Sometimes I have a bunch of ideas that I often forget. How do you keep track of all your ideas? I was thinking that I may be able to use the GTD system for ideas, any suggestion?
Ask HN: How do you keep track of your ideas?
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Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your ideas?
#2I use my mobile, EverNote, GMail, whatever I have available to capture the idea.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your ideas?
#3I don't, and neither should you. :-)
If an idea is worth pursuing, it reoccurs in several ways. For instance, with my current project I can have a casual conversation with someone around a pain point and instantly see how my idea could help.
Many of my ideas seem brilliant when I first have them, but then fizzle the more I think about them. Even if they are wonderful and viable, your motivation to build them out is also a factor.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your ideas?
#4I have a really long list of business ideas in a .txt file 99.9% of which I'll never get round to implementing. An idea worth doing will stick in your head and eat away at you til you've accomplished it, a poor idea, not so much.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your ideas?
#5I use Gmail. I have an email thread going (sent to myself) that's I reply to every time I have a project idea. It's pretty rare that I'm thinking about project ideas and also not anywhere near a computer. And if I'm not, I just remember it for a few hours until I am or write it down on a sticky note in my wallet.
I should note that I very rarely actually go back and implement these ideas--I just used to have a thing where I'd want to do something and I'd have no idea what to do. I've become a lot better at generating ideas and so it's no longer really an issue, but I still like keeping them around. It's fun to see startup ideas I've thought about appear here on HN in the form of companies and realize I'd had the same idea a while ago.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your ideas?
#6I don't, and neither should you. :-) If an idea is worth pursuing, it reoccurs in several ways. For instance, with my current project I can have a casual conversation with someone around a pain point and instantly see how my idea could help. Many of my ideas seem brilliant when I first have them, but then fizzle the more I think about them. Even if they are wonderful and viable, your motivation to build them out is a…
I agree that many ideas seem silly after they've sat for a bit, but I disagree that you shouldn't keep track of your ideas.
I get a lot of ideas. I keep track of them. If they fizzle, I remove them from the list.
I simply don't always have the time to jump on implementation of the ones I consider "good" when I have the idea. Also, keeping track of them means that I'll basically never have a point where I'm going "hmmm nothing to do, wish I had an idea!"
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your ideas?
#7I use an emacs org-mode file that is in my github repo of configuration files and other things that go on all the machines I use. Org mode has a bit of a learning curve, but it's powerful and flexible. That's another way of saying it's a mature emacs library ;)
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~charles57/GTD/orgmode.html <-- article on using org-mode for GTD.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your ideas?
#8Sometimes I find myself thinking about the same idea I had in the past because I don't remember why it was a "bad" idea.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your ideas?
#9I have a really long list of business ideas in a .txt file 99.9% of which I'll never get round to implementing. An idea worth doing will stick in your head and eat away at you til you've accomplished it, a poor idea, not so much.
I do the exact same thing.
For ideas that reach the "tinker" stage, I create a folder into which I have "designs", "html", and "notes" subfolders.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your ideas?
#10Text file. Write it down and move onto something useful. Don't waste time trying to find a better way to do this. GTD, in particular, is way too much for just this.