Do you struggle managing your ideas?
I guess we are all looking to find problems worth solving that we can monetize.
Since I wanted to build a business I've started to write down every single idea onto the notes app whenever something popped into my head.
Since then, the list got larger and larger and is currently at a staggering count of 129 ideas in total. It is tough to maintain, prioritize and evaluate ideas once such quantity is reached. Out of curiosity I am really interested in hearing how you deal with this issue.
Are there tools that helps you manage your ideas effectively in order to focus on the ones with the assumably highest potential? Can they help you with some quick and light validation as well? If there is not, can you imagine using such an idea-management-platform?
I recently (within the last year) became a Notion user. Before that I used to add a note into Evernote whenever I thought of something, but after a while the notes get out of hand and it's hard to review a giant list in order to highlight priories.
Notion completely changed that for me, where I'm able to tag what sort of idea it is (is it a website tool I want to develop or a story I want to write?), and then tag it's status.
So by default, when I add an idea it gets a tag of 'idea'. When I want to actively work on something I can change the tag to 'in progress'. This will be filtered to list on my homepage view to see the ideas currently being worked on. And of course there's 'complete' which removes it from view.
For me personally, Notion gives me all the tools I need. I have the ability to add bookmarks for inspiration, jot down some text, or even write a task list of things I would need to do before I can start on an idea. Plus it's a lot easier to review.
I wonder if there's a way to expand on this though. As I use Notion for most things, there could be some sort of AI based suggestions. If I add a screenshot of a website forum with a nice design to my inspiration folder, it could suggest I link it to my idea for starting my own website forum. Perhaps you could connect accounts from different spaces (Evernote, Notion etc) and offer cross-platform suggestions based on new notes.
+1 for Notion.
Similarly, I posted in the Developers group asking members how they manage ideas, systems, solutions for development. I posted my process using Notion. Awesome to hear that there are others utilizing Notion for managing ideas.
Here's the thread if you're interested @Jorsoi
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-do-you-keep-up-when-building-complex-systems-as-a-one-person-team-e01b76636e
Wow! That's a very detailed answer of your ideation process. Thanks a lot Steven! I will check out notion to see how it works. :-)
I use two tools:
One is Asana, where I add detail, notes, related links, etc.
The other is a one-line title and a brief description in my own tool https://yourideamachine.com , which I then use to help enrich each idea over time.
Regards,
Andy
To me this sounds like an idea in itself to write down... "Idea Management Tool". It's almost like you now need to create such application to fix your problem!
But if you are genuinely looking for something simple but not really built for the task, Asana is simple and easy - and free. Asana is a team management tool.
Hey @LucaUnderwood! I definitely agree with you that this could be an idea in itself. How did you gather your ideas before starting EndorseFlow? :-)
I used Trello when I gathered ideas, before coming up with my final one I moved to Asana. Trello was um, not a great platform to say the least. But I mainly used it for its kanban board where I could write the idea down and add some pros and cons as well as market research about competitors.
That's super interesting to hear! Would you mind telling me why Trello was such a pain in the butt?
I like that you create the pros/cons as well as the market research for your idea. Is there any other thing that you when coming up with an idea and writing it down?:-)
This may be just from a personal standpoint, but I didn't like the Trello UI at all. Seems old and outdated, like I was using a bad Microsoft application (no hate to them). I think UI and UX are big considerations and sometimes make or breaks. That was the main reason.
I gathered images of competitor applications for features they had or designs I liked. It sort of built up a portfolio of each idea and/or competitor so I could compare and work out what I could do better :)
I changed from Trello to Asana recently for pricing reasons. I much prefer Asana.
Oh yea... ugly designs are quite tough to handle :D Thank you for your input Luca! :-)
Everyone has ideas, it's not so much about managing ideas but more so executing them. Execution is everything.