them. I add notes to some, throw some away. Some I break out into several cards.
There is something about the physical nature of the cards that makes them work better for me than any app I have yet tried
Sounds like the Zettelkasten system.
I'd like to try it. It sounds like a system you don't back out of, a system for life. How was your experience with it? Any caveats you'd discovered along the way?
I love it because it allows ideas to grow organically from a single sentence to a whole book; or a single idea into a project spec and plan.
I use it to manage all my personal projects. They usually start off as an entry in my Scrivener based journal, and get a Scrivener document of their own when they start to fly.
The reason it's so good, is that the UI supports shuffling all the bits and pieces to structure and restructure the project as it evolves; and it equally well supports long form writing, capturing idea snippets, screen shots and webpage clippings.
Tools like Evernote are good for capturing, but rubbish for turning the bits and pieces into a single project.
Features: Notes can be accessed from any web browser. Web site is mobile friendly. You can share notes with others. You can encrypt notes. And the most important feature: You can download all your notes by clicking "Download all" and you get a .zip file with plain text files (with line breaks compatible with your OS).
Other features: You can save links to random websites, you can create lists, store some files and so on.
When I went to school for art (until I switched), I learnd that artists and writers have long used physical notebooks, but that you can't just use them as a convenience: you have to actually put effort into ensuring you put something in it each day whether you're feeling creative or not. And you have to go back and read it to critically evaluate what you're doing. It has to be a process, not just a reminder.
You can easily take notes and then there's a built in reminder system which is most efficient for keeping things in your brain's long-term memory.
I notice the reminder system also ends up making me much more creative, since I can more easily combine things together to make new ideas. That is a huge bonus.
With files, you have the entire operating system at your disposal to manage them.
You can organize them however you see fit with folders. If you are using links, you can also create additional hierarchies.
If you are looking for old ideas, you can use grep or ag (silversurfer) to look for keywords.
The operating system keeps track of access times so you can restrict your search to a time frame.
If you use git, you have a full history of your versions.
With some discipline, e.g. you can use the first paragraph for a summary, you can easily extract content for meta documents like todo or priority lists.
I also use my phone, but typically for longer notes since it's a slow phone and takes forever to open the notes app.
When I have access to the notebook, I'll write down my ideas properly the moment I can.
If the ideas aren't important, I let the little pieces of paper accumulate until ~once a month, along with the notebook and the notes on my phone, I clean them and sort them into my computer. If you don't do this though, it becomes a pain, because it's often hard to decipher what the hell you meant by a note weeks later. Doing this also helps you form more connections/ideas from what you review usually. When I do this I also make sure to mark the idea as transferred since sometimes I might keep the papers or only transfer half (just the text when there's a drawing).
As to where I put them, I used to use Evernote to manage everything but it wasn't working for me so I switched to Scrivener. Until now it's not working for me either (too many notes), and I haven't found anything that works so now I'm working on my own solution.
Evernote has a global shortcut to active: Cmd-Ctrl-E (like Evernote), which will bring the Evernote app into the foreground and positions you into the search field.
Then you can either create a new note with Cmd-N (like New), or you can start typing the words you a re looking for.
Are you sure something like that doesn't work for you?
Disclaimer: I don't use Evernote for note taking but for capturing what I read on the web and taking photos of documents and receipts. It's supposed to be like an external brain to me.
I also share this "capture log" publicly, so I can search it without a login from anywhere: https://www.evernote.com/pub/onetom/links
Search sucks in it though; often I end up just googling instead at the end.
I would also rather use something https://typora.io/ or https://caret.io/ for actual note authoring...
And I also agree that Evernote is a bit of a bloatware, but it's good enough, so I even pay for it yearly, since it can OCR the receipts I scan (and it also supposed to work offline too, though I haven't figured out how)
The most important thing for me is to put dates, and sometimes times, on things. The second most important thing is, when I have a brainstorm, filter it into a coherent[0] set of ideas right then and there. My previous "idea generation" strategy held on too long to ideas that don't cohere. As a result I had many ideas that didn't go anywhere and weren't memorable. Making a coherence is much more powerful, since it creates a web of ideas that catch other ideas. My "hit rate" has improved a ton since I changed strategy.
Using a markdown editor on my phone and computers means I've always got access to view, edit and create new ones, even offline, that all sync up when I'm back online.
It works great and I'm not giving my data to anyone else.
> (My pick) use instant IM to send messages to myself: the IM tool really doesn't matter. It could be mail app,
Agreed with this, I actually do both. I use OneNote, but I don't want to waste time opening the app. So I simply open my google inbox app, and send an email to "me@onenote.com". It creates a note with the subject of the email being the note title, and the content of the email is the note content. [1] I've commented in the past about that feature, I think they should advertise it more.
(One extra feature I enjoy with this is if sending URLs it also creates a snapshot of the webpage in the note , which can be pretty handy, especially since images are text-searchable.)
Another thing I'd do is save the thought as a Inbox reminder, but I switched to me@onenote.com, since it saves it both in my OneNote notebook, and in my "Sent" folder in my gmail account, the redundancy can be useful.
What I have started using which is better than the default evernote quick note interface is the IFTTT note to evernote shortcut. Its way faster than evernote but it doesn't support tagging so if it could do that it would be pretty much perfect for me, I think.
1) Things app on my iPhone/iPad/Mac ( https://culturedcode.com/things/ ) - it's a quick place to jot down quick thoughts or notes when I'm in the middle of doing other things. (I use it for my "to-do" lists - and it syncs beautifully across my other Apple devices.)
2) MindNode ( https://mindnode.com/ ) - if I have a group of thoughts, or if I have a few minutes, I'll often create a quick mind map with MindNode and collect my thoughts there. (It also syncs beautifully across all Apple devices.) I also have a couple of specific mind maps for tracking projects or article ideas, etc. So if my creative thought falls into one of those, I'll open up the mind map and add it there.
3) Evernote - For longer lists or ideas, I'll typically create a note inside of Evernote. I've been using it for years... although with many of the UI changes and general uncertainty about the company's future direction, I'm considering migrating my collection of notes/notebooks to something else (so I've been reading this HN discussion).
I'll note that I'll use these three tools together. Often I'll jot a note into Things... and then later expand upon that into a MindNode mind map or an Evernote entry. So one is more "short term" capture of thoughts, while the other two are for longer term - and longer form - capture.
The challenge of using 3 tools is, of course, that there's no easy way to search across all of them.
P.S. And many times when I'm going to events, speeches, conferences, etc., I'll bring a pen and a notebook as that can be the fastest way to capture ideas.
All other smaller thoughts and ideas usually get written into atelegram’s saved messages and then get processed on mac later.
I know you'll also need habits to make it work, otherwise, you'll write, and never review. I'm having this trouble myself. I use vim wiki to organize but I never do come back to much of it.
Anyways I think the answer is, in the abstract, more of a process than a tool. Something that you can easily form a habit with and something that allows for creative expression (like writing or drawing, or programming or linking). I'm envisioning a digital book where the pages can be drawings or writing or snippets of runnable code. Easy to rearrange, probably you want to track historical changes, and make connections between things. I don't know of anything that does all of that but I think you could get pretty far with a reminder to review stuff and just sheets of paper.
For a working notebook when developing, I’ve switched to using Markdown inside Atom with a number of plugins. I used to really like mindmaps, but I find that nested bullet structures can do the same job but be captured much quicker. The plugins do nice things like partial bullet tree collapsing, instant Markdown previewing, and Vim keys which are great for me.
Might well move towards Notable backed by Google Drive, as mentioned on a thread here a few months back. Also a utility to extract my Evernote data to be included too.
If I'm not writing in a paper notebook, I often just email stuff to myself. In theory I could put some kind of special tag or annotation in these emails and then set up some kind of system to programmatically process them and build an index or promote them to a wiki or something, but I have yet to get around to doing that. I can at least search my email for messages from myself though, and quickly find them.
I used put all my ideas in a google doc, plain and simple. But then I started realizing that all my "great" ideas just rotted away because I never had the time or will to make anything of them.
So I started building a (very simple, and rather ugly) web page where I could put my ideas, and have other people (family mostly...) look at them and make comments etc.
To me it makes great sense to open source ideas, and let anyone comment and contribute to them. This way they can grow into something much more interesting.
If anyone is interested in having a look, feel free to do so at https://www.innoventory.com . Anyone can look at the current list of ideas, but to post your own, you need to create an account with an email address (btw, the "artwork" is not up to date with the domain name, but you will get the idea)
Slack's UI is probably better, but zulip's UI is nice too. It offers multiple clients - web, ios, command line. I don't use the command line client as I find myself using the web much more.
I keep a tab open and when I am not in front of the computer I use my phone.
Of course, you need to be connected all the time. I write down take a picture and post it whenever I'm back online.
Search works right out of the box - though you wont get OCR for free like OneNote/Evernote. Something that I am looking forward to is writing (i)bots to automate some workflows (like ocr) (ii) integrate with other productivity tool chain - todoist and trello.
P.S. Its written in Python!
1. mindmap that syncs all devices, type on your phone, see changes on TV immediately
2. super intuitive gamified keyboard shortcuts (no need for mouse); super intuitive mobile gestures
3. has node-level in-browser encryption via tweetnacl so if you provide a crypt key, only you can see what you typed under a crypted node - crypted data looks like gibberish in the db and there is NO way to recover it, except you provide your crypt key. If you lose your key, you have lost the data under all crypted nodes, forever
4. copy/paste nodes to/from freeplane/freemind directly onto your map
5. full disclosure - I am the developer and working on a second release, sign-ups paused for now but I can open it up for signups if there is interest in working on the beta - I use it to organize my entire life
Most of the ideas get touched only the one time. Some I come back to and expand on. And some actually become projects (which is what I call the root folder where I keep all these, "projects").
If the idea does become a bigger project, I will often have many more ideas and they will get written up in the same folder.
What you haven't talked about is the routine of review. Sounds to me that's really where you want to spend your efforts.
If capture is picking fruit, review is squeezing juice out of the fruit you picked.
On the other hand, I am not very happy with my current random ideas picking strategy. It is really nice to see there are many alternatives in this thread.
To sketch things, I use the Concepts app on my iPad. Once you get used to the convenience of drawing something, then circling it with your finger and moving it to the side, it's difficult to go back to paper. Highly recommended. I do a lot of drawing/sketching, it helps me think (even though I can't really draw, my drawings are really just a bunch of text with arrows).
Then once a year or so I review all my oh-so-creative thoughts turned into notes and I realize with sadness that I had no time to do anything about any of them.
Humans have a long evolved history of memorization. Before we had writing, we had to memorize the things that mattered. Don't forget that this practice is baked into your genes.
To get there, it helps to write down your ideas, and to organize them together, reflect on them, find patterns in them. But the actual medium doesn't matter as much as the practice you follow. Remember that when you are writing down your ideas, you aren't dumping them into an offline store -- you are making them nice and pretty and well-organized for your brain to remember them as you write them down. Write them down to fill in your brain; not to offload.
1. I'm skeptical of a claim such as "But the actual medium doesn't matter as much as the practice you follow". I recall hearing about studies that show tactile experience (physical writing for example or being physically present during a lecture) forms better memories, at least in many people.
2. I strongly disagree that the best way to store your ideas is to memorize them. First, memorization isn't feasible, information-wise. Second, memorization is not most people's general goal. I would suggest a more general goal is to recall the salient features of your ideas and connect them to your task at hand. This suggests a mix of storage mechanisms: some memorization (i.e. for indexing, summarization, and connecting) with other higher-bandwidth, less-error-prone storages.
To prove my second point with a counterexample: I highly doubt that visual artists can remember every brush stroke on their favorite canvases. It is more important, arguably, that they organize their work in a way that they can refer to it. And, for the purposes of creating future work, I doubt that memorizing exact details of previous work is the most important. Remembering the inspiration and the techniques is probably more important.
To help with this internalization I made a chrome extension that lets you review your ideas using spaced repetition in new browser tabs. Check it out if you’re interested https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/forgetmenot/nncbpj...
POIC is a useful basic framework. Don't let it get in the way of what works though.
https://unclutterer.com/2014/06/17/the-pile-of-index-cards-p...
Bullet journal.
I've tried various todo/organisation apps and I just find email to be the easiest for me. There's filters setup for each of those subject tags and I sure have a lot of em.
I tag the emails with "Project Ideas" in gmail, so I can sort them later to review.
I find that this is the most flexible and multi-device option, which then makes it easy to copy-paste content into other tools and places (email, GitHub, GDoc, whatever).
For very quick mobile notes, I also use Pushbullet to send myself a kind of "reminder" to pick up a thought from my phone and continue the thought when I get to my laptop/desktop.
I also have Simplenote installed everywhere (including simplenote.vim and native apps across Android / iOS / OSX / Linux) which I tend to use to quickly jot down notes during meetings, but for little else besides that.
If I need to jot something quickly, I use my phone's note app or regular pencil and paper.
I send myself emails, record audio, then in the end everything is converted to .txt file on structured dropbox folders.
I feel that not enough people are mentioning outliners -- essentially lists within lists within lists.
My favourite one is Workflowy, which exists as both a web app and a mobile app. I have top-level nodes for the major areas of my life: personal, relationship, work, house, hobbies, etc; each is then further broken down into smaller topics until they end in actionable points. You can even share parts of your outline with others (with read-only or edit access); for instance, my kids's wish lists are shared publicly to avoid unwanted or redundant presents; I have also shared nodes with my coworkers as a canvas for group brainstorming.
Outlines also work well within a GTD (Getting Things Done) context.
Honestly, I rarely get to them though. Usually if an idea is stimulating it keeps coming back over and over and it’s irrelevant whether I wrote it down.
Now for the bit nobody will care about:
If the thought’s really worth it, I will get up, find a notebook, and spend quite a lot of time transcribing it. I’ve actually gotten pretty good at writing blind because a particularly pernicious thought keeps sleep from me at least once a month.
Every so often, I’ll read through my notebooks and try to synthesize these notes into something better. Often, the really good nuggets are lodged so deeply that I wind up remixing them durably within a few days anyway.
If I don’t record it, I’ll probably forget that I thought it soon enough, so I can only ever feel a few days’ worth of regret at any one time. And there’s still too much material to work on anyway.
I keep a notebook (or a substitute) by the bed, for the very same reason. Writing most ideas down is worth it, in a sense of developing a habit to write all of them down, regardless of how much they're worth at the time.
I'm writing this story, where chapters are broken down by the song the main character listens to, which reflects his emotional state. I've had this great song idea for a sudden shift in atmosphere when his abuse ex messages him out of nowhere, after years apart. It's an emotional whiplash for the character.
I'm kicking myself for not writing the title down. All I remember now is that it was perfect for it.
I have Orgzly set up with Syncthing in my phone for things I actually care about. I don't use emacs, but I like that I get notifications about things on my phone for scheduled things and I have a backup on my computer if my phone dies. I plan to learn emacs orgmode at some point, but I haven't gotten around to it.
I put them to a ring binder together with project notes, specs etc. Works well with note block papers with holes or classic papers & hole puncher. Ocassionaly I review the content of the ring binder, throw away outdated stuff and make note of forgotten ideas worth developing more.
I like Feynman problem solving strategy: keep two or three problems in back of your head and when you encounter interesting method, try applying it to the problems you keep in your mind.
1. on phone > color notes on android
2. at home desk > a physical notebook, draw things on paper
3. while typing > I have a chrome extension I click, type a few things, press enter, gets sent to my notetaking app.
I check (2) once a week, (3) once a month. (1) is on a per need basis if I remember an event and notes I took from it.
(1) is just random notes from conversations and events. If its important I'll funnel it to either (2) or (3)
If its urgent and I can act on it right away, it goes into a stickynote
I eliminate whatever is unnecessary to make progress with my work and keep just one README.md on the progress I’m making. If an idea is critical to whatever it is I happen to be working on I write it down on a piece of paper, to be consumed quickly by the README.
It’s freeing and it’s made me considerably happier at work.
I am not an artist; if you need to be sketching things, you will have to keep looking.
Workflowy is a near-perfect outliner aka list of lists that consciously avoids adding features that aren't absolutely necessary. Complaints people have are always things like "but I can't assign dates" or "but I can't assign a task to someone on my team". The correct answer is, "exactly".
Then it failed syncing.
Then I noticed search doesn't work over note titles.
Then it prevented me from having more than 100 attached links (yes, links, not files) per note. Hard-coded.
Then it started crawling performance-wise. Slow startup, slow scroll.
Currently, I'm at file level when on desktop, and on paper when not. I'm not particulary happy with this either, but at least I'm aware of limitations at all times.
I have ideas from games to T-shirts to apps to frameworks but working a SWE job and your general age 30+ responsibilities it's hard to execute on any of them.
For smaller ideas and week-month TODOs I just use a Sublime Text that's always on.
I switched to Things 3 on Mac/iOS which I love.
Things 3 is both my GTD app of choice (it runs my life) and my inbox where I catch everything. When I have a random thought/idea I just add a new to-do in my Inbox. Then when I have the time, or at least once a week, I go through my Inbox and add more detail to the task, and try to make it actionable or store it for review at a later date.
I also keep a notebook next to my bed, because for me sometimes good ideas emerge when everything quiets down. I transfer any writings to a digital format while I'm drinking coffee in the morning.
Recently, I started using Google Keep.
This year, I plan to build my own solution (unless someone convinces me otherwise).
If it's something that doesn't require a sketch, I just use a plaintext document.
Unfortunately, Notion does not have a browser extension yet so you always have to open the website or app to jot down something, but I hope this will come soon.
If you want to add notes without opening an app, you can try Google Keep. It has a Chrome extension that works really well.
It's also open source, and from a company that won't go bankrupt anytime soon.
The whole point is to write the idea down, not so much remembering it (unless you literally have the melody for a hit song or the algorithm for the cure for cancer)
I really liked this solution since it was reliable. The synced entries were deleted from my phone automatically so I did not have to worry about an endless list of tasks on my phone.
edit: To be more precise I thought about Rocketbook Everlast: https://youtu.be/FL2aOGwm3Ak
The other tool I use is the Remember app on my phone, but only because it allows indexable voice messages. Hit the button, say my piece, and it's there for me later. A quick aide memoire when I'm on the go.
Google Keep
Physical Moleskin Notebook 4inc x 2 inch in back pocket
.txt file where I write quick stuff in terminal
I do not have one source but a combination of mediums to jot down my thoughts. I prefer that than having a centralized place because different thoughts and ideas are better conveyed in different ways.
I think the cross-platform support is crucial, which is why I was dismayed to learn that Microsoft acquired the parent company. I don't want to be tied into a Microsoft account to use Wunderlist, or see second-rate versions of the tool become the norm for the non-Windows platforms. Strangely, Wunderlist has not been shut down nor have people been forced to migrate (yet) even though this was announced a few years back.
I still use paper notebooks from time to time, especially when I am listening to someone talking or I need to digram something out.
My notebook is A4 and sits alongside my laptop: if I have my laptop, I have my notebook.
I find the act of physically writing things down is really important for my process.
It's basically a note app dedicated for ideas so you can get back to them in the future.
For more technical stuff I use whatever is the nearest technology to the source of the problem. Eg when doing web dev I use Chrome Snippets or codesandbox or Slack.
I later organise them using mural.co (originally it was called mural.ly) which is a web whiteboard which I find very good for organising different kinds of materials, links, etc.
I also use Google keep for all product and Tech ideas. that's if it definitely has an implementation or it's a task or thing to research.
Pocket moleskin for daily log.
In retrospect I should have put it under version control; nearly a decade's worth of ideas and no clue when most were thought up.
Ideas for my active project/startup are organized in a relatively more disciplined fashion and consist of multiple text files under version control.
I use Rocketbook. It's a physical notebook but you can also scan it and directly upload to your cloud storage of your choice.
It has 36-pages which you can erase with just a wet paper towel.
In that way, I can review them on a weekly basis and add more parameters such as rating, difficulty, next steps, etc later on.
Is there some way to make visible and actionable this potentially vast resource?
An open source model for ideation?
A marketplace for ideas, insights, observations?
Mastodon could probably fill a similar niche
I think the law of least effort applied to me.
Keeping them short and simple avoids procrastiantion
Also I link out to Google docs etc within it. However its not the quickst tool to get an idea on record...
It's the fastest way to get those thoughts stored, and I always have my phone on me these days.
For software related ideas on a project, a notes file in the project folder
For ideas I don't really intend to revisit, I write them in any piece of paper I can find and leave it around
Longer thoughts or ones I want to access remotely go into google docs.
For rewiewing they can be easily clustered and amended.
- Voice recorder (possibly an app installed on your phone)
- Water resistant board for in-the-shower ideas
vim -c 'r!date' -c 'normal i# ' -c 'normal o' notes.mdAn insane collection of project/notes/ideas/code folders on iCloud for permanence.
Ideally i would want a service where all notes are reminders, with default perhaps 1 week. When you are reminded , you choose whether to be re-notified or discard. The good ideas will stick
For years I used Evernote but as the tool got more and more bloated it didn't work for quickly saving a new idea. I tried Notes by Microsoft, Notes by Apple, SimpleNote... in my opinion they were all too bloated. I wanted something I could click into, type, walk away.
So I made my own. You create a single sheet of digital paper and it syncs across all devices. My wife and I use one for a shopping list on both of our phones, I have one for personal notes and one for work notes. If anything gets more complicated, it goes into Evernote but this is what I use 99% of the time.
