Ask HN: How do you work through large ideas?

2 dry erase boards,

Favorite text editor,

Draw out the systems at play, choose a salient aspect present in many of the nodes, take a stab at writing about it over the course of several days/weeks/months.

Got something interesting as a result? Start a newsletter.

It seems to me that the best results come about after contemplating things for a while and then having a conversation with someone such as on a forum or internet-chat and sharing the dialogue with others. Easier to follow and usually more impactful than long-style writing on one's own.

Edit: I’m sorry I didn’t really answer OP at all and came across as a bit of a dick. Didn’t mean to just wanted to share something different than everyone else I guess.

I have an unconventional approach. I just don’t work on ideas that I don’t find interesting or am not passionate about. Passion is the only thing that makes it easy to work through the hard parts to see the idea through, so I stopped trying to lie to myself about HAVING to work ideas. I change my mind a lot, but literally dream about my projects sometimes and will turn and try those ideas out sometimes. I’m not going to take over the world, or work well with others this way, but I absolutely love it and maybe I’ll be able to finish something soon and be able to sell it! If not whatever I’m an experienced software developer I can go find work

Okay that’s a nice spicy comment but do you have anything of value to add? I guess I agree, passion alone won’t get you anywhere. But if you DO have the skills, having some amount of passion behind your work can only help, not hurt.

This kind of response is not generally productive, because the people asking the questions are obviously looking for help getting organized / motivated / productive.

If you're able to focus on ideas you are passionate about, that's great, but not everyone is the same. Some people have issues focusing, AD/HD, or self-destructive procrastination habits. If they are posting on HN asking for help, saying "I'm just able to do it naturally, why don't you try that?" isn't really helpful.

We've built a society where being distracted by mindless consumption is by far the easiest path through life. Some people need help getting out of that swamp, and the way to help is not to say, "don't bother".

This is a really good question. Frankly, generally I fail to work through large ideas except through occasional discussion with drunk people. Normally I write the notes I can when I am motivated, then leave them, publish them, and mention them to people who I think may be interested.

After years and years, when I am still referencing and thinking about them, I know I was on to something and fully intend to go back to them and execute: just as soon as the current large idea has come to fruition...

In terms of a strategy for immediate and motivated analysis, if you have the motivation to focus, I like to see ideas as an apple and different perceptions as perspectives thereof. To pick the apple up in your hand and to turn it in your mind is to consider it as a life form, as an asserting potential life form (seed bank), as a series of competing life forms (seeds), as a subject of aesthetics, as a food source, as a mood, as a colour, or as a home to insects is to conceive of it in a different way.

Also, to smash it to pieces - perhaps as performance art - and to just walk away...