

Ask HN: Thought tracking (fuzzy) - olliesaunders

I'm quite confused about this problem so I'm just going to blurt out. I hope someone can make sense of it and help me.<p>I find remembering everything I think of and about difficult. I spend much of my day thinking but I don't feel like I reap the rewards that I should. I forget what I was thinking about, I come to a conclusion on something but forget it or don't develop it, I don't develop my thoughts fully enough to explain them to people, I don't know when to stop.<p>Can anyone suggest a strategy or framework for organising or tracking thoughts that doesn't require me writing / designing my own software?<p>I think what I want is something that allows me to organise my thoughts into concepts or maybe thinking projects. I can add and evolve one over time adding the thoughts I have. I can discontinue one and put the reasons why it has been discontinued or fork it off into multiple thinking projects. I could write why I'm thinking about  that thing and add the details of my life situation at the time so I know where I was emotionally when I was thinking those thoughts.<p>You could also phrase this question as: are there any analysis techniques that I can apply to understanding life in general?<p>I really want something I can use with just plain text files.<p>Any ideas or guidance will be appreciated.
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rms
<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5784740380335567758>

You can skip the ~10 min intro.

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olliesaunders
Seen it. Doesn't really answer my question either, unless I'm missing
something.

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rms
I didn't have a good answer, I just thought that was generically applicable,
but since you've seen it...

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frossie
Have you tried mind mapping? It's not plain text files, but I think you are
asking quite a lot of a flat linear format.

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whimsy
<http://orgmode.org/> maybe?

