Q1. How do you capture your ideas?
Hi everyone,
ok, this is the first of a series of (hopefully) thought provoking introspective questions I will be asking as part of my research into the life cycle of ideas.
Thanks in advance for sharing a bit about your process. Hopefully we'll see some real gems surface during this process. so let's get started.
This week I want to focus on the capture of ideas. When a though fist hits...do you record it? do you evaluate it in realtime and only record the ones that meet some specification? IF you do record it...how are you doing this? What has worked for you..what has not. what did you try but gave on because of some reason.
Paper and pencil, voice note, emails to self, Notion, Notes app, flip charts, whiteboard.... telling whoever is in earshot @ that moment?
Question 1. How do you capture your ideas?
I created a problem validation platform just for that - needgap, it's become indispensable to me and many others for problem & idea validation.
When I come across a problem which seems to have a need gap I post it there.
When I come across solution to a problem posted at needgap, I comment it there.
So why problems instead of startup ideas? Problems are tangible, it's something we have now and startup ideas are something which become tangible only when executed.
Very interesting, and u have built in sharing and collaboration in the process. But here you primarily focus on problem capture. or solutions related to existing problems listed.
Are you also using this for ideas that land, which may have proceeded the defining of the problem? or it just doesn't happen that way for you?
Thank you.
Yes, to build products which people want; that's the the goal of needgap. Several side projects have been created to solve the problems at needgap, I myself have created a few.
As we have heard time and again; building side projects to solve problems is a good strategy to build successful products and in the case of needgap there are already people who want what you build.
Great question. Over the years I have trained myself to take a problem first approach, you can read more about it here - Startup ideas vs Problems.
ok, I see what you're saying. thanks for sharing that
so basically 3 version of the same thing (notes). Why the split?
Joplin is heavyweight - i have it to store things that are well tagged and categorized (also backedup in cloud and accessible on desktop and phone).
Gedit to take notes of things as they come - later to be put into Joplin.
Pen and paper - its the most elastic and fastest way - can draw and write at same time. I use it mostly when i solve some problem.
ok..so these are all pathways to ultimately get it into Joplin. what happens to it once its there?
They are ready to be executed or list problems to be solved next.
and do you execute on them in Joplin also?...or move it else where to manage during the execution?
Then its basically coding - Github with VSCode.
Things that are code related related go to GitHub issues organized in Github Projects.
I don't use any other tools than that. Tried Google Keep, Trello, Taiga.io and Gitlab but ditched them after some time.
why'd they fail you?
Google Keep is not end-to-end encrypted. Trello is basically too slow to take a lot of notes (because its online service). Gitlab had constant need for updating versions and lots of stuff is on paid version. Taiga.io had few nuisances like there was no "task dependency" feature.
Pen and paper god bless
random sheets?..or dedicated book? are these stored in some sort of system...or what happens to them once u've written them down?
This is a great question. I find the most valuable process to use being the business model canvas. This style of capturing your idea and quickly identifies Whether it is worth pursuing further or not. It is a great way to also keep the idea alive in a written form as I find it’s just as easy to forget ideas as it is to think of them.
Yes, BMC is pretty awesome... but not all my ideas are at a business-in-mind level. So I think for you I would ask : 'how are you defining the word 'idea'?'
Hey, yes I was specifically talking to business minded ideas.
My day to day job is visual communication designer and have to come up with multiple ideas daily. My method for this varies. Most preferred option is old school pencil and sketchbook/note pad.
However if I am doing digital research to come up with ideas, I use Evernote 90% of the time. It’s really nice that you can capture articles or highlight sections of articles specific to building an idea.
A combination of both Evernote and a tangible sketch pad I find is my winning recipe. I find the art of writing something down helps me remember and grow an idea.
yup makes sense. thanks for sharing
Always Evernote for me. I try to write a 2 line summary, and then over the following weeks I expand with:
1 note per idea, and if it develops from there, I move it to its own notebook, and start using tools like Whimsical and google drive to flesh things out further.
Wow... I love how clear your process is. How many ideas do you take though this per... week? or how long does it usually take you to take an idea through this process end to end?
For me it's Evernote + pen and paper as a quick inbox.
And once there... what's your review or management process? or do they go there to fight for life?
I do quick inbox review each morning and decide on what to do with each item in the inbox
I try to keep only the essential things, but I don't bother having all kinds of bullshit in my inbox. It usually gets trashed anyway.
Excellent. thanks for the peek behind the curtain.
When I get an idea I evaluate it and, if it's worth recording, I create a quick note in Google Keep.
Do you keep them in a single google keep note. or 1 note per idea?
How long does it take for you to evaluate?
how often do you end up recording? (how many ideas per week do you get vs how many are finally recorded)?
and lastly, how long after getting an idea would u typically record it?
I use one note per idea.
Evaluation is perhaps a bit of an overstatement. When I have an idea, I immediately decide whether to take notes.
I record an idea within seconds of deciding whether to permanently store it, just the time it takes to grab my phone or reach for the open Google Keep tab on my desktop computer. If there are no digital tools handy, I jot down the idea on a scrap of paper and copy the text in a Google Keep note later.
I don't keep track of how often I record, but I'd say at least once per day.
thanks for sharing that. I like that your initial evaluation is not on the idea itself (per se), but on whether it deserves being captured. Now, once it's been captured... what's your review process like? or do you add them..and forget about them, unless something spurs your memory and you go looking for it to evolve?
At this point I don't have a definite review process.
The Google Keep tab is always open in the browser and I constantly review it, especially the most recent ideas at the top. I decide what to do with them, similarly to a todo list.
At some point I start working on a few ideas, expand some notes into Google Docs documents for gathering more thoughs or resources, or forget others deep in Google Keep.
ok...so let me ask you a hard one... what's your birth:capture ratio? how many of these ideas usually make it to full expression? (1:10? 1:100?). what would gauge it to be?
It's indeed a hard one not just because I don't keep stats but also because, given enough^1 time, the ratio increases significantly^1. But, if I have to throw a number, I'd say something between 1/10 and 1/4.
^1 No, I can't quantify "enough" and "significantly" 😀
lol... thanks so much for @PaoloAmoroso. Wishing you continued success with the ones you are currently working on, and look forward to further peeks into your process over other questions to come.
You're welcome.
Typically, when I have an idea, I quickly jot it down on Trello like this 👇
lol, I was literally reading your post about 20 mins ago.
so...clarification... does that mean:
Hope this is helpful.
Thanks for reading my post! Any quick thoughts on it? I haven't gotten much feedback on it so far, so I'm wondering if it's not interesting or it's too long or something.
Well depends on what your aim is. if it's just journaling for your own purpose, then It's doing a good job of capturing your thought process and how you advance through it.
If however it is to engage readers into some sort of conversation, then you may consider 1) making each post around a single idea or point of conversation instead of trying o capture multiple things in it. this way there is less for readers to focus on, and a more direct point of engagement. 2) end with an actual question (kind of how many you tubers say...let me know what you think about X in the comments below.
I will admit, I did only scan over it the first time, cause of the length..looking for keywords or sections that aligned with my own interests (which I expect most users prolly do)....so that may lean you towards making it more scanning friendly... clear section headings, or pull quotes, or other lil content features that if someone were to squint their eyes so they could not actually read the words... they would still be able to identify the areas in the post that you deemed most important for them to takeaway.
hope that helps some.
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Very helpful. These are great points. Thank you!
Google Keep note with "App idea" label
how is it?
cool way to showcase projects, but this is very much post execution. How are you capturing the initial idea itself (way before you have something to add to linktree.