

Ask HN: Where do you keep your ideas? - laurencer

Where do you keep all of the ideas you come up with - and if you decide to work on an idea where do you keep everything related to it?<p>Right now I email everything to myself and have a GMail label, but I'm sure there are much better strategies out there. I'm keen to see how HNers keep there ideas (e.g. writing them in a moleskin, using Evernote, etc), and how they work on side-projects/ideas (e.g. if you decide to start researching one of your ideas where do you keep it all).
======
zrail
I literally wrote an entire app just for this exact use case.

<https://www.marginalia.io>

There's a REST api and an email API. You email ideas to a special address and
it creates notes for you. You can append further refinements when it replies
with a note-unique email address.

You can sort notes into projects, add tags, search, sort, and export to plain
HTML or PDF.

~~~
waxjar
I recommend putting at least a screenshot on your landing page. Whenever I'm
looking for software, I'd like a quick look at the UI to decide I want to try
or not.

If there are a lot of competing services, I tend to pick one that has UI
previews to save time.

~~~
zrail
Thanks for the tip. I have some screenshots on the tour page but you're right,
there should be one on the homepage too.

------
kkowalczyk
Workflowy (<https://workflowy.com/>), which is a web-based outliner. Good
because it's fast.

~~~
napoleond
Me too. I'll second the opinion of others and mention that paper is hard to
beat, but for me paper happens at either end of the idea (jotting a quick note
in my notebook/whatever paper is around, and later sketching layouts/business
models/user flows/etc to flesh things out) while Workflowy happens in between.

Most good ideas happen when I'm in the middle of another project. By the time
I'm able to devote any serious thought to it I've already gone through five
notebooks and oodles of scrap paper, so I make a point of entering at least
the basic elements of every idea into Workflowy the same day that I initially
write it down on paper. Then I have a searchable record, and it's really easy
to expand on various points in five-minute chunks or on sleepless nights. That
way, whenever I'm looking for a new project I have a bank of ideas to pull
back out onto paper.

I also use Workflowy to keep track of goals and sort of the "big picture"
TODOs.

~~~
atul_wired
This looks like a great tool.. but for these kind of sites, I always feel
uncomfortable to signup and then store my personal information in their
databases. I could easily end up giving them my personal ideas and my
professional work related stuff.. We really don't know who is looking at our
data on other side and what kinda security measures(if any) they are taking to
secure the same. Your thoughts?

~~~
rayhano
Interesting point about privacy. Does anyone else have similar concerns?

I am of the opinion that life is too short to worry, plus people generally
aren't able to steal ideas. Execution is always very different. Look at the
Xerox-Apple-Microsoft implementations of GUIs... All very different.

My ideas start on napkins or Notes on the iPhone, get translated to Workflowy
and then fully drafted and edited into a blog post: <http://rayhano.com>

The hope is others take the ideas and use them with their own. Ideas should be
free, only then can society benefit.

~~~
atul_wired
Sharing explicitly versus gaining access to your data are completely separate
things. Moreover, how about pushing your professional data to these sites? I
don't want to use separate tools for ideas which I'm fine if someone steals
them and which not..

------
kepzorz
I think a Trello board works perfectly for this.

Whenever my business partner or I have one of those "WE SHOULD MAKE A GITHUB
FOR BIOLOGY!" moments, we put it on a Trello card in the "Someday" pile, tag
it with the appropriate categories, and write all our thoughts on the card.
We've also got "soon," "doing," and "done" categories, but we mostly use the
board as an idea bank for those "Somedays."

We call it the "Vox Industries Ingenuity Bin."

~~~
mappum
+1 for Trello.

------
anigbrowl
All my best ideas are on paper. I find a pencils far more effective than any
digital tools for sketching out ideas.

~~~
po
I agree. Paper is under-rated by geeks. I use a Muji A6 dotted paper notebook
because the grid helps me draw boxes but is light enough to also let me ignore
them when I feel like it. Some of them come with an elastic band on the cover
to help keep it closed. The paper is cheap enough that I don't feel like the
ideas have to be important to write down. I find that I am a bit reluctant to
write in a super nice notebook.

[http://www.muji.us/store/stationery/notebooks/pp-cover-
doubl...](http://www.muji.us/store/stationery/notebooks/pp-cover-double-ring-
note-a6-dot.html)

I keep a Frixion erasable pen hooked in the spiral part of the notebook.

