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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 al

by kaens 16y ago

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.

run4yourlives 16y ago
I think you're taking way too much personal offence in my comment where none was intended. If you have a solution that you enjoy, then obviously you don't need the advice in my comment. The OP however is asking for a solution and I am assuming that he/she is open to options. Look at the number of comments in this thread suggesting a personal favorite technique. My comment introduces the option of looking at the problem in a new way; one that removes the issue at its source. I'm not assuming everyone has my lifestyle, certainly. However one thing I have learned in my 35 plus years is that most people overvalue their own ideas, and the concept of an "idea" in general and undervalue the execution. Not recording ideas promotes the things you do execute on over the actual ideas. That doesn't mean you don't act on any idea, never write anything down or extend this basic model to ridiculous degrees. The animosity towards this approach in your comment is curious.
- kaens 16y ago
  I must have misread you, I'm sorry. I got the impression that you were trying to state that the way you think about ideas, and idea-tracking (or the lack thereof) was somehow "correct" in some more objective sense. I got the impression that you felt that if someone had to write down an idea to remember it, or if someone wasn't immediately capable of implementing an idea, that the idea itself must not be worth saving or implementing. I didn't get the impression that you were saying "this works for me, this might work for you" -- rather, I heard (or saw) "the problem you're addressing is a non-problem. tracking ideas is a wasted effort. period.". If that's not what you meant to imply, apologies. I don't think that your solution removes the issue at its source if the issue is remembering ideas that you want to examine or implement in the future, either. If the issue is only having those ideas on hand that you felt were good enough that you remember them no matter what, then your solution works fine. If that's not the issue, then your solution only works in the sense of repainting the issue as a non-issue, unless I'm missing something fundamental about what we've been talking about. I don't disagree that most people overvalue their own ideas, that's pretty inarguable. I probably overreacted a bit -- as an explanation, this is a bit of a personal topic for me. I struggle quite a bit with remembering to do things, or remembering things I want to do -- and I also don't have very much time to devote to pursuing what I think are good ideas. Without a means for me to jot down stuff for me to think about or work on in the future, I wouldn't ever come back to scratch any of the things that were making me itch in the past -- and scratching those itches tends to be better for more than just me. This is probably partially because I, like a lot of "hacker types" am ADD. I don't mention that as a crutch or anything, but it is something that went undiagnosed in myself for a long time, and that definitely contributes to the "problem". I can not rely on my memory alone. I can't really express the difference in how I'm able to "be productive" when I'm medicated and have a system for idea tracking versus whenever either of those are not present. It's a big, tangible difference, and this is the case for a lot of developers I know even when you take medication and ADD out of the picture. Perhaps another semantic thing that should be mentioned is that the vast majority of my ideas are "change functionality of library X to include Y", "write script to do Z", "little app that does this", "configure app FOO to work with input BAR". I'm not necessarily talking about larger ideas. Anyhow, I hope that clears some stuff up.

by kaens 16y ago

run4yourlives 16y ago

I think you're taking way too much personal offence in my comment where none was intended. If you have a solution that you enjoy, then obviously you don't need the advice in my comment. The OP however is asking for a solution and I am assuming that he/she is open to options. Look at the number of comments in this thread suggesting a personal favorite technique. My comment introduces the option of looking at the problem in a new way; one that removes the issue at its source. I'm not assuming everyone has my lifestyle, certainly. However one thing I have learned in my 35 plus years is that most people overvalue their own ideas, and the concept of an "idea" in general and undervalue the execution. Not recording ideas promotes the things you do execute on over the actual ideas. That doesn't mean you don't act on any idea, never write anything down or extend this basic model to ridiculous degrees. The animosity towards this approach in your comment is curious.

kaens 16y ago
I must have misread you, I'm sorry. I got the impression that you were trying to state that the way you think about ideas, and idea-tracking (or the lack thereof) was somehow "correct" in some more objective sense. I got the impression that you felt that if someone had to write down an idea to remember it, or if someone wasn't immediately capable of implementing an idea, that the idea itself must not be worth saving or implementing. I didn't get the impression that you were saying "this works for me, this might work for you" -- rather, I heard (or saw) "the problem you're addressing is a non-problem. tracking ideas is a wasted effort. period.". If that's not what you meant to imply, apologies. I don't think that your solution removes the issue at its source if the issue is remembering ideas that you want to examine or implement in the future, either. If the issue is only having those ideas on hand that you felt were good enough that you remember them no matter what, then your solution works fine. If that's not the issue, then your solution only works in the sense of repainting the issue as a non-issue, unless I'm missing something fundamental about what we've been talking about. I don't disagree that most people overvalue their own ideas, that's pretty inarguable. I probably overreacted a bit -- as an explanation, this is a bit of a personal topic for me. I struggle quite a bit with remembering to do things, or remembering things I want to do -- and I also don't have very much time to devote to pursuing what I think are good ideas. Without a means for me to jot down stuff for me to think about or work on in the future, I wouldn't ever come back to scratch any of the things that were making me itch in the past -- and scratching those itches tends to be better for more than just me. This is probably partially because I, like a lot of "hacker types" am ADD. I don't mention that as a crutch or anything, but it is something that went undiagnosed in myself for a long time, and that definitely contributes to the "problem". I can not rely on my memory alone. I can't really express the difference in how I'm able to "be productive" when I'm medicated and have a system for idea tracking versus whenever either of those are not present. It's a big, tangible difference, and this is the case for a lot of developers I know even when you take medication and ADD out of the picture. Perhaps another semantic thing that should be mentioned is that the vast majority of my ideas are "change functionality of library X to include Y", "write script to do Z", "little app that does this", "configure app FOO to work with input BAR". I'm not necessarily talking about larger ideas. Anyhow, I hope that clears some stuff up.