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I used have this problem and I developed a system for this. Whenever I have an idea, I'll write it down immediately, either with evernote, clear, or by hand wit

I used have this problem and I developed a system for this. Whenever I have an idea, I'll write it down immediately, either with evernote, clear, or by hand with the aim of getting it into my trello board. In my trello "idea" board I have swimlanes designated like this ongoing - stuff I'm working on now next - Stuff I want to tackle next good ideas - ideas that I think could be something meh ideas - not so sure about these ones, I'll keep them around just for prosperity's sake, so if someone launches a billion dollar company off of one of them I can kick myself just ideas - not fully fleshed out, just whims at this point. far out ideas - Things I'd do if I had $100 Million or if JJ Abrams became my best friend (Remake "Battle Los Angeles" for example) done - things I've completed dead - things I tried that didn't work Ideas start out in the just ideas column with just the title of the trello card, and every weekend or so, I'll revisit the board and flesh out ideas, adding checklists with all the steps I have to take to realize the idea, and adding comments with stuff I find (competitors, stats etc) items journey from just ideas, to meh ideas, to good ideas to next. Sometimes moving in the opposite direction to far out, or dead (if I find someone is doing it better). Once they get to "next", I turn them in to their own trello board, complete with swimlanes for things like user acquisition, marketing, competitive analysis, monetization, features, code, devops, vision/strategy and other adhoc lanes I need for things like picking a name, or "discussions" (if I'm working on it with somebody. So far it seems to be working very well, and I don't worry so much anymore about losing a really great idea that I had, because I didn't act on it, and I get to see the progress I've made on stuff at a glance. The next thing I need to do is figure out how to turn 24 hour days into 28hr days so I can get more time outside work to hack on the ideas I plan out using this method :D

bane 13y ago
I really like this. I'm thinking of adopting it myself. I think it's also really important to track ideas that don't work out and use them as a heuristic to help weed out future bad ideas before you put any effort into them.
sophacles 13y ago
I have a similar, but not as well organized system. * If it is an idea for the thing I'm working on, I just file a ticket in the tracking system. It contains enough text to remind me of what it is, and let other team members iterate on it as well. It definitely infuriates some of the team members because the granularity of them can be tiny or huge, but the point is tickets can be refactored if needed. It also allows the whole team to discuss bigger things and gives the junior devs something to dive into when they need direction (e.g. lets refactor this like so... ). * I make a todo to flesh out an idea in my todo list if it is unrelated to my current project. Then during review my life times I can make a document about each idea, or add the idea to an existing idea. * i have a rough ranking for idea documents of "do it now", "do it sometime soon", "do it sometime (usually never...)", and "wtf was i thinking". If you ever figure out the 28h days thing - please share, I'll pay well for it.
ColinWright 13y ago
> The next thing I need to do is figure out > how to turn 24 hour days into 28hr days ... For a significant amount of time (several months) I worked on a 28 hour day. The problem is that you only get 6 of them per week.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - nanidin 13y ago
    Seems realistic - not everyone's internal clock matches with the 24 hour day. This guy let himself live on a 28 hour day, but the tradeoff was that instead of 7 chunked out pieces of living per week, he had 6. So when is the weekend? Still 2 days, or just 1 now? It presents an interesting set of problems.
    - Blahah 13y ago
      As someone currently doing a PhD, I can assure you weekends don't exist.
    - dspillett 13y ago
      Actually, it is normal for it not to match. The majority of people have a natural cycle longer then 24 hours, and our bodies "reset the clock" each morning. This is one of the reasons certain season-sensitve stress/depression related problems exist: for some the changing day length upsets their balance more than usual. It makes sense given that we don't naturally have a fixed day length that we would evolve a system that doesn't bother to try being exact (as there isn't anything fixed to be exact in comparison to).
  - ColinWright 13y ago
    No, it's not a joke. When I was doing my PhD I realised I'd only finish if I got an average of 6 hours sleep every 24 hours. I don't work well on that amount of sleep - I always awake groggy, I'm always tired. Once or twice is OK, but not in the long run. But that's 42 hours of sleep a week, so if I switched to 28 hour days I could sleep in 7 hour stretches. Although I'd become sleepy and groggy at the ends of the "days", I'd be sufficiently alert immediately after waking to be able to do real math thinking. So I switched to 6 x 28 hour day weeks. Later I only slept every other night. After 12 hours sleep I would be awake and fresh and able to do serious math. The second half of the wake period would be spent on mechanical tasks like type-setting (in TeX) and proof reading. So no, it's not a joke. Yes, it was serious. And yes, it worked. I submitted on time.
fenesiistvan 13y ago
I have mostly the same, but in clean text todo.txt with some minor changes: -done tasks are marked with + prefix -dead/failed tasks are marked with - prefix -both migrated in a separate done.txt file to keep my todo file short Good ideas, just ideas, meh ideas in a separate file (because these are not really todo -s and it is inspected only time to time) So i have only the following sections: -now: current work -todo: list in priority order (reprioritized frequently) -next: my next project(s) (categorization, ideas, timings) This is how i track my life in a few simple text file: -todo.txt -mentioned above -done.txt -mentioned above -notes.txt -people names, phone numbers and lots of other uncategorized stuffs -passwords.txt -all my passwords I am using two other important tool: -browser bookmarks (carefully categorized) -email (including 10 year history) These are so important for me that I would never think about using some external tool such as trello. I want to be able to read my stuff in all circumstances, even after ww3 :)

