[HN Gopher] Put it on the crazy pile: Ideas and creativity
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       Put it on the crazy pile: Ideas and creativity
        
       Author : Topolomancer
       Score  : 69 points
       Date   : 2022-08-20 17:14 UTC (5 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (bastian.rieck.me)
 (TXT) w3m dump (bastian.rieck.me)
        
       | malux85 wrote:
       | Now push Ideas.md to GitHub and share it!
        
       | mmcconnell1618 wrote:
       | I really like the notion that you capture the idea at a point in
       | time but purposely revisit the list on a regular basis. I've had
       | similar experiences where coming back to an idea after a few
       | months allows me to express it in a more refined way. Capturing
       | the initial thought in a simple text file reduces the mental
       | burden and allows temporal arbitrage.
        
       | Cupertino95014 wrote:
       | Totally right. What no one's mentioned yet is the immense value
       | of someone who can listen to your crazy idea, and just play
       | around with it. Someone who accepts that many of your ideas, or
       | even most, are crazy, but you never know which one might not be.
       | 
       | Or if it IS crazy, maybe there's some variation that isn't.
        
       | boilerupnc wrote:
       | Totally agree with the sentiment of this post. My crazy pile is
       | named "My Half-Bakery".
       | 
       | I revisit it often to refine and ponder and/or add. It has helped
       | inspire patents and given me insights in connecting things that
       | otherwise would nag me to a point of being distracted. I've found
       | the "Lateral Thinking" ideation approach championed by Edward De
       | Bono [0] helpful as a tool to realize disconnected concepts that
       | nag me as related in someway means their is something interesting
       | there. While not always obvious, after entering the vague thought
       | it gives me a mystery to solve as to "why do I sense a
       | relationship there". Many times that eventually leads to an "aha"
       | and then validation that it feels so obvious now in retrospect.
       | Those moments are rare but exhilarating when they happen.
       | 
       | [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_thinking
        
       | throwaways85989 wrote:
       | To much rationality or filtering early on in creativity detrains
       | your mind from being creative.
       | 
       | No dopamine on discovery of the new, prevents that circuitry from
       | running after a while. Write it down, filter it later. Celebrate
       | even ridiculous ideas and approaches, consider them not "failed"
       | nonsense, but in-between-steps as your subconcious works on the
       | next, better solution. Let self-critique not be negative
       | "Ridiculous, never would work with the physics we got" but more
       | "constructive" -"that would be great if we could get it to fly".
       | 
       | Also remember, that your subconscious works with the knowledge it
       | got. It needs input, to create strange mashups. Get your input
       | way outside of your field to not be stuck in the solutions of
       | your peers.
        
       | EliasWatson wrote:
       | I use Obsidian for this exact purpose. Anytime I have an idea, I
       | open up Obsidian, hit ctrl+n for a new note, give it a title, tag
       | it with '#idea', and write whatever I think is nessecary to
       | understand it in the future. Since each idea is a separate file,
       | I won't be tempted to worry about ordering. Obsidian also lets me
       | link related ideas together and it's easy to find an idea again
       | in the future and add some notes to it.
       | 
       | Like the author, I've found that writing down my ideas greatly
       | increases the amount/frequency of new ideas I have. I went from
       | having a decent new idea maybe once a week to now having multiple
       | decent new ideas a day. The problem now is focusing on one idea
       | at a time without getting distracted by all the shiny new ideas.
        
       | computator wrote:
       | As someone who keeps an ideas file as well as files for
       | quotations, new words I learned, and Hacker News submissions I
       | didn't have time to read, I think it's freeing for my mind but I
       | find that I never go back to review them. I found it surprising
       | that the OP has the discipline to set aside time once a month to
       | go back and review his file.
        
       | mentos wrote:
       | I have a folder on Dropbox called "Highdeas" just for this. For
       | me it's not even about logging them so that I can come back to
       | them but just so that I can move on.
        
       | matthewfcarlson wrote:
       | I hate the feeling of forgetting an idea but also have a hard
       | time finishing something before a new thing comes along. So it's
       | a bit of a catch 22. I want to write down the ideas, but if it's
       | written down I tend to start researching and figuring out code
       | structure in my head.
        
       | genjipress wrote:
       | In the golden years of Disney's animation industry, the animators
       | kept a bulletin board out in the hallway between the studios
       | where each animator worked. This board was dubbed "the goodie
       | board". If you came up with a concept, a sketch, a shot, that
       | didn't work for whatever you were doing but which you liked
       | anyway, you could pin it to the goodie board, where others were
       | welcome to take it wholesale or crib from it.
       | 
       | I kept this idea for my own use. If I have an idea in a story I'm
       | working on and it doesn't quite fit, but I like it anyway, I save
       | it to my own goodie board. On rainy days I poke through it, and
       | oftentimes I find something worth reusing in another context.
        
       | xipho wrote:
       | Love it, I have the same. "GoodIdeas" in my Vim potwiki(0). Most
       | of them I shared in passing, maybe one or two I hold on to
       | actually being special. Have often thought of an anonymous
       | twitter feed as an alternative.
       | 
       | [0] https://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=1018.
        
         | metadat wrote:
         | How does this compare with VimWiki?
         | 
         | https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki
        
           | xipho wrote:
           | There is no markup in the former, you just get highlighted
           | words whenever there is any (capitalized) camel case word.
           | Hit enter on the word and you get to the new file. Super
           | lightweight, super efficient.
           | 
           | I don't render most of the notes I take, but will write draft
           | in markdown from time to time. The wiki is in a git repo, of
           | course, that I commit to once in a while.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | BubbleRings wrote:
       | I _hate_ the feeling of  "oh I had a great idea yesterday, that
       | was so cool, what was it again? Oh no, is it gone?"
       | 
       | So I also try to make sure I get them jotted down. I used to use
       | Dropbox, I think I will switch back to it again.
        
       | [deleted]
        
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       (page generated 2022-08-20 23:00 UTC)