A hierarchical notes manager is great for this.
My favorite is Zim Wiki.
Zim Wiki - http://zim-wiki.org
Ask HN: How do you keep track of your ideas?
21–30 of 61 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your ideas?
#22I've liked the idea of a delicious style app for plain text notes, I'm working on an open source HTML5 app that stores tagged notes as JSON and can be saved in local storage which can be upload to a couchDB instance. I'll upload to gitHub if anyone is interested?
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your ideas?
#23Google Docs spreadsheet, with the following column headers: Idea/Elevator Pitch, Value Proposition, Target Market, Unique Selling Proposition, Revenue Model, Exit Strategy, Barriers To Entry, Competitors, Startup Costs
You're not afraid that Google will steal your ideas? ;-)
alternate: Dropbox stored spreadsheet with a strong password protected file. :-)
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your ideas?
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 "hmm…
I simply don't always have the time to jump on implementation of the ones I consider "good" when I have the idea. An idea you can't execute is worth about as much to you as no idea at all. The concept of an idea being so timeless that it will be both relevant and somehow forgotten in the future if not recorded is not one I accept. Either your idea is so great that you'll a)make time for it or b) remember it in the fu…
I'm not saying you're wrong but much of this will depend on how your life is structured. For people whose life follows broadly regular patterns this is likely to be true but for free lancers who can go from feast to famine (with their spare time going in the opposite direction) having a list of possible projects isn't a bad idea.
In terms of generating more ideas - yes you'll keep generating them but surely you want to pick up on the best ones rather than just what you happen to have come up with recently.
Besides, the way ideas work and interact aren't always straight forward. Sometimes you might be in the mood to act on something fitting a particular brief when that's not what you've come up with lately. It's like reading a book - you don't just pick up the first one you see, you look through the shelves and see what appeals.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your ideas?
#25Shameless plug: http://www.ppcsoft.com/iknow.asp
Before this I used plain text files as many others.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your ideas?
#26I have a bound notebook, which I call my ideas book. Whenever I get an idea, I write it on the notebook, one idea per page. The rest of the page goes for details like features, implementation ideas etc.
Whenever I have some time to hack away on personal projects, I just flip through the notebook, choose an idea and go with it.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your ideas?
#27Notational Velocity - http://notational.net, mainly because it's very easy to add a note in a few seconds using only the keyboard.
I've tried a lot of note taking software, and this just stays out of your way. Also, it's open source.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your ideas?
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 "hmm…
I simply don't always have the time to jump on implementation of the ones I consider "good" when I have the idea. An idea you can't execute is worth about as much to you as no idea at all. The concept of an idea being so timeless that it will be both relevant and somehow forgotten in the future if not recorded is not one I accept. Either your idea is so great that you'll a)make time for it or b) remember it in the fu…
If that works for you, great.
For me, I jot down ideas, keep them in a file, and then implement the ones I want to when I have time to do so.
I forget shit all the time, and really -- I don't want to hear any philosophical fluff about how that must mean that the idea just wasn't all that good. It's an attribute of my memory, not the idea.
I'm not an "idea person". I'm a "getting shit done" person, who happens to have quite a few ideas, and who also happens to work full time and attend 12 credit hours a semester. I'd rather make a note of them, review them in my free time, and implement when I feel like I can, or when I choose to than rely on keeping some spark of inspiration kindled for an indefinite period of time.
Not recording ideas is both a way of validating them and focusing your mind on implementation. "Idea people" like us can easily lose ourselves in the mental masturbation that is the generation of "ideas". The last thing we should be doing is encouraging staying in that stage longer than we have to.
Yeah, luckily I'm not talking about just sitting around thinking of ideas and not implementing them. I never sit around trying to come up with an idea, and I get no satisfaction from just having an idea, which cuts out the masturbation.
I'll agree that we shouldn't encourage people to sit around thinking of hare-brained schemes, but please don't assume that everyones lifestyle and mind are structured the way yours is.
There's no universal truth to be had about tracking ideas or todo items -- it's too subjective of a territory -- and when you talk as if there is, it makes you sound like a jackass.
If you never find yourself in the position of wanting to jot down ideas because you "remember the good ones", wonderful. Don't tell me that it's not a useful thing for me to do, because seriously -- if I don't do things like that, I do not remember them. I don't remember what's in my ideas file right now, but I guarantee you that some of those ideas I will start implementing later.
Yeah, I'll always have more ideas than time. That's fine. I'll also know that the ideas I've saved but haven't had the chance to work on are ones that I'm actually interested in -- and I'll know that I didn't just forget some bright idea that I've had.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your ideas?
#29Most of the general ideas I will forget, but I take the ideas I am really interested in and store them in google docs in a bullet list.
Re: Ask HN: How do you keep track of your ideas?
#30For something new, I create a project in Omnifocus on my iPhone, then describe it.
For an existing idea, new items get added as tasks on the project.
I bought Omnifocus right when the app store opened, along with Super Monkey Ball etc., but whilst all those other programs fell by the wayside, Omnifocus recently migrated to the 'shelf' and has stayed there.
If you own a Mac, you can share sync between iPhones, iPad by simply pointing Omnifocus at a webdav folder on the Mac (easy to create by using the built-in Apache 2.0)