

Ask HN: How do you manage and organize Ideas? - Zakuzaa

My own habit is to just quickly write down the idea in one sentence and plan to come back to it later. But the problem I am facing is I never really get back to them.<p>How do you manage things?
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mahmud
I had a good idea last week. Today it accepts credit card payments.

Do it immediately, even if to the detriment of you social life and sleeping
patterns.

I can't put ideas down. Moment I have one I collect keywords and setup some
Google Alerts. Cheapest way to taste a market. Second I would look for clients
and email the directly, posing as a "consultant" or specialist, or a
seller/buyer in the field. If things look warm, I get the domain name and whip
out a brochure site in 2 days. Google apps for email. EveryDNS for DNS
hosting. Everything on one $20 VPS.

1 idea every 2-3 months. If you do it twice you will have all the boiler-plate
stuff ready to go. ~12 hours of work for a complete image.

~~~
bvi
I'd be very interested if you could go into further detail (on the product
development front), just to have an insight into your thought/workflow process
on how you move from concept to reality.

~~~
mahmud
Sure. But I do _services_ , not _products_.

I have been a freelance software developer for 5 years now; whenever I get a
spec for a project, I have this lingering fear in the back of my head that the
client might turn out to be sour and not pay me. So I take a deep breath,
evaluate the idea with the intention that I might be able to sell my code, iff
they don't pay me. During those hours of fear I stalk the company and learn
everything I can about them, trying to imagine an entire self-sustaining
business.

If it's not something new and exciting, or something challenging, or something
I could easily resell, I wont take it with a cash deposit.

Fortunately, things always go well and I take on the project, but as we get to
know each other better and talk for weeks, my business side comes out and I
become some sort of trusted advisor to them. I ponder the possibility of me
consulting with them as a firm, and reach to my contacts for previous clients
and other acquaintances for similar interest, and this is when I start
researching as well.

I go back to the client with my brochure website, I write down everything I
remember about their business needs, and we arrange casual lunches/meetings to
see what they're up to and I inform them of my new venture. I try not to
explain too much, and let them tell me exactly what services they might think
they need from me (I work in marketing and advertising, so the needs are
almost all the same; problems customizing COTS and SaaS packages); it's
important to shutup and let your client tell you how they _think_ you might be
able to help them.

So, by now I have 1day/week gig that pays for the rent. I put together the
token automated billing, receipt templates, email notifications, etc. I always
have a PDF "Guide Book" document. Something that explains where they can find
everything; support email, API keys, setup email accounts, etc.

Then I move on to the next project.

I almost always start something by talking out of my ass first. When I meet
someone powerful and influential, I have this knack of opening my mouth and
offering to help them.

In the consulting business, it's more important to be reachable, warm,
communicative, etc. than to be technically competent. Most people hire me as a
programmer but I always end up hiring programmers for them. If you can help
someone sketch out the high-level designs and put together a prototype,
they're more than happy to spend more money assemble a virtual team to iron
out the kinks.

It's very important that you _get_ business. The quickest way to establish
your authority is to address the problems one might face in a certain
industry/market-segment. When someone tells you they're a brand-manager, or
M&A attorney, or VP of sales for telecom equipment, it helps to know a little
about their industry and location to say something negative about its current
climate. Amateurs are always enthusiastic about business, they think it's all
flights, hotels and golf courses. So be weary of anything who tries to hype
you into a project or industry. The real veterans are almost always weary.

[Edit:

Once a month I go through my contacts and shoot emails to people or catch them
on Skype, just to touch base. I find it fascinating to listen to them talk
about their work. And sometimes it reignites our partnership.]

------
oscarduignan
<http://orgmode.org/> is a brilliant tool for this kind of thing. And you
don't need to know emacs to get started. If you're unfamiliar with emacs then
getting it setup does require some persistent effort, however once your over
that hill, it's really easy to work with. And I have mine set up so that I can
hit a key binding wherever I am and a window will pop up so that I can enter a
note or todo item.

------
pierrefar
Here is how NOT to do it: keep the tabs open in your browser.