<http://www.pilotpen.us/Brands/FriXion.aspx>

The only downside I have found is that if you freeze the notebook your erased
writing will come back! I thought that the friction from rubbing destroys the
ink, but it seems like it just transforms it into a new stable state. It's a
really interesting fluid.

~~~
co_pl_te
I used to consider pen(cil) & paper as the only medium worthy (and secure)
enough for transcribing the ideas that popped into my young head, although now
I use an iPad, a Bamboo stylus, and either Paper or Penultimate to record all
my thoughts.

I think my preference for paper stemmed from a childhood experience I had with
keeping my first journal on an old DOS/386 in a password-protected WordPerfect
file (and I still remember that password! :-) Originally, my intention was
merely to try to use up all the memory on that machine, but I soon had a fond
habit of taking 15-30 minutes per day to write about the world around me. What
I wrote would likely be mundane from an outsider's perspective, but there was
a sort of innocent joy in noting all the tiny insights and observations I had
that were important to me at that age.

One day, I went to update my journal, which was entitled MY LIFE, and
discovered it and its backup had been erased from the drive. My father must
have found this strange document that he could not open taking up loads of
space on his computer and deleted it without a moment's hesitation.

I was devastated. I swore to never save anything of personal value to a
computer again. I think this bad childhood experience actually engendered a
deep technophobia that I harbored from high school throughout college and
didn't really overcome until the last five years. This same experience also
seems to be the root of a lifelong passion for writing.

In any case, I began keeping a more "formal" handwritten journal in the latter
years of college up until a few years ago. It was written in pencil
(preferably 0.5mm) on lined looseleaf paper contained in a large, unmarked
3-ring binder. I wrote in it daily, not really trying to distinguish "good"
ideas from "bad" ones, but just concentrating on getting at least one complete
thought on paper per day. Though I used pencil, I only erased obvious errors
(like misspellings) choosing to strike through parts that didn't seem to fit
at the time. I did this because when I looked back on what I wrote after
significant periods of time, it often gave me further insight into how I had
come about thinking what I was thinking at the time I wrote it.

It wasn't until about two years ago that I switched to using an iPad and a
capacitive stylus for jotting down my ideas. Although it certainly doesn't
have the same feel as working with pen and paper, I really like having a
compact, infinite canvas to work with that I can take anywhere, and am
reasonably confident that when the tablet grows up, it will transition from
disrupting the PC to doing what it was meant to do in the first place — make
paper obsolete.

In the event I get nostalgic for paper, I prefer using a blank 9x12 sketchbook
— for the most part, I can't stand to be restricted by lines anymore — and my
favorite Zebra multi pen:

[http://www.jetpens.com/Zebra-Clip-On-
Multi-2000-4-Color-0.7-...](http://www.jetpens.com/Zebra-Clip-On-
Multi-2000-4-Color-0.7-mm-Ballpoint-Multi-Pen-0.5-mm-Pencil-Black-
Body/pd/4191)

Ultimately, I agree that paper is vastly underrated by geeks, but let's face
it — after thousands of years, we're always trying to eye something better.

*Note: Safari quit unexpectedly before I could post this and I had to rewrite everything from scratch. Talk about coincidences!

~~~
rayhano
If you have that original hard disk, have you thought of using recovery
software to see if fragments of your file still exist?

~~~
co_pl_te
I might give that a try sometime (I'm sure it's around somewhere) just to see
if I can get something back. I vaguely remember a little of what I wrote, but
it would be intriguing to reread what I was writing all those years back.
Thanks for the idea.

------
saulrh
Emacs, org-mode, org-capture, and a global keyboard shortcut that pops up an
org-capture buffer when I have an idea. I just type it in, hit a few keys, and
it goes into a nicely-formatted file with all my other ideas. Hitting slightly
different keys will capture appointments, todos, read-this-later links, book
recommendations, and the like.

------
timfrietas
Honestly, and sadly, MS Word.

I have a template for startup ideas that is many questions long. It is still
easiest to fire up that document and go, where everything is set up with well-
laid formatting and bullet points. I am probably biased from many years spent
in word processing programs coming from a writing heavy non-technical
background originally, but that template gets everything out of the way for me
so I can just write. Maybe eventually I'll write a Rails app for myself but I
don't think I'd gain much over the current process except version control.

Nothing else works as well locally, which is a lot of the problem. Gmail is
getting closer to being able to serve purpose as a general idea store for me,
but I am not always online, and the migration cost at this point is not worth
switching for, even if Gmail worked flawlessly offline.

~~~
zengr
"I have a template for startup ideas that is many questions long."

Just curious, can you share that?

------
pirateking
Paper or plain text files. If neither is available, then I email myself using
my phone.

