100Ideas
Personal Brainstorming tool that doesn't break your wrist
I'm an avid user of PKM(Personal Knowledge management) tools. I use Google Keep for quick capture, Logseq for note-taking, and Gitbook for my blogs.
I have used almost all brainstorming tools, starting from miro, scapple, excelidraw, and Figma, and nothing suits the purpose. I want to stress the word "Personal Brainstorming" again.
I see one typical pattern among them.
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They are all diagramming tools morphed to behave as a brainstorming tool
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These tools are great for presenting your ideas rather than brainstorming
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If I even try to brainstorm with those tools, I always end up losing my stream of thought midst all the clicks, boxes, links, colors, etc.,
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I also have carpel tunnel syndrome; overusing the mouse in a short period puts my wrist under a lot of stress.
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Exporting ideas or working with ideas after brainstorming hasn't been easy. CSV is the closest I can get to
My dream (Personal) brainstorming tool
Keyboard First. I don't have to go through clicks, boxes, colors, sizes, and shapes just to put down a few ideas. It should be as simple as opening a notebook and writing down your ideas.
Thinking in steps - The tool lets you think, write, connect, and curate ideas as an individual step. Ability to go back and forth between visualizing the ideas vs. creating new ideas
Text-based, I should be able to create lists as text files and upload them to visualize them. Similarly, I should be able to export them and use them in a blog post.
Is this problem relatable to you? Then you should give 100Ideas a try.
I would be glad if you could give the tool a shot and give me your feedback
https://100ideas.in
6 Comments
Spot on, Bhavani.
The cognitive friction in traditional PKM and diagramming tools is a massive flow-killer. When you're forced to switch gears from thinking to formatting (fiddling with boxes, colors, and layouts), the original idea completely evaporates. The fact that you are focusing on a keyboard-first, step-by-step text approach to bridge the gap between visualization and creation is brilliant.
We are actually building a tool called Ovandor to tackle this exact problem from a slightly different angle—focusing on proactive personal intelligence to surface connections and eliminate the heavy lifting of manual organizing.
Since we are actively trying to solve these exact friction points, I'd love to learn more about your workflow and where current tools fall short for you. Would you be open to a quick 10-15 minute chat? I’d love to trade notes on the future of PKM and see how we can help make your brainstorming completely seamless.
Would love to hear from you on Linkedin or X:
Linkedin: Kasra Baqeri
X: @kbaqeri
Give a try to https://obsidian.md
At least, it may be a great source of inspiration for you. It's extremely fast to work with and simple to write down notes, ideas, etc. There are tools for visualizing connections between your ideas and tagging them, ...
It doesn't come with drag & drop moving of fancy boxes (but who knows; there are tons of plugins), but it's kind of a second brain for me.
I'm an avid user of Logseq, which is very similar to obsidian. But I see it as a note-taking tool and not a brainstorming tool.
Since it's more fine-tuned for note-taking, I keep opening browser for no-reason during a brainstorming/writing session
https://bhavaniravi.substack.com/p/apps-affect-producitvity
I found your problem interesting. For me I have more of a difficult time coming up with ideas, most of my ideas come to me when I am doing something else vs an actual brainstorming session. I tend to draw a blank in a brainstorming sessions.
I don't want to be one to just suggest features, but maybe if there was a prompt to help facilitate ideas built into a brainstorming app it might help someone like me use such an app.
I do like where you are going with the idea of solving the idea generation issue, just for me it wasn't really a solution I would use, but maybe it will be for others who have no problem generating ideas in a specific set time and place.
Thanks, Anders. I appreciate you taking the time to give me feedback.
I also have a generation problem, and prompts do help.
I used to self-prompt/niche down myself before the brainstorming session. That's
100ideas has a board for each session. I will see how I can make it more easy for people with generation problem
Hey Anders, I hope you find this version useful
https://ideate.100ideas.in/