My 2009 new year's resolution was to never have more than 10 tabs open in
Firefox. It took a few months (April IIRC), but when I hit the goal, it was
the best thing I ever did for my productivity. Sadly I lost the habit and now
I'm on 50+ tabs again and trying to lose them.

Scrapbook (a FF addon) is the top candidate for my tool of choice, especially
as I have its storage folder in Dropbox and thus syncs with all my machines.

~~~
Zakuzaa
Thanks for the Scrapbook+Dropbox tip. :)

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jacquesm
Register a domain for them. That way when I get the renewal bill I am reminded
to go and do something about it.

A pretty good sign that it was a bad idea is when I don't remember on the
renewal date a year later what I registered the domain for ;)

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mogston
\- Evernote \- iPhone Notes \- Keeping far too many windows open in Chrome and
FireFox as a reminder, \- pen and notebook (x 2), \- Things for Mac, \- Things
for iPhone.

All of the above help me to document and organise ideas as i get them.

Sound like a mess?, well yes it probably is to someone else....but documenting
ideas as I get them, in the most timely method possible ensures that I capture
everything and i'm not left carrying these crazy ideas in my head every night.

Don't worry about not coming back to every idea, but do force a habit of
reviewing your list at least once a month, you'll be surprised by what you
find in there after just a few weeks!

~~~
Zakuzaa
>Keeping far too many windows open in Chrome and FireFox as a reminder

I do this. At any time I have more than 70 tabs opened. Last week I abused it;
took it to 250. Crashed.

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ecaradec
I think most comments are missing a point. His issue is not on the capture
side of his ideas. It's on the execution side.

Read the "4 hour workweek", it give good tips about starting a business on the
side. It's a bit over the top sometimes, but it motivate me working on this :
<http://grownsoftware.com/swiffout> (just a project, not really a business,
but that book help me anyway ) I think the book is great at convincing you
that it's easier than you think.

Beyond that take any idea (ideas are not that important ), work on it everyday
for a while and see what happens.

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gtani
I put them into a spreadsheet that shows a 4-level hierarchy of concept, sub-
concept, sub-sub. Then i roll up the spreadsheet into strings, LOAD DATA
INFILE to a mysql db, and index using Sphinx and SOLR/lucene.

All this is pretty easy using rails (or Django, PHP, or grails, I imageine)

(or write some memo's, use Google desktop to index them).

The important thing is describe your business plan/Cconcept in a way that you
can find it using your search terms.

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pook
I'm trying to fix the same problem.

My attempted solution is to blog at least a paragraph on it. This way I have a
public record of it, the opportunity for feedback, and some sense of
progression.

It hasn't worked very well so far, though, because I'm still much more likely
to pop open an idea.org buffer and append it into a category where it will
gather dust.

------
mogston
I got a personal demo of Tinderbox from Mark Bernstein at LeanCamp - looks
very good for rapid brainstorming and documenting multiple streams of thought:

<http://www.eastgate.com/Tinderbox/index.html>

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csomar
The question is: Why don't you get back to them? You probably have better
ideas or more interesting/priority things to do.

IMO, writing them down is good. It worked well with me if you keep them all in
one place. The nearest opportunity/free time take a look and do one.

~~~
Zakuzaa
Yes. I never sit idle. But not being able to materialize most of the ideas
make me feel like I am losing something everyday.

I do go through them once in a while, that hasn't helped much though.

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eande
Ideas often spark at a situation where you have little time to take care of
it. I use Evernote on my iPhone and PC. After making a short not I usually
later on go back and evaluate it. Over the years I found this to be the best
sorting and capturing mechanism.

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Concours
I have a google chrome extension for quick plugs, I just open it and write
down the idea. I'm into mobile apps these days, so it works really well for
me. When I'm done with one App, I go to the next in my ideAa Box

------
pshirishreddy
If you think the idea is worth it, spend the time at the first go. :)

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ahoyhere
If you never go back to them, that suggests a failure of motivation and/or
structure in your life. After all, if they're exciting ideas, WHY don't you
get back to them?

Maybe you should solve that problem first. A tool may help you "go back to
them" but it won't help you make them.

