I've been writing down notes, thoughts, ideas, concepts anything at all that seems remotely worth keeping at the time and I used to hit this particular bit all the time:
> I do less well at capturing the level of detail that made the idea exciting at the time.
Thoughts and ideas usually require context to frame them in the way that is exciting. When writing down notes I always have that required context in my head but I didn't capture that as well. I still start by writing down the part that I'm excited about but now I spend some time trying to capture that context.
What was I reading, watching, listening to when the idea occurred. Where was I when it occurred? Was there another thing I was trying to work through that led me to this? Do I have notes on that other thing, or any other related topics? I was thinking about that I can connect this note to? Coming to this thought cold is there some context I need?
The problem that I mostly have now is that my collection of notes is quite vast at this point and of varying level of quality and detail. I occasionally will spend time pruning, refining, and cleaning up my notes but I tend to produce more than I consume. I've started to focus on places in my notes where there are a lot of tight connections between notes. It means its a place that my mind keeps wandering to and where I have a high density of ideas.
I'm still looking for better ways to manage and refine my notes so these threads are all very interesting to me hahah.
I think your suggestions are well worth trying. I don't want to build the second-brain or knowledge graph that is so often discussed here -- as a secondary effect, I'd be happy if that happened.
But I also know there are two kinds of ideation I want to capture better: lightning in a bottle thoughts (the idea I had for my son came to me while we were bombing down a ski bowl), and thoughts that arise during particularly ideation friendly activities -- driving, running, working out, lying in bed, etc. It can be hard to stop the activity to record a lot, but it's stupid not to record at all (as in the story with my son), and sometimes I'll need to record more or at least record more as close in time proximity as I can manage.
I'm loathe to use voice memos, but I might need to start trying it.
> I do less well at capturing the level of detail that made the idea exciting at the time.
Thoughts and ideas usually require context to frame them in the way that is exciting. When writing down notes I always have that required context in my head but I didn't capture that as well. I still start by writing down the part that I'm excited about but now I spend some time trying to capture that context.
What was I reading, watching, listening to when the idea occurred. Where was I when it occurred? Was there another thing I was trying to work through that led me to this? Do I have notes on that other thing, or any other related topics? I was thinking about that I can connect this note to? Coming to this thought cold is there some context I need?
The problem that I mostly have now is that my collection of notes is quite vast at this point and of varying level of quality and detail. I occasionally will spend time pruning, refining, and cleaning up my notes but I tend to produce more than I consume. I've started to focus on places in my notes where there are a lot of tight connections between notes. It means its a place that my mind keeps wandering to and where I have a high density of ideas.
I'm still looking for better ways to manage and refine my notes so these threads are all very interesting to me hahah.