bane 13y ago

I really like this. I'm thinking of adopting it myself. I think it's also really important to track ideas that don't work out and use them as a heuristic to help weed out future bad ideas before you put any effort into them.

sophacles 13y ago

I have a similar, but not as well organized system. * If it is an idea for the thing I'm working on, I just file a ticket in the tracking system. It contains enough text to remind me of what it is, and let other team members iterate on it as well. It definitely infuriates some of the team members because the granularity of them can be tiny or huge, but the point is tickets can be refactored if needed. It also allows the whole team to discuss bigger things and gives the junior devs something to dive into when they need direction (e.g. lets refactor this like so... ). * I make a todo to flesh out an idea in my todo list if it is unrelated to my current project. Then during review my life times I can make a document about each idea, or add the idea to an existing idea. * i have a rough ranking for idea documents of "do it now", "do it sometime soon", "do it sometime (usually never...)", and "wtf was i thinking". If you ever figure out the 28h days thing - please share, I'll pay well for it.

ColinWright 13y ago

> The next thing I need to do is figure out > how to turn 24 hour days into 28hr days ... For a significant amount of time (several months) I worked on a 28 hour day. The problem is that you only get 6 of them per week.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- nanidin 13y ago
  Seems realistic - not everyone's internal clock matches with the 24 hour day. This guy let himself live on a 28 hour day, but the tradeoff was that instead of 7 chunked out pieces of living per week, he had 6. So when is the weekend? Still 2 days, or just 1 now? It presents an interesting set of problems.
  - Blahah 13y ago
    As someone currently doing a PhD, I can assure you weekends don't exist.
  - dspillett 13y ago
    Actually, it is normal for it not to match. The majority of people have a natural cycle longer then 24 hours, and our bodies "reset the clock" each morning. This is one of the reasons certain season-sensitve stress/depression related problems exist: for some the changing day length upsets their balance more than usual. It makes sense given that we don't naturally have a fixed day length that we would evolve a system that doesn't bother to try being exact (as there isn't anything fixed to be exact in comparison to).
- ColinWright 13y ago
  No, it's not a joke. When I was doing my PhD I realised I'd only finish if I got an average of 6 hours sleep every 24 hours. I don't work well on that amount of sleep - I always awake groggy, I'm always tired. Once or twice is OK, but not in the long run. But that's 42 hours of sleep a week, so if I switched to 28 hour days I could sleep in 7 hour stretches. Although I'd become sleepy and groggy at the ends of the "days", I'd be sufficiently alert immediately after waking to be able to do real math thinking. So I switched to 6 x 28 hour day weeks. Later I only slept every other night. After 12 hours sleep I would be awake and fresh and able to do serious math. The second half of the wake period would be spent on mechanical tasks like type-setting (in TeX) and proof reading. So no, it's not a joke. Yes, it was serious. And yes, it worked. I submitted on time.

fenesiistvan 13y ago

I have mostly the same, but in clean text todo.txt with some minor changes: -done tasks are marked with + prefix -dead/failed tasks are marked with - prefix -both migrated in a separate done.txt file to keep my todo file short Good ideas, just ideas, meh ideas in a separate file (because these are not really todo -s and it is inspected only time to time) So i have only the following sections: -now: current work -todo: list in priority order (reprioritized frequently) -next: my next project(s) (categorization, ideas, timings) This is how i track my life in a few simple text file: -todo.txt -mentioned above -done.txt -mentioned above -notes.txt -people names, phone numbers and lots of other uncategorized stuffs -passwords.txt -all my passwords I am using two other important tool: -browser bookmarks (carefully categorized) -email (including 10 year history) These are so important for me that I would never think about using some external tool such as trello. I want to be able to read my stuff in all circumstances, even after ww3 :)