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

I love Workflowy. For me the single most valuable part of it is how effortless it makes it for me to write down some quick notes that I can get back to (or not) later.

This might be against the grain here but I prefer simply to practice remembering things well, like humans did before writing was invented. Its hard but worth attempting. I usually engage in the thought for a while, thoroughly milk it by letting the mind wander wherever it pleases, and it typically stays etched. This has worked for a long time now.

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.

here you go https://imgur.com/17XxTmX

all these are equivalents [CRYPT][SAFE][HIDE] etc

there are also other commands such as: [VISIT][PEEK] that allow you to navigate and edit a different mindmap so that you don't have to leave the one you are currently working on

eventually I want to be able to combine commands like so: [SAFE]send Cindy key - [AT 2130] - [TEXT 7732049384] - the key Cindy is expecting

in the example above Cindy would receive a gibberish text message around 9:30pm, but you get the point

The most important thing for me, and as you mention, is the accessibility aspect. The father something is, the harder it is to remember to jot down something. The notes app opens really fast on both Mac and iOS, whereas Onenote can feel very bulky.

Totally agree - constantly trying to jot down thoughts as they occur is both distracting and can get overwhelming to revisit.

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.