Ask HN: How do you recall ideas/eureka you get during walks, showers, etc.? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you recall ideas/eureka you get during walks, showers, etc.?

33 pointsBrajeshwar67 comments

I get clarity on existing ideas, problems, and the best of new ones while walking, in the shower, and sometime during mind-play just before dozing off. I know this is common with most people.

What are your recall tactics?

I do Audio Recording (Phone App), write on tiny notepads, and even use one of those water-proof bathroom-ready notepads. Sometimes, I felt the ideas were so apparent that I didn't write them down or just continued walking. However, the moment I sit in front of the Computer - the best case is that I'm now doing other "important things" or trying to knock off the tasks in the calendar, etc. That simple but effective idea I had is gone and won't come back in its form for hours, days, weeks, or years!

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Funny this shows up today - literally yesterday, during the shower, I've got two candidates for a solution to a technical problem I'm trying to fix for a couple of months!

They didn't turn up as great as I initially though, but this lead to some interesting ideas. And to me writing this answer. :)

This shower thing happens from time to time - but only if I actively think about the problem - and I never go to the bathroom with a goal of solving anything. It's more like something is bothering me and it just happens that it's this time of the day.

Walks are also moments where ideas pops up - again, if I actively think about the problem. Always have a phone with me, so typically I just write down some short note to be able to come back to it later.

My more conscious approach is writing outline of the problem down, together with currently know solutions. Often times imagining I'm doing this for someone else than me. This tends to flush some interesting issues. Also, returning to such note after a day or to, when I try to understand it just from its content, somewhat pretending I know nothing about the issue, can also be fruitful.

I sometimes use this approach actively. Think about a hard problem and multiple ways to tackle it. Then step back and let my subconscious sort out the rest. More often than not, a good solution (or part of it) either pops spontaneously into my mind or very quickly after starting to think about it again. I recon it only works though if you thought about it hard enough or gave your subconscious enough material to work with so to speak.

I've been trying to get my son to take notes forever. He doesn't, except in one area -- his video channel ideas. He's gotten pretty good at pulling my phone (he doesn't have one) and sending himself a note via our family slack.

We were skiing last weekend and I had a really good idea for him -- I shared it with him and he said, "Get your phone out, write that down!" I said, "There's no way I'll forget, it's too good..!"

Neither of us can remember what it is.

Parental touche, hardcore.

I remember working for someone a couple decades ago who would go on long road trips to his vacation house and use a voice recorder. He'd record hours and hours of his thoughts, and then have his assistant transcribe the recordings.

One thing I've struggled with -- I have a lot of ideas. I write a lot of ideas down, but I do less well at capturing the level of detail that made the idea exciting at the time. That's what I'd like to develop further.

> One thing I've struggled with -- I have a lot of ideas. I write a lot of ideas down, but I do less well at capturing the level of detail that made the idea exciting at the time. That's what I'd like to develop further.

Reminds me ideas I get when smoking pot. Writing them down yields more regret than not to.

:-) I don't mind having not-great ideas in the mix, and I know having ideas in and of themselves won't be enough -- execution and all that. But I believe that enriching my thought capture process will lead to better notes/thinking/follow-up and stronger execution.

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.

Same thing with the "lot of ideas" struggle. I usually put them down initially into a sms or google notes. Then transfer into Obsidian once I get back to a laptop.

Those files are massive man, most of the ideas are 10-50 words and the file for software ideas alone has almost 5000 words (so roughly 250 of {what I think are} good software ideas). It's been an accumulation of everything for the past 6-8 years and really just enforces the whole "Ideas are a dime a dozen" mantra.

I should really start taking action on a few of them though, it's happened once or twice already where someone has made one or two of them with great success and I've gotten pissed/depressed that I didn't pursue them before they did.

I have earth shattering paradigm shifts in my thinking about once a month, or at least they feel that way at the time. They often come in bursts, where I get between 5-10 in quick succession as the initial paradigm shift causes me to pull on a tonne of threads and look at things a new way.

I used to get a little panicky during this time because I'd worry I would forget this volume of important thought.

Turns out, if it is truly a paradigm shift, you can't forget it. No need to write it down (unless you want to share it). Once you know it, you'll never unknow it. Your lens is forever changed and you can't look at the world without constant reminders that you have had that thought.

If you're getting mind blowing paradigm shifts every month that sounds more like mania to me.

"What we know is but a drop. What we don't know is an ocean."

Humanity's constructs are both:

1) far too large to summarize in any one person's head

2) likely mostly (if not totally) incorrect

I start from a position of assuming that everything I know is wrong, I just don't know why yet. I'm taking in new information every day; from wikiscroll.blankenship.io, from hacker news, from conversations at the gym, etc.

Given:

1) How much there is to learn

2) How little time I've had to learn it and reconcile all of it

3) The number of foundational beliefs I hold

4) The rate of new information available to me from the internet

I don't think it's unreasonable to frequently come across new information incompatible with how I view the world. I don't shield my ego from that new information, I diligently think through how I'm incorrect and what that might mean about my world view.

I know I'm one of the few people in my social circles who do this, so it's definitely abnormal. Maybe this is mania? But, at least as of the current moment, I'd rather be manic about reevaluating my deeply held beliefs in light of new information than to shield my ego and hold onto those deeply held beliefs.

Delusions of grandeur, even. Yeah, you might be bipolar.

Maybe!

You've called me manic bipolar with delusions of grandeur. Pretty serious diagnosis! Would be cool if you shared a bit more about how/why you were so quick to fire that from the hip. Would like to learn more.

When my lens shifts, I tend to notice it at first, but over time the novelty fades. The shift is still important, but the consciousness of it decreases, unless there is an active effort or trigger.

Also, it can be quite difficult to go back in time and try to 'remember' what it is like to _not_ have the new worldview.

OOOH. