Hey hackers how do you track your ideas and decide to work on next?
I’m building a small proof of concept to track my ideas and give myself deadlines etc. how are you currently doing this? Tools, notes, google doc etc?
Would you try out a new way of tracking your ideas?
If so what features do you think are must have?
I keep all my ideas in Evernote.
When I have a new idea, I write everything in my mind in an Evernote document. But I don't do anything with the idea. I give enough time to find out whether I'm really serious about it. If I still thinking about the idea everyday for the next month, I know I should do something about it.
This is exactly what I've done, I find it works well.
You really know an idea is worth perusing if you leave it for weeks/months and it still excites you and you haven't managed to pull it to pieces with by identifying the major flaws in it.
Same I just use Bear for taking notes now instead. Love writing in markdown.
Tracking ideas
I don't track ideas anywhere besides writing it down on a single sheet of paper, as a to-do item. That gets it out of my head and I can put the paper on my intray to review later. From there I'll either throw it away or put the next action associated with it into my to-do app.
Deciding what to work on next
This happens in my notebook, either at the start of a day or at the start of a week. I use a system adopted from Sean Blanc's. Basically once a day + week I create a plan for the top 3 things I want to accomplish in that timeframe. 3 is about the maximum amount you can accomplish. Then I fit it into my schedule.
Notion is a great tool for tracking ideas amongst other things. Someone posted it on IH a couple months ago and I've been using it ever since!
I keep all of my ideas in a google spreadsheet that I am constantly adding to.
I also recently started different Trello boards for my ideas, and keep different categories for where I believe the idea lives (ie: not feasible, easy to mock MVP, etc...)
Yes Trello is great.
I've a Trello list "Get ideas out of head", every time I come across ideas I put them in the list and forget about it. Over time, if I liked the idea I fill in market research, competitor research etc.
I recently changed my up system for tracking ideas. Previously I just had everything in bear app but it was easy to lose track of what's what.
Now I use an airtable base. Here's a screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/gmE3LM7
The "Cost to launch", "excitable rating", and "ease to launch" columns make it easy to get a quick overview of everything and see what makes the most sense to work on next.
I typically use my notepad! As soon as I have an idea, i just wish to runaway with it and make it big.
Moreover, the best thing is to get yourself a sketch board so that you can nurture your idea into something very big and profitable.
Using notes from mac and working on the weekends
Dropbox Paper.
Holy shit I love this product, it's everything I wanted from a notekeeping app.
Lists help me stay organized, and after years of struggling to find the right lists app, I decided to build Taskade.
You can use it as a notes app, outliner for brainstorming, or a checklist / todo list for task management.
It's now available on mobile and web at www.taskade.com. 🙂
I use a notebook to track and generate ideas (google James Altucher idea machine). Then I use heatmaps and user surveys to decide which to prioritize in the short term.
I used to have this kind of stuff in Notes or a google doc. Now I keep my list of potential ideas in Notion. It's perfect for this kind of situation.
I've been keeping the lists for years, but I think they became most valuable when I started putting them through a criteria before even considering actioning them.
Until that point it was a list I liked to add to rather than ever thought I would really action.
Hey Grills, thanks for responding. What type of criteria do you put them through?
It's a kinda 2 stage process. Here is the first high level set of questions. (The second set is kinda lengthy)
message boards.
This might illustrate things a little better...
https://twitter.com/MrGrillet/status/986650005913075718
Thinking like this got rid of a huge amount of my 'good ideas'.
(This list is not unique to me it based on various ideas I have found over the years)
What business are you speaking of in part 1? Who are the people in steps 3 and 6?
I'm just running through your list and seeing if it can be used to generate useful ideas for what I'm working on.
The assumption here is that, some decision makers do not use software because they aren't convinced it's the way to go for them. This can be for any number of reasons. If the decision maker has bought software in the past, they're likely to be open to exploring more software solutions. This is also useful to consider when thinking about Web based solutions. Some companies may not like the idea of putting some information in the cloud, for example.
Some businesses are 'lifestyle' or 'hobby' type projects. In some cases others are happy with the size of the business they run. In these cases, they often don't feel the pressure to cut costs or drive growth. (I normally recommend making software to help increase profits because it makes it easier to sell in the long run)
The theory here is, you want to sell a solution to a decision maker who has the power to buy. (Operations Manager, VP of X, CEO in smaller businesses). Therefore, they can quickly make the decision so you don't get tied up in endless conversations for months. Some decision making staff are hard to get on the phone. Maybe they aren't desk based or, they have a number of gatekeepers.
Ah, I think the even higher level assumption I missed was that all the ideas would be about building a new B2B SaaS.
