Managing Idea Schizophrenia
on 11.04.04, 05:00pm in life • comments (7)
It’s weird. Every once in a while I deal with a bout of idea schizophrenia: I suddenly start getting all sorts of thoughts about new applications, new solutions for old problems, new projects around the house (usually involving some electronics), new embedded concepts, etc. that all have the same net result: Sleep loss. (of course, this could be contributed to the large amounts of coffee I’ve been drinking lately).
Unfortunately, a good portion these projects usually fall outside the scope of my “day job”, so finding the time to work on the quickly becomes a juggling act of late nights and weekends (because frankly, my wife and son are more important to me) but I’m almost certain some ideas will fall through the cracks. I can’t even begin to talk about how many ‘half-started’ apps I have sitting around on my drive. (For fun, check out the “fusion“ project I started in Aug of 99 - then look at today’s SmartPhone. Wierd.)
This time I’ve actually started to write down everything in OneNote in an attempt to track these things. So far, it’s been able to help me keep links, notes and random thoughts somewhat organized.
Here are two questions:
- How do you keep track of the million ideas you get?
- And how do you juggle your time to get them done?
Shital Shah (November 4, 2004 @ 10:48 pm)
I personally feel the same way. I use NotepadX (http://www.ShitalShah.com/notepadx) to manage my notes. OneNote is just way to fency. Also check out http://www.shouldexist.org.
Julien (November 6, 2004 @ 8:12 am)
One word: wiki.
Dumping ideas into the wiki is one way to make time, by u loading the mind. Still not enough time though.
KevinP (November 8, 2004 @ 2:11 pm)
I use the Tasks feature of Outlook. It allows things to be prioritized and you can put in reminders and dates.
Most things never get done. Welcome to fatherhood. Remember, the tasks will sit and wait patiently while the kids grow up around you. Enjoy them while they are young and still want to spend time with you. You will always find time to do the projects that are most important and it is funny how a lack of time seems to put things in the proper perspective.
Michael Brundage (November 8, 2004 @ 4:37 pm)
Personally, I like MindManager (www.mindjet.com), especially the TabletPC version.
Some other links you may find interesting:
http://www.writedesignonline.com/organizers/brainstorm.html
http://www.graphic.org/links.html
David Evans (November 8, 2004 @ 10:04 pm)
I’ve found the Mission Control (http://www.missioncontrol.com) system really useful.
The one thing that is fundamental to their system is: You will never get everything that you want/need/desire/wish to do, done. It just isn’t possible.
Once you come to terms with that it makes the rest easy to deal with.
D. James (January 28, 2005 @ 10:33 am)
I like Tinderbox for the Mac for writing by Eastgate. It lets me write in small chunks and organize. It has great views of information, including outline views, graphical map views, and explorer views. It exports in XML, which is very nice! I really like the publish to blog feature!
It allows rules (basic programming) to run, so that you can group items easily. The application is not perfect, and it has a learning curve.
nex (April 20, 2006 @ 7:14 am)
general ideas (as opposed to specific tasks, projects, processes …) go into a wiki. which is a great place to put them, because firstly it’s easy to link to reference material on the web, and secondly it’s easy to refactor the material and link/web it together. after all, we’re talking about millions of ideas that i don’t really have the time for. thus, i try to factor out common tasks that benefit multiple projects, and find ways to merge multiple ideas into one Grand Idea. a page is digested enough when it’s obvious what the project is, what it is good for, and what the Next Action is. which goes in the GTD system du jour.
when i don’t have the wiki handy, i use my phone’s dictaphone feature and transcribe the recording later.