I struggle with the same thing. My mind is often too noisy to filter out the signal, let alone put into a structure suitable for tractability. I happened upon G

I struggle with the same thing. My mind is often too noisy to filter out the signal, let alone put into a structure suitable for tractability. I happened upon George Polya's "How to Solve It" book several years ago, which contains a very wholesome (and very useful) strategy for tackling problems. It's ostensibly about math problems, but you can apply it to anything. Here are a few portions of his method that I always come back to: --- Understanding the problem: - What is the unknown? - Draw a figure. Introduce suitable notation. - Separate the various parts. Can you write them down? Devising a plan: - Have you seen it before? Do you know a related problem? --- You can see the whole method at this link: https://imgv2-1-f.scribdassets.com/img/document/68994766/original/75c4919037/1593695954?v=1 https://imgv2-1-f.scribdassets.com/img/document/68994766/ori... I use this approach in conjunction with an A4 piece of paper, or a note program capable of "outlining" functionality (expandable nodes). The latter works great for containing and structuring lots of information, and you can selectively show and hide different parts depending on what you're focusing on. Again, helping with filtering out the "noise" factor. Another good approach is falling back to a plain-text editor such as Notepad.exe when you want to write anything down. I got that tip from the Pragmatic Programmer book. You can easily extend this to Markdown if needed.