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Ask HN: Which tool do you use to jot down your project idea / creating stories?
Hi,<p>I have been using pen and notepad since the beginning but it is very unorganized and some of the notes even got lost. I would like to know whether there are any tools in cloud which I can use for this specific purpose.<p>I can think of using a combination of basecamp + pivotal tracker. Is there a better tool out there?
- dholowiski 16y agoPen/paper - extremely simple user interface, never crashes, and no monthly fee.
- Mithrandir 16y agoJust don't spill any coffee on it. :D
- dholowiski 16y agoThat just adds character.
- spooneybarger 16y agoMy paper comes in handy little moleskin notebooks. Hardcover for longer term. Softcover for short term. I agree, it is hard to beat pen and paper. EDIT: just in case i wasn't clear for those who don't know what a moleskin notebook is... it is rather hard to lose an individual piece of paper from one.
- dholowiski 16y agoI use the same paper. I absolutley love the softcover grid books. The cover is not quite paper- it's more like leather.
- jagira 16y agoAgreed!!! But it helps if we have a tool which favors organization. Plus, having it in cloud is an added advantage.
- dholowiski 16y agoWell, if you must bring technology into it, I snap a picture and upload it into evernote when I'm done. Then it's in the cloud and tagable too. But I really enjoy creating the paper version.
- jagira 16y agocool idea!!!
- fooandbarify 16y agoIt depends what I'm doing. I've fallen in love with Workflowy for capturing ideas and keeping track of what needs to be done in my various projects. Free and easy - I've grown to like it enough that I'd happily pay a bit to keep using it (that's a hint to the Workflowy guys if they're around). For writing longer things, whatever the purpose, I still have enormous collections of txt's and rtf's hidden peppering my hard drive and many many saved drafts in various blogs. When it comes to creative writing I enjoy using pen and paper, but since it often needs to end up in digital form at one point or another I sometimes skip that step. When it comes to diagrams, though, nothing beats pen and paper. I have long given up any hope of finding them later, though - all but the most important diagrams are destined for the recycling bin from the get-go. That's an approach I picked up from the 37signals blog or one of their presentations somewhere, and I highly recommend it. I no longer worry about making it legible or easy to understand, I just dump my ideas onto the page. For extremely important diagrams, I suppose I could then scan it before throwing the hard copy away, but I can't remember ever doing that. In the context of web development, sketched diagrams have always been a short term intermediate step for me - my code may not be as clear or well-documented as it should be (I try!) but it's still more obvious and less hassle than my chicken-scratch diagrams.
- dools 16y agoI have a notebook for jotting down notes whilst I'm talking on the phone. When I want to schedule or prioritise tasks or when I have lots of hashing out to do in my head prior to entering data into a more structured online task management system I use a whiteboard and index cards: http://workingsoftware.com.au/indexcards.jpg http://workingsoftware.com.au/indexcards.jpg
- Scott_MacGregor 16y agoI use MS Word.