I'm working on an educational niche where I'm selling content rather than software and the customers are individual people. That's why I didn't quite parse your list at first!
While I am talking about SaaS, I think the framework can be applied to almost all product/ service types.
For you the process might look a little like...
"All these online marketing people selling courses are a scam! You'd have to be stupid to buy one."
"If I take a Project Management course, my salary will increase by $20,000. Paying $5,000 for a course is worth it."
It's not so much a hard fast set of rules, but more about looking/ optimising for paths of least resistance.
I have chosen to focus on B2B SaaS for a similar reason as to why the list was made. "You can sell anything, why not sell something with the highest LTV? - then sell it a with a path of least resistance", is kinda the thought process.
This is fascinating!
I do the idea muscle practice and have generated nearly 1,400 ideas since starting Alchemist Camp, of which 304 relate to the project.
Of those 304 ideas related to the project, two arguably fit into your framework, and neither of those made it out of the initial generation phase and into my Trello! I suspect there's a lot to learn here, so I'm going to save your post and come back to it when I have bandwidth for another side project.
Nearly all of my ideas have fallen into three categories—ways to figure out what my target users want, ideas to improve my content or content generation, and ways to improve my site (e.g. tags, commenting, easter eggs, social features, progress tracking, etc, etc, etc). At a distant 4th is off-site promotion and partnerships, 5th is pricing and business model ideas and nothing else even makes a coherent grouping.
Thank you 🙏🏼
I have a single rule and it works like a charm: J. F. D. I. !
No analysis-paralysis, no guilt, you J.F.D.I; it is way better than thinking what to do and N.F.D.A ;)
Ah, I also use JediFocus https://jedifocus.com/jedi.png — but until I find time to move it to a MVP, it is a single-person private alpha product at the moment :) — it’s a desktop app.
For smaller and project specific issues/ideas we use Github and they have a trello-similar thing.
For bigger ideas I have the following procedure: use a simple paper notebook and write down the ideas in arbitrary order and put a number for the priority in front of them, change numbers in the next days. Now at some point you need to start over (usually unreadable with 2 weeks!) but use this time to reflect the ideas and their priority via writing down the ideas from memory - not via copying. This avoids loosing critical things but at the same time you learn which ideas are unimportant. So if a tools supports this and feels a bit like trello I would give it a go :)
I'm mostly using Trello. I have a column called Inbox where I drop all the crazy ideas there. I decide what to work next if both are a yes: a) the idea is small enough so I can build all myself b) must be something useful for me, I'm the first and main user.
Previously I was using Google Keep app, but I recently finished the GTD book and I was looking for some software or an app to match that method.
I started using the Things 3 app on the iphone and have taken to a project type structure as outlined in GTD. The problem I had with Google Keep was that the ui did not lend well to organizing multiple things. I always felt it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack
I use Bear to keep track of ideas (among other things) http://www.bear-writer.com/
My system is pretty simple: I have an automated workflow that creates a note every day https://www.workflow.is/ - I use these daily notes to capture a series of things i.e commitments, notes, learnings, and random tasks (which I triage/prioritise into Todoist at the end of the day). If I think of a business idea I will tag it with with "#businessidea" which archives this note under the Business Idea section. This helps me when I revisit an idea to understand the context of when I came up with the idea and what I was thinking/experiencing. For example there might be notes from a meetup or conference in the same note which reminds me there was a speaker I should talk to about this idea.
I am not good at prioritising what to work on next but this system helps me with documenting business ideas.
I usually write them down in a notebook... and never reread them again. :)
I'm way too excited about all the possibilities, getting hyped / chasing colored balloons, so I had to create some sort of filtering as a self defense mechanism. Not overthinking an idea is one way to see if it sticks - if it's good, it will keep popping up into my mind, subconsciously working on it.
Then I'll just try to find ways to kill it as soon as possible, actively searching for all the blind spots and things that might go wrong.
I share them on Github https://github.com/matteodem/ideas
My last side project idea went through this flow => started with a pen and paper in front of a desktop screen puking the idea while researching, editorially moving everything to Workflowy, breaking down to Trello actionable cards, and last, micro to-do tasks with a homemade chrome extension.
OneNote. I have a list. Then I move some ideas to sections, I can add pages to each section.
For budding ideas, the flow is usually:
Just a Word document, for me. Sometimes a Trello board if I need to flesh out an idea and actually start working on it.
Trello mostly if it's just a rough idea. As soon as I start giving it more shape and details it gets its own document on Google drive.
When I'm ready to execute I'll break it down as much as possible and go back to Trello on a new board or use something like basecamp(especially if working with a team).
Trello one love
I have a Trello board for every new SaaS idea I want to launch
Use an app I built for brainstorming and jotting down ideas: https://mypost.io
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