(Warning I made this for myself. It currently doesn't have any offline features. Use at your own risk?)
There are five important parts to my strategy:
1. Each idea gets its own notebook/document. 2. Each idea gets linked bidirectionally from/to its parent concepts. (more on this later) 3. Each concept / parent concept gets its own notebook/document. 4. Each day gets its own notebook/document that links bidirectionally from/to the ideas thought up on that day. 5. Various UI tricks such as hotkeys and "NLU" to make working with the above as fast and efficient as possible.
To sketch the above, I'll give you an example of my workflow on a given day.
I'll often start by going on a walk for 40-80 minutes in the morning. The energy of the morning air, the extra blood flow from walking, and the beauty of nature stimulate various thoughts and ideas.
Once I'm sitting in front of my computer, I press a hotkey Ctrl-Alt-Shift-T, which runs some code to create a "Today" document. The title and file name of the document are, for example, "January 6 2019", and it has a hyperlink within it to its parent document "January 2019". There's a section of the notebook pre-generated called "Ideas".
To create my first idea, I press a hotkey Ctrl-Alt-Shift-N, which is for "create a child document" which will link back to the document it was created from. A dialog box opens asking me for a name/title, so I'll type in a one line summary of the idea "Depression as Feedback Cycle that is Inverse of Entropy". Pressing ENTER, this creates a new document of that name, and adds a hyperlink from it back to its parent "January 6 2018", as well as a link from the parent to the child. I then add a few bullet points to record the essence of the idea.
Now it's time to link the idea to all of its "parent concepts". In this case, the parent concepts are "Depression", "Feedback Cycle", and "Entropy". If I don't yet have documents for those concepts, then I'll press a hotkey Ctrl-Alt-N to create those new documents. Then, from my idea notebook I'll use a hotkey Ctrl-E to create a link to a parent concept notebook. Each time I do this, it prompts me for the name of the parent concept, so for the first one I'll type in "Depression". Upon pressing ENTER, it will add the hyperlink from the child to the parent, but it will also open the parent concept's document and create a link to the child in a "Related" section at the bottom of the document.
When this process is done, I have the following documents that all link to each other:
Parents to children: (and vice versa) "2019" -> "January 2019" -> "January 5 2019" -> "Depression as Feedback Cycle that is Inverse of Entropy" "Mental Health" -> "Depression" -> "Depression as Feedback Cycle that is Inverse of Entropy" "Feedback" -> "Feedback Cycles" -> "Depression as Feedback Cycle that is Inverse of Entropy" "Entropy" -> "Depression as Feedback Cycle that is Inverse of Entropy"
In addition, I'll add links in the "Related" section at the bottom of the idea notebook to any other ideas/concepts that aren't necessarily "parent concepts" but are related. In this case, I'll press Ctrl-E and then type in "Depression as Thinking Too Much", which create a link to that document, as well as a link within that document to my new idea document.
Why create all of these bidirectional link from child documents to parent documents, and laterally between documents? It's all about "making connections" and making things "findable/noticeable at the appropriate time in the future". Without all of those links, your idea will become an "orphan", possibly never seen / though of again, or hard to find if you only vaguely remember what it was called in the future. On the flip side, with all of these bidirectional links in place, in the future when you're adding new ideas to these same parent concepts, you'll see the link to this idea, and it will make possible a new unexpected connection / aha moment. Being an idea person, you probably realize how ideas are like popcorn -- one pop leads to another, ideas connecting with each other to form richer and deeper understandings of things.
The final piece of all of this is that rather than only giving each concept document a name (for future lookup / reference), I give them a regex like name. So for example, if I create a concept document for "rectified linear unit", I'd actually define the pattern:
"rectified linear unit" | relu
Then from a document in the future, I can link to it by either of the above names. Or, if I simply want to get to that concept fast, I press a hotkey Ctrl-Q, type in a name, such as "relu", press enter, and it appears. (otherwise, if I just called it "Rectified Linear Unit", it wouldn't have been found when I typed "relu")
This system has been working great for me. I've quickly developed a tree/graph of concepts and ideas that are building on and connecting to each other. Any time I have a new idea or learn a new thing, I have a place to "hang" the concept, so things don't get lost.
write down by hand → type on physical keyboard → type on virtual keyboard
I used to have physical notebooks to write things down in. Loved the idea, never stuck with the process: too slow, can't do much on the go¹, can't do it with one hand.
¹ I often take long walks around town, which is when I get a lot of good ideas
Nowadays, I spend a lot of time behind the table, at home. The table is wide enough to comfortably host the laptop and a wide² yellow sticky paper stack. If I have a quick idea and am near the table, I would write it down on a sticky, take it off the stack, and stick it to the top of the table, by the stickies.
² I find wide stickies better for writing and/or jotting down quick design
For outlining and quickly jotting down a complex idea – a character, a description of a design – or a list of ideas I use [Indigrid](https://innovationdilation.com/). It's a quick, minimalist outliner ready for full-keyboard control, developed by a friend of mine. There, I have several categories for long-term items I keep track of:
* writing (plot, characters, details etc.) * worldbuilding * web game design * forum RPGs planning * major projects * non-fiction books * various notes (eating & dieting, songs of the year etc.) & ideas * thoughts (things that crop up on my mind) * questions (things about life I want to find the answer to)
For to-do, I use [Dynalist](http://dynalist.io). It's slow for my taste³, but the workflow is very useful for my kind of tracking: mostly-linear, mostly-checkbox, what-to-do and what-needs-doing. I've also been looking into moving to [Notion](http://notion.so), which is equally slow to load⁴, but provides a wider range of functions – something I find myself needing sometimes, when the thoughts move beyond linear structures.
³ it takes several seconds to load, so I keep it open constantly
⁴ both Notion and Dynalist being Electron-based apps, which takes very long to load for such small apps
I take the iPhone wherever I go, so it seemed appropriate to find a notetaking app for it as well. I scribe down ideas on the go, one-handed, onto Better (which is a bitch to find now; its icon is a yellow square sticky; no clue if there's an Android app). My criteria were:
* quick to access, * simple design, * easy to write things down
Better satisfies all three. It's like Google Keep, only even slicker-looking and fast.
I used to use Google Keep for on-laptop notetaking. It proved to be too slow, though I'd used it for a while and had accumulated a sizable stack of disparate notes.
I'd also used OneNote for a long time, and it was okay. I did, however, find myself having to navigate what ends up a maze of notes when you're in a hurry to jot one down, so I didn't stick. Evernote was no good, either, for similar reasons. (Notable, a notetaking app trending on GitHub for the last week, is like Evernote, but slicker, so if you like Evernote, check it out.)
Long texts – like published worldbuilding – I write in Markdown, in [Caret Editor](https://caret.io/). It's simple, straightforward, a bit slow (Electron, eh), but exactly what I want from a .MD editor otherwise. I love that it uses inline Markdown highlighting⁵ – it fits my mental model of a Markdown document well. It's effectively free-to-use, as long as you can tolerate the pop-up that asks you to buy the license. [Beta releases](https://github.com/careteditor/releases-beta/releases) – stable as a hyppo, far as I can tell – are free, though.
⁵ if you wrap some text in asterisks, it becomes oblique while still showing the surrounding asterisks, and so on
For life stuff, I have plain-text files for written stuff (journalling, dream-logging, quotes, and some scattered thoughts) and a big, overarching Excel table (tracking: habits, weight, exercise, finances).
Overall, I use Notepad for cases where I need to write down a thought quickly. My main criterium is ease of use, centered around swiftness of response. Notepad is the quickest so far, with Indigrid close second.
On a related note: there was a mention of a guy with a brilliant, if sophisticated, method of notetaking on a podcast (could be Wireframe). He's carried around glasses with an in-built projector (a la Google Glass, but hand-made), and a one-hand keyboard. When he had a thought to write down, he'd switch the whole device on (no idea how, exactly) and type it down. When he needed to find a previous note, he'd switch modes and type out the text he's searching for. It's been a while for him and his experiment, so he has a lot of notes stored – about people, about fields of science, about himself etc.
I'd love something like that. Even typing – I type quickly – is slow, and I don't like the sound of my voice enough to tape it. If I ever get an advanced prosthetic arm, I could program it so, after a certain gesture, it would react to "muscle" movement for keypresses, and store text either on a connected device or internally, and project the results onto a lens⁶, so I could see what I'm typing.
⁶ I mean, I'm already assuming being able to program a prosthetic arm for use as a keyboard, so of course it's gonna connect to digital lenses wirelessly.
Alternatively, AR keyboard on my biological arm.