A generic question that comes back often is how to put one's thought in consignment somewhere so as to not let this potential "big idea".<p>My question is further down the road: once all the ideas have been streaming and been written or stored somewhere: how do you assembled them together ? how do you review this product several months later ? Are you happy that you have been mindmapping your thoughts correctly ? has this had an influence on how you conducted your "business" ?
I don't even bother trying. Hoarding "ideas" doesn't make any sense to me.<p>I will always have ideas. The Halfbakery website is full of people's ideas. My mom has ideas. Everyone has ideas. Someone's probably had the very same idea already.<p>Ideas are so cheap and common, they're almost worthless by themselves.<p>I put far more value into execution. Actually making an idea happen, that's where the value is. In order to make ideas happen, I need resources, so what I need to concentrate on right now is developing lots and lots of resources.<p>Whenever I need an analogy, I think of ideas as being seeds. You can go to just about any store these days and pick up a little packet of seeds for real cheap. Each one of those seeds has the <i>potential</i> to become something beautiful, but only if you give it soil and water and sunshine and a place to grow.<p>So before I go trying to figure out where to store all my piles of packets of seeds, I should figure out how I'm going to get the farmland I need to grow them all in the first place.
I wrote a little cl script called 'do'. It requests a name, description, and tag list for anything I think I might like to 'do' in the future. For instance:<p><pre><code> Name: Gideon Series
Do a series of new-primitivism photos, Goldsworthy
pieces, except environment is cheap motel room. Bible,
towels, bad art, curtains, etc.
Tags: art, medium, moderate
</code></pre>
Then I can forget the idea. When I feel the need to begina new piece, I can ask for ideas about art:<p><pre><code> > do art
</code></pre>
And one will appear for my perusal. 'Medium' and 'moderate' refer to difficulty and time required.<p><pre><code> > do short easy
</code></pre>
Helps to fill spare moments, when I don't have much attention to spare.
I don't worry about that. It's the process of writing down ideas that matters to me. Writing it down forces you to think clearly; gives your idea structure. If the idea is still good when you read it to yourself: great. You'll be able to reconstruct the idea at a later time if you need it. If the idea doesn't sound that good anymore, just forget about it. So I don't file ideas anywhere. I often don't even bother to save the files with all my ideas when I reboot my PC. Saving stuff I'm not going to look at later isn't worth it.<p>You write ideas down so they don't distract you while you're trying to work. Ideas interrupt your train of thought: they're harmful. Write them down clears your mind -- and a clear mind is far more valuable than any single idea.
The process of collecting the ideas is super easy for me. I use the all-time-and-devises-compatible .txt file. I am attached to 5 different machines. My laptop (Linux) , office PC (WinXP), Home server (Linux), Pocket PC (Wm6) and the work UNIX servers (HP-UX x 4).
Whenever I have an idea I fire the minimalist text editor I have. Usually [ ~> vi idea_description.txt ] then I write whatever on my mind. I don't care that much about the writing; just a mind stream.
Considering me as a media carrier, the 5 devises are in some kind of a network. Every couple of days I collect the ideas from the different machines into single directory called [IN BASKET] in my laptop. Usually through the FTP, email and/or bluetooth.<p>I don't care that much about making the ideas real. If they are worth living they will occupy my mind a great deal. Which means the .txt file will get bigger and bigger over the time. At the end I will naturally make them happen. By just executing the .txt file in the life environment :P.
Right now, I'm using the "Someday" slot in Things to represent concepts, ideas, and other things that don't have an immediate "plan" attached. It works well enough for <i>storage</i> and <i>search</i>, but that "assembling together" process has brought up another idea for something that would work better: basically, a program that shows you all your ideas as little fridge-magnets, allows you to move them around and draw relationships between them, and group them together under "named entities" (e.g. for a novel, character traits could be moved around and grouped to form characters.)
Two things:<p>1) I use an iPhone todo app (<a href="http://www.appigo.com/todo" rel="nofollow">http://www.appigo.com/todo</a>) to jot down ideas as I get them in a "Projects" category. This lets me quickly browse through them at a later time. You can add notes too if your ideas are elaborate and you want to jot them down too.<p>2) Keep a journal. Write down what you're thinking. There's nothing quite like reading something you read six months ago and wondering, "What was I thinking?"
It's really simple for me...<p>1. I write everything down in an unlined spiral notebook with perforated detachable pages.<p>2. I file every page into a labeled green file folder in a file cabinet.<p>3. I keep all of it.<p>I've been doing this for 30 years. I have <i>everything</i> I ever wrote. If fills 3 two drawer file cabinets.<p>I don't print and save anything which is already stored digitally. I hardly save much else.<p>About once a month I pull out a folder a go through it. Obviously, there's a lot of stuff that appears to be of little use now, but I never fail to find <i>something</i> of value.<p>I give away or donate any that is replaceable (which includes all books). But not my own writings. I don't remember how I handled that issue 12 years ago, but I do know that I can find all my notes on it pretty quickly. This way I don't have to remember every detail, but I always have my younger self and much of my experience as a resource at my disposal.