Paper is the best option because of the limitless possibilities. I can use
pencil, pen, color pencil, watercolor, scotch tape bits of junk to it, rip it
out, fold it up, and burn it.

------
egypturnash
Evernote and sketchbooks. (I'm a graphic novelist.)

Sometimes big projects end up with a sketchbook pretty much devoted to them.
More often they just sprawl across all the books I use during the course of
the project.

Also there's a pile of index cards with a core dump of one story I've been
carrying around for a long time. I made it shortly after losing a bunch of
sketchbooks in a hurricane because I wanted to preserve every bit of that
story I could.

Also my advice is to avoid Moleskines, I find them overpriced and the paper
sucks for the way I like to draw. I like the similar form factor books from
Hand*book. And softcover books from Cachet. And of course the classic black
hardcovers.

------
chubot
I use a wiki I wrote for the purpose. I'm surprised that so many people are
talking about text files and outliners. Hyperlinking is really important!
Ideas are naturally hyperlinked.

I just looked at workflowy, and I don't see a good way to link from one place
to another. That seems to put it more in the realm of TODO list rather than a
place for real ideas.

Compare to paper (which I used to use), the wiki has the drawback that you
can't draw pictures easily. But it has the advantage of being searchable.

I have 1300+ wiki pages from the last 8 years or so. It's been one of the more
useful things I've done since it's allowed me to tackle bigger and bigger
projects.

------
waxjar
I keep a lot of notes, recipes, code snippets, lists, ideas, etc in
_Notational Velocity_. I keep them in a folder on my Dropbox. That means I've
always got access to them, provided I have access to a computer with internet
and a simple text editor.

Notational Velocity has an amazingly simple interface. And it's fast. It deals
just with text, which is all I need.

To ease online access, I've dived into my first Ember.js adventure and am
writing a simple web application that mimics Notational Velocity. It accesses
files trough the Dropbox API. It's not done yet, but it's on its way :)

Linky: <http://notational.net/>

------
mark_l_watson
I don't use a notebook anymore. Now I start with a small document containing
what need the project is supposed to solve, some design notes, and I use
omniGraffle to sketch out diagrams. One tip: I save copies of all of my "idea
diagrams" in a folder and I often start by grabbing an old file and copying
parts of it. I find that using a diagramming tool is almost as fast as
sketching with pencil and paper.

I also rely on Evernote (happy paying customer) for storing resources, random
thoughts, photos taken with my cellphone of receipts, etc. I don't use
Evernote for project materials however, just general resources and a history
of what I have found interesting and useful.

------
knockonthedoor
I created a notebook called Projects in Evernote and I keep one note to all
the ideas that I could summarize in a sentence. For more mature idea I create
a separate note to keep all links and notes related to the project there.

------
nedwin
Evernote and moleskines.

My everyday todo and notes are taken in a black a5 moleskine. I go through one
every 3 months and have a shelf that I keep all the old ones on, organized by
date.

Fleshing out ideas happens in evernote, as well as writing blog posts and
longer emails.

I have a couple of notes that I think are relevant to this discussion. 1 is
the list of ideas for products or businesses that I would do if I wasn't doing
what I am doing right now (and which I might do in the future) and 2 is the
list of things I can do if everything ever goes to shit.

------
jamesmcn
I have a stack of notebooks that goes back over two decades. Anything worth
writing down goes in the notebook. No postits, scraps of paper or backs of
envelopes unless I'm willing to throw the note away immediately.

One of the things I learned in high school is that taking notes helps me to
organize and remember my thoughts - even if I never look at the notes again. I
don't refer to my notebooks much, but writing ideas down helps me triage ideas
for things worth following up on.

------
Link-
I keep a moleskine notebook with me all the time where i sketch and write my
ideas on the spot. I use mindjet's mindmapping software to elaborate on those
ideas and store the files in a brainstorming folder on my portable harddrive
and laptop. A copy of that folder is also in Google Drive to have access to
the files and documents whenever i need them. I frequently use evernote and
flava and sync them both, especially when i take snapshots with my mobile.

------
pknight
Ideas end up everywhere in my workspace; in my physical notebook, in a
moleskin that's always in my jacket, on the whiteboard (which I sometimes take
snapshots off), on index cards, in my homebrew webbased project/life tracking
app (I have tons of product ideas stashed in a category), in mindmanager and
onenote. Each format has it's strengths and all of them are pretty fun to use.
I'm looking to add the Galaxy Note as yet another input tool.

------
bobo23
I use Dokuwiki <https://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki> and keep them in a GTD
style someday/maybe list.

------
tjbiddle
I find paper to be the best - I keep both a personal notebook for anything I
do on my own time whether it be startup ideas, shopping lists, a short TODO,
etc; I also keep a work notebook for any drafting I do in the office. It's
great to keep things backed up in an electronic sense, but I find it easier to
expand on a thought if I just have it in front of me on paper.

------
lsiebert
I use a combination of Google Docs and Springpad <http://springpad.com/about>

------
peachananr
I use Springpad and its Chrome extension.

Whenever I have an idea, I would add it in an already existung "idea" notebook
and if that idea develops then I would create a new notebook just for that
project.

Whenever I found content related to the project on an Internet, I would use
the chrome extension to pin it to that notebook.

------
trekkin
I keep my ideas in <https://AES.io> \- one of the reasons I created the
service.

------
DaNmarner
A folder in Dropbox, containing each idea as either a text file or a folder of
its own.

Sometimes the whole idea is one line as the file name. The content of the text
file is the details of the idea. If I wrote some script or collected some
information for this idea, it'll be in its folder.

------
sentiental
Fake tool: I write everything down on whatever paper is nearby, but the act of
me doing that somehow tricks me into remembering it.

Actual tools: Evernote (on all my devices, plus the email address that I send
them to), the iPhone reminder app, Google Tasks.

------
thenrich99
I developed Task Science (<https://taskscience.com>) to manage, categorize,
and collaborate on ideas and tasks. The goals were to remain quick and
responsive so you can add the idea and get back to work.

------
ankuragr
I use workflowy primarily.. Basically what helps is anything that you can
always have quick access to.. Like I use workflowy on my android mobile coz I
can scribble on it anytime.. on bus.. while in class.. while jogging..

------
white
I run a custom site that I share with a limited group of partners/friends with
a rating system where everybody can rate/comment on my ideas. I'm not the only
one who posts ideas though.

P.S. Wanna invite? Email me why.

------
brianjolney
I keep an evernote notebook for ideas, and drop photos and various ideas into
it over time. I revisit every few days to organize and cull the really bad
ideas. The ones I keep returning to seem to bubble up to the top.

------
swastik
I use plain paper most of the time. It's convenient, and I've been used to it.

Sometimes I use the iOS's native Notes app for that. It's pretty basic for
writing but that's exactly what I want.

------
hybrid11
We keep it simple, and use a Google docs spreadsheet. We split the ideas
between the ones that we quickly jot down with almost no research, and the
ones where we have done thorough research.

------
azharcs
I keep them in a private folder on Dropbox. I can easily sort them by their
names and I can access it across all my devices as Dropbox has a client for
all popular platforms.

------
kiba
I keep them in a page called Notes and Thoughts:
<http://kibabase.com/articles/notes-and-thoughts>

------
praveenaj
I'm a huge fan of Evernote! I use it almost everyday whenever a new idea pops
into my head. I have installed it on my laptop and my mobile. Highly
recommended.

------
andycav
...sometimes I publish ideas that I think have potential (at an early stage,
of course) on my blog: if they get commented, then there is REAL potential...

------
mflindell
I use a document in Dessk, autosaving and its a really nice blank canvas to
work with. Easy to assign to tasks and share with other people to brainstorm

------
dave1619
I currently use Apple Notes (iMac, iPad, iPhone using iCloud sync).

I've previously used Devonthink, personal wiki, Basecamp, Asana, GTD, and
others.

------
fsokhansanj
Ideas are on one of the greatest apps ever made: Evernote

Then I start a folder in Google Docs to keep everything related to the
project.

------
unimpressive
Old notebooks from school or my head.

I figure if I forget it probably wasn't that important in the first place.

~~~
freework
Yeah, same here. Raw ideas come to me in such an unorganized manner, it makes
no sense to try to write them down. I won't know what I meant when I look at
them later.

------
Axsuul
Gollum, which is a markdown powered wiki system. In fact, it has all my notes
(programming, lifehacking, etc).

------
yogrish
I keep all my Ideas in Gmail Draft with subject Name "I.D.E.A.S". I keep
appending all my ideas into it.

------
richardw
iPhone and text docs, and when I want to think a bit more about the idea,
Google Sites. The latter has a wiki-like structure with lots of useful
structures (e.g. headings, LHS hierarchy, some widgets, lists) and I can share
it with others very easily. Keeps version history.

------
rooshdi
If good enough, with other people.

------
dreadsword
I use my own weekend project(look in my submissions) and tag 'em "#ideas."

------
plasma
Notes file on my phone. I need backups! :)

------
free2rhyme214
Google Drive.

------
pknerd
Google Docs

