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

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

#271

Post by kd5bjo »

ifoundthetao wrote: post #266
kd5bjo wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been using a new system for the past few weeks, so I don’t know how well it will stick: 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 fre…

I love this. I did something similar .. but then I kept on putting them through the wash. I briefly looked up notebooks that are washing machine safe, but I think the ones I found cost more than I wanted to spend. I'll give this a go, again, but be more diligent about taking stuff out of my pockets for laundry. Well, I'll try to be, at least.

That’s part of the reason I move everything out of my carry-around book daily: it’s the most physically vulnerable part of the system, so I want to minimize the damage that losing it would cause.

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

#273

Post by dublin »

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…

OneNote is by far the best electronic note-taking and organizing tool out there, in spite of many glaring shortcomings. (e.g.: It really needs a way to tag things, as the full text search quickly becomes less useful as you pour more of your life in it, especially web clips; also need real tree-structure organizing that lets you go deeper than just Notebook/Section/Page; UI is a disaster for pen/touch use since removing radial menus, etc.) It's the main reason I will never go back to a "caveman laptop" w/o pen support. I just wish MS would really put serious effort into OneNote as a product.

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.

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

#276

Post by plithner »

I made a web page for myself (and family/friends) where we "open source" our ideas, and which allows users to "vote up" ideas and contribute to them etc. Feel free to have a look at https://www.innoventory.com ! I mean, why not share all the great ideas instead of burying them in some document somewhere :-)

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

#277

Post by plithner »

Hi!

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)

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

#278

Post by KlaymenDK »

I'm probably too late to the game, but here goes anyway.

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.

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

#279

Post by KlaymenDK »

ajflores1604 wrote: post #69

Switching to Notion from Evernote has pretty much changed my life. I tried mind maps before but the scattered nature of how I dump ideas I think requires a little more of a structured framework for me to play in. With notion the key features that really help me is having nested pages, and being able to group select things and drag them into a nested page. From there I can keep nesting if I want. The general ease of b…

Man, it's annoying when things are named with such common words.

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.

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

#280

Post by drbojingle »

I've heard the Leonardo Divinci would use sheets of blank paper so that he could later re-arrange concepts easily and draw.

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.

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