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  2. Do you write your ideas in evernote, email, trello, apple...

Do you write your ideas in evernote, email, trello, apple notes etc?

Ivan Hanák
1 reply
I used primarily an email for such simple activity - writing your ideas down. But my inbox was quickly filled with all those ideas. I also needed to mark some as brilliant that I executed, and mark others as never to think such again. But I got this great mess of ideas in my mailbox, like never before. So I programmed a mobile app for myself, that just lets me write an idea down for later - and I can peacefully go through them later and decide if I am going to act upon them. What do you think? Would you be interested, if I published the app to public? Or would it be possible for me to find people interested in that?

Replies

Andy Dent
I use Evernote. I have multiple inputs - ideas may be verbally recorded whilst I'm out doing chores, driving or walking the dog. Especially whilst listening to podcasts, ideas are generated. I have an utterly lousy memory that's only got worse with age so I have to capture everything. If I re-invent the same idea multiple times that's a good thing because my subconscious has usually come up with a refinement. Using Evernote, I capture not only the original recordings (via Just Press Record, not the useless iOS Evernote App) but I also do text notes of casual ideas as they flow through. For each product, I have an _Idea Log_ which means I have a dated entry in there for that idea summary. I review the log regularly and from there will often create explicit tasks in the issue tracker used to manage development (tasks and bugs in one tracker). Evernote makes it easy to have URLs in notes so I can update the log with URL of issues derived from it. For more complex assemblage of ideas, I create an Evernote note that contains internal links to the originals. This is the one weakness - you can only have an internal note link to the note as a whole. There's no equivalent of linking to a point somewhere within a note. I'm working on a rich app (Touchgram) as a solo founder - it's vital to capture all this stuff because I haven't the time to rework through reasoning. I've also got minor writing projects and other ideas I think of which get managed with the same process. I have confidence that I capture my ideas so I don't waste any effort trying to remember them or stew over them as a distraction.
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