

How I Learned to Defrag My Brain - alexknowshtml
http://alexhillman.com/defrag-your-brain-with-a-sparkfile

======
thejerz
I've kept a file called "ventures.rtf" since 2007. Quite simply, it has every
business idea I've had that's worth writing down. Every year or so I go
through and delete the stupid ideas. To say this has become the most valuable
document in my life is an understatement. It is my career, in a file.

I used to keep a larger, more generic "spark file" but I found it got to be
too big to navigate. So I throw away more ideas now, and only write down ones
that have serious merit, placing them in specific files instead of a "kitchen
sink" catchall file.

I also have "possible programmers" and "possible designers" files, which I've
kept since 2007. These are just lists of great people that I've found over the
years, and may wish to hire at some time. I've initiated relationships with
some of these people, knowing that one day I might want to bring them in to
one of my ventures.

Finally, I have a "rules to live by" file. I've kept this since November 2011,
so it is much younger than the rest. So far, it's about 560 succinct adages. I
work on it for 30m-1h ever day. I study life and draw conclusions, abstracting
the particular instances I experienced into broader maxims.

I review this file before any major decision is made. It's sort of like a file
on disk that I can load into my memory; it puts my mind in an optimal state
before making a decision. It's like putting everything I've learned into my
brain's electro-chemical RAM banks. The quality of personal and business
decisions has increased 10000x since starting this particular file.

~~~
noonespecial
Heh. I call my two files "foundation" and "empire".

~~~
mey
Mine is called "A little bit of background" and "Biz Ideas"

------
eggbrain
One of the biggest issues I've found is that many developers say they are
uncreative -- they have the talent, but they say they can never think of ideas
that are useful to build.

So, for those of you wondering how you can even start building a "sparkfile",
I'll give you my secret: whenever I'm annoyed with something I'm doing, I'll
analyze why I am annoyed, and out of that usually comes an idea. A few months
ago, I was annoyed that Hacker News was the first place I learned about
password leaks, sometimes weeks before the companies emailed me -- leaving me
insecure for quite a while. If only a computer could scan headlines across
different tech websites looking for the latest companies to have password
leaks, and would email you the second it saw anything.

48 hours later, I built leaknotifier.com to do just that.

For me, I crave simplicity. Whenever something that I think should be simple
to do takes much longer than necessary, I start brainstorming how I would
simplify it. If I ever feel like I'm on autopilot because I'm doing the same
thing over and over, I figure out ways to automate it. If you ever feel
frustrated and start to think "if only they just _____", start actually
figuring out why they don't just do X, and if there is no good reason, start
developing it.

~~~
fromhet
Why is google not avaliable in the list of services at leaknotifier? That is
something many of us use.

~~~
eggbrain
To be honest, it was because Google kept being a false positive whenever I ran
the analysis on RSS feeds, and since Google hadn't had any large password
leaks (outside of China targeting a few protestors), along with Google's
emphasis on security with IP monitoring and 2-factor, I considered them
immune. Still, though, I'll add it in and fix my parsing to get rid of the
false positives.

I still need to do a lot of stuff for the app (SSL default, tweaking feeds and
parsing), I was more just trying to show how my frustration led to an idea.

------
tep
To log bits of information quickly I added this to my .bashrc:

log(){ date >> ~/log/$* ; cat >> ~/log/$* ; }

I try to keep it simple but I keep several files. There is one for general
ideas which is called "projects", another one to log new words I've learnt
called "voc.en" (English is a second language for me) and so on.

For example:

log projects <enter>

write something cool... <enter> <ctrl+c>

\--------------------

cat log/projects

Mo 10. Sep 07:16:02 CEST 2012

write something cool...

~~~
aaronpk
This is a great idea! I've been using text docs like this for a while, but the
problem that keeps happening to me is I go open the file to add something to
it, and get distracted by reading the stuff in the file and forget what I was
about to add!

I'm going to try this CLI method since it'll be impossible to read old stuff
and get distracted while trying to add something.

~~~
aaronpk
Here's my entry in my bash profile:

    
    
        log() {
          echo >> ~/Dropbox/NotationalVelocity/$*.txt ;
          date >> ~/Dropbox/NotationalVelocity/$*.txt ;
          cat >> ~/Dropbox/NotationalVelocity/$*.txt ;
        }
    

We'll see how this goes!

------
kiba
I also read the _Where Good Ideas Come From_ book, and I especially like his
commonplacing idea. However, I didn't compile them into a sparkfile. Instead,
I compile my notes into this personal web page:
<http://kibabase.com/articles/notes-and-thoughts>

It's full of random ideas like fear inoculation, legoization, animated qr
code, and some half completed essay like _self quantification_ , _synthetic
blood vessel_ , and _why choose prosthesis_. I am constantly rewriting them as
well as adding ideas and citations. I also reread it everyday.

------
david_shaw
I think a lot of us entrepreneur types have files, Moleskins, txt documents,
blogs, etc. that are similar to 'The Spark File.' It's an excellent tool, and
keeping track of ideas, inspiration, projects, and more is a vital part of
organizing your thoughts.

One thing that differentiates this particular implementation is the consistent
(but not constant) review of ideas, as well as the consolidation of ideas that
seem to go well together. The creation of "full" ideas vs. "half baked" ideas
is a really interesting concept, and I feel that I learned a lot about idea
formation, even from just a four minute video.

While ByWord seems great for offline editing (and I'm certainly going to give
it a shot), I've had a really great experience using Trello for my "spark
file." The separate "cards" that Trello supports allow me to have different
categories of ideas that I can then individually consolidate. For example, I
currently have cards for:

\- Startup (ideas for ventures I'm considering.)

\- Posts (blog posts I'd like to write; either expanded versions of HN
comments, or stories in and of themselves. This comment will likely go right
in there as well!)

\- Research (security & appsec research I'd like to conduct, as well as
particular technologies I'm interested in. My to-learn queue.)

\- Software (non-startup related software I'm building or would like to
build.)

In the end, I can't help but agree and evangelize Alex's post -- the human
brain can only keep track of so much on its own, but with help and
organization, we can be much more productive!

------
willholloway
Creative types have cool new ideas all the time.

Some have an idea and think "it would be cool if someone did that", others do
it.

The problem most doers have when they get a new idea is they are already
working on a cool idea.

These new ideas will distract the driven, unless they write them down in a
trusted system.

I always wrote ideas down in notebooks, but I don't like paper's distributed,
non-indexed characteristics as a persistent storage medium. Also, being in my
20s I like to move to a new city every couple years by plane and staying
completely digital makes this lifestyle easy.

I wrote an app called IdeaList to solve this problem for myself, I was almost
finished with it and about to ship when a consulting project with an urgent
deadline came by that was too good to refuse.

I've been using it myself and its increased my peace of mind considerably to
know all my Awesome Ideas are there.

This post reminded me that IdeaList is something worth releasing because its a
slick solution to a critical problem.

I'm going to charge a very small amount to keep the service viable, but anyone
from hacker news that might be interested gets a free lifetime subscription if
they email me today at will@willholloway.net

------
danso
I think doing this as a single document works well...but I like to do this
with text files in a dropbox folder. The file name serves as the description
of the idea, and the textfile contains any details/updates I have in mind.
Ordering by date-created or updated seems to work fine. A little more overhead
but allows for "overflow", when some ideas have more meat to begin with.

~~~
pixelcort
There is software called Notational Velocity that can be setup to use a folder
of text files like this. I have mine setup like this on Dropbox and it works
great.

<http://notational.net/>

The software presents a reverse chronological list of the files' updated
timestamps, has a 'search-or-create' style of file creation, and can have
links to one file within another.

~~~
pronoiac
I really like Notational Velocity - or, for me, ResophNotes on Windows and
Simplenote on the iPhone. Before this, I tried MobileOrg on my phone, an Org
Mode app - the search in NV is just much smoother and more useful.

------
smoody
I have a single OmniOutliner file with all of my ideas and random thoughts. It
is _much_ better to have tools that support ad-hoc organization than tools
that limit you to a flat space. It's so easy to create outlines in
OmniOutliner, that it would be silly not to. Definitely recommend it. Before
that, it was emailing ideas to myself with a tag in the subject line.

------
taude
There's a whole book on this type of topic called "Making Ideas Happen" that
discusses the idea of the "Backlog" for all your ideas. There's also a
dedicated website called <http://99u.com/> that supports the materials in the
book. Check it out.

~~~
taude
I should add that I've been using Trello to track my personal "Spark File" (or
Backlog) for awhile now. Works wonderfully. And as a bonus makes it easy to
"riff" on certain ideas for a couple minutes without committing to anything.

------
lostapathy
I use Trello for this. I have a board with a few lists, each with a different
category of idea on it. When I get a new idea, I add a card for it. As I
develop the idea, I add to the card.

At some point I either archive the card out, or I setup a new board/list/card
elsewhere to actually pursue the idea.

------
billswift
That looks like a weak version of "How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought
you Think", <http://www.speakeasy.org/~lion/nb/> . You don't have to dive
completely into Lion Kimbro's system to find parts of it very useful.
Especially the use of speeds for quick jottings and the binders for organizing
things so you can find them again. No matter how much of his actual system you
might end up using though, reading his book about it will open your eyes.

My initial system is similar to his, but I found transcribing everything into
computer better, mainly because of easier searching, and because it made
sharing information that applied to multiple projects easier.

------
tedmiston
Interesting how many of us here mention some concept of an idea log across
media such as wikis, paper notebooks, text files, the web, and others.

My own implementation is a journal, each day in its own plain text file. I
track the major milestones in my day and prefix ideas with "Idea: " so that I
could easily grep all ideas into one list if needed. (However, I haven't done
that yet. I tend to let them sit and incubate rather than act immediately.)

I'm curious about 3 things:

(1) What motivated the start of such behavior for others?

(2) How do you react to your idea log with respect to balancing focus between
current projects / work, and speculative projects?

(3) How do others account for visuals such as sketches or interface ideas
which are often easier to create with analog tools?

~~~
npsimons
_(1) What motivated the start of such behavior for others?_

I was letting things slip and forgetting things I needed to remember; so it
was more of a "hey, I need to be more organized" kind of thing, but it also
came with the benefit of capturing EVERYTHING.

 _(2) How do you react to your idea log with respect to balancing focus
between current projects / work, and speculative projects?_

It's sad but true, you can do anything, but not everything. Most of what I
capture are todos, maybe the occasional project or "big idea", but two things
have forced me to realize I can't do everything. First, I was forgetting
things again, because I'd capture them and never see them again (reviewing
wouldn't help; there are simply too many to review them all). Second, to fix
the first, I added a default deadline of "today" to my capture template. Then
once I started going down my todo list, I would reschedule, only to come
across some things again and reschedule again. After a while, I finally
started forcing myself to either cancel or indefinitely defer things. I have a
core set of "must dos", habits, chores and such, plus short term goals, but
haven't quite gotten to the long term planning stage yet. For now, it's all
logged, version controlled and archived in git, so I never truly "lose"
anything, I just give up on doing everything and prioritize.

 _(3) How do others account for visuals such as sketches or interface ideas
which are often easier to create with analog tools?_

I'm mostly an auditory/textual person (code monkey by day), so I don't miss
that too much. You could do ASCII art, I suppose (<http://emacs-
fu.blogspot.com/2009/01/drawing-pictures.html> ;) Although, I would like to
have some nice charts (or at least cumulative stats) for a bigger picture;
this is actually yet another project idea of mine, which is very feasible with
org-mode: <http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/intro.html>

~~~
tedmiston
I experienced similar "panic scheduling" with (2) myself. I'm trying to forego
due dates and deadlines except when completely necessary (often because of
procrastination).

I'm trying to take a low-tech approach to my system as opposed to having more
tech. It's easier for me to ignore the list of "random things to research
someday" when it's on an index card at home than on my laptop and phone
everywhere. At the same time, I rarely find myself missing lists like these.

My own sketches tend to pile up physically with the eventual goal of being
scanned in and named with the date drawn.

Thanks for sharing.

~~~
npsimons
As to the easy to ignore, I can always defer or just remove the deadline (then
it won't show up in the agenda); I'd rather capture and ignore than lose data.
I don't get a lot of "big ideas", but I'm constantly thinking of little things
that need looking after, and I will forget them if I don't record them
somewhere. This even gets so bad that now I want something voice activated for
when I am driving and think of something!

I've also tried scanning, to the tune of 10s of thousands of scans; then you
have to manage the scans, and they aren't indexable by default (unless you
have some fancy OCR type software like the Neat). It's one of the reasons I
really prefer plain text: perfectly greppable, easy to slice and dice with
Perl (or Python, Ruby, R, etc).

------
mrtunes
i have notes scattered around evernote, dropbox, index cards, moleskines, iOS
notes. i think it's time to compile them into a spark file!

~~~
alexknowshtml
That was the difference for me, too. If I took notes at all it wasn't in one
place (a mix of text files and iOS notes for me). Switching to Byword and a
single file was faster and I was more consistent about jotting notes down no
matter where I was.

More importantly, I didn't have any habit for reviewing them. Hope it helps
you like it helped me!

~~~
npsimons
For me, it's org-mode in Emacs and git. Quick idea/note/todo capture combined
with time logging, task management and calendar, not to mention the table
features. Got it on phone and desktops/laptops.

On a slight tangent, I'm looking for something more touch screen appropriate
that I can sync with git (must be text based, preferably compatible with org-
mode). While I have Emacs, org-mode and git on the current phone with a
hardware keyboard, that won't last forever, and I _really_ need something that
makes for _very_ quick idea capture on a touchscreen. Bonus points for
something that also tracks/logs time, manages todos and calendars (ideally, I
suppose it would be org-mode optimized for a touch screen).

EDIT: Yes, I know about MobileOrg (<http://orgmode.org/manual/MobileOrg.html>)
and while it's close (oh, so close), it's not quite close enough (notably,
it's lacking logging of time spent on tasks). Although, since it is open
source . . .

~~~
agumonkey
Never managed to learn org-capture, so I use deft instead. Not as immediate
but good enough.

------
jamesmcn
I started doing something like this in paper notebooks in the early '90s. The
main difference is that my notebooks keep _all_ of my notes. This makes the
review process a lot more tedious. Maybe it is time to start a new notebook
for ideas, and keep that separate from the "note" books.

Edit: one advantage of the paper process over the various software / cloud
solutions is that I can still read those ancient notes. Love the cloud for
business, but it is tough to beat ink and bound paper for personal records
that you want to keep for a long time. An added bonus is that you can
occasionally entertain visions of holding a bonfire of your old notes and
starting fresh.

~~~
npsimons
_Edit: one advantage of the paper process over the various software / cloud
solutions is that I can still read those ancient notes._

Have you heard of this awesome thing called "ASCII"? Org-mode (among others)
uses it, but adds structure, shortcuts and refiling, so you get the best of
both worlds. Combined with something like Git and SSH, plus your own server
(c'mon, VPS are down to what, $6/month these days?), and you've got
replicated, versioned, encrypted, non-proprietary, non-lockin, forward (and
backwards!) readable notes.

~~~
jamesmcn
You are right - I should have been running Git in 1993!

~~~
npsimons
Kindly ignoring the snide fact that, yes, git wasn't available in 1993, I'll
point out that ASCII has been around since, what, the late 1960's? Of course,
I will admit I was being a bit snarky too, but backups have been around
forever, and text compresses really well. Of course, I can appreciate the
permanence of ink, or even stone as a media
([http://books.google.com/books?id=CgeHW-
geducC&lpg=PA6...](http://books.google.com/books?id=CgeHW-
geducC&lpg=PA6&ots=W-wVe4fKqT&dq=chalk%20ink%20stone%20Anathem&pg=PA6#v=onepage&q=chalk%20ink%20stone%20Anathem&f=false)).

------
karpathy
I do something very similar but with my research. Ithink Scientists have
basically known about this for a while, and it is one of the primary reasons
we are encouraged to keep a research journal. It is essentially a diary of all
the ideas for algorithms and things to try that I randomly come up with, and
it works absolute wonders. I review it completely from time to time and I am
almost always guaranteed to find some brilliant idea that the old me had a
while ago, and I completely forgot about since. Sometimes an old idea can
combine with new context or mindset and magic happens.

------
sesqu
I started with a couple of flat files. Then I used a notepad, then I moved to
Xfce Notes (one of my favourite pieces of software), and lately I've been
moving to a folder of text files.

While this is certainly an important habit, I wouldn't call it defragmenting.
Sometimes I do refine or rewrite my notes, but occasionally delete them
entirely, and sometimes find myself more confused, having tied together too
many concepts. One thing I have learned is that my thinking changes so much
over time that conveying information, even to myself, is surprisingly
difficult.

------
sedachv
This is a very old idea: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonplace_book>

~~~
theycallmemorty
Johnson actually mentions this idea in his book.

------
lpolovets
I recently read "Pragmatic Thinking and Learning", and the author recommends
setting up a personal wiki for stuff like this (and for personal notes in
general). A wiki is a good fit for an idea repository because it's easy to
link ideas together, have them reference each other, etc. I installed Zim Wiki
a few days ago and am already feeling like my mind is less fragmented.

~~~
npsimons
Org-mode for Emacs also does this
([http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/org/Hyper...](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/org/Hyperlinks.html#Hyperlinks)),
and doesn't require any extra software (well, if you already have Emacs).

I don't want to sound like a fanboy, but I do just _love_ org-mode. Of course,
I was already using Emacs for development, and org-mode just slips seamlessly
right in. Everyone seems to suggest some other service where the data is
stored in a proprietary format on someone else's server, but I do very much
like keeping control of my own data.

~~~
runejuhl
I concur -- org mode is fantastic. I've only started using it recently, but I
think it'd be safe to say that I'll use it forever.

Just the tables feature (<http://orgmode.org/manual/Tables.html>) alone is
worth it, but inline LaTeX comes close. Mixing math in LaTeX with a proper
table editor (unlike LaTeX) and being able to export to anything that matters
(HTML, PDF and LaTeX) -- bliss!

------
jasim
I've been using the awesome Notational Velocity to keep track of TODOs, my
'Spark File', expenses, confidential information, personal diary etc. etc.

The contents are encrypted through a TrueCrypt virtual volume and the volume
is saved into Dropbox.

I've found this to be a great setup - the searchability and keyboard centric
navigation of NV provides a friction free environment to quickly record
content.

------
te_chris
As a songwriter I do this instinctively as part of writing songs. I'll often
jot down ideas on a note book or into evernote then revisit everything later.
It's a great habit to be in, the revision can be enlightening - as the author
says - and can lead to much better insight.

~~~
evincarofautumn
Better to evolve a great piece slowly over time than to force a mediocre one
prematurely into the world.

------
jeffpersonified
In just skimming through comments, it's interesting to note how many people
already keep this habit, myself included - my spark file can be found in the
back cover of my notebooks... Keepin' it analog.

------
plehoux
<http://myide.as> I builded this small app last year as a way to quickly share
my "sparks" with friends anonymously or not.

------
jtauber
I started implementing <https://thoughtstreams.io> the last few weeks for very
much this kind of thing.

------
stretchwithme
Separating the doing from the thinking about what to do is the one reason why
the Getting Things Done approach works.

------
azarias
I have found OneNote to be an excellent tool for this. One of the main apps
that make it worth running a VM for me.

------
bemmu
After keeping a thoughts.txt diary for a year, one of the best things is that
I can grep my thoughts.

------
ZombieFeynman
I switched my brain to linux and haven't had to defrag in years.

~~~
alexknowshtml
Hm, I didn't expect a novelty account on HN.

