Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?

#101

Post by wtmt » Sun, Jan 06, 2019, 2:01 PM UTC

donatzsky wrote: post #71

I use Trello. 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.

For those on iOS with a device that supports 3DTouch, there’s an option to add a new card in the menu that pops up from the Trello app icon on the home screen. Granted that 3DTouch features are not easy to discover though.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?

#102

Post by dredmorbius » Sun, Jan 06, 2019, 2:03 PM UTC

Index cards.

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.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?

#103

Post by dredmorbius » Sun, Jan 06, 2019, 2:03 PM UTC

srikz wrote: post #67

I (and am sure many here) have been in the same situation. I have tried physical books (which I'm still biased towards), OneNote (my next favourite, especially on tablets with stylus), txt files, wiki etc. 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 dif…

Review is essential, yes.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?

#104

Post by yardshop » Sun, Jan 06, 2019, 2:12 PM UTC

I use a physical notepad, OneNote, and Quire.

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

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?

#105

Post by lfowles » Sun, Jan 06, 2019, 2:14 PM UTC

Unless the ideas are absolutely critical I mentally explore them and then let them slide on out of my mind. Great ideas seem to strike more than once and I am better prepared to act on an idea that has come up multiple times vs one that I just came up with and feel certain is the greatest idea ever (for now....).

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?

#106

Post by bschne » Sun, Jan 06, 2019, 2:17 PM UTC

alexcnwy wrote: post #3

Dynalist

+1 for Dynalist! I have always struggled with the balance between structure (e.g. trello boards, spreadsheets, ...) and keeping enough freedom to easily jot down new stuff and discarding or expanding it as I go (the other end of the spectrum would be one large TXT file i suppose).

I came across Dynalist through workflowy and was instantly hooked as you don't feel bad for just throwing something in and not following it any further, while also having the option of structuring your information really neatly, throwing in tasks, going back and finding earlier notes, etc.

For me it works for almost everything from drafting outlines for writing through task management, keeping track of research, study notes for books & courses, etc.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?

#107

Post by cogs » Sun, Jan 06, 2019, 2:20 PM UTC

I see no one has mentioned Scrivener.

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.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?

#108

Post by padthai » Sun, Jan 06, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

For me writing is too slow. I carry a tape recorder and every couple of months I transcribe the ideas that I consider worth my time.

Lots of things sound stupid in retrospect.

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?

#109

Post by cherrygarcia » Sun, Jan 06, 2019, 2:26 PM UTC

A combination of notes, voice memos and music memos on iPhone

Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your creative thoughts?

#110

Post by nexuist » Sun, Jan 06, 2019, 2:29 PM UTC

I wrote a Bash command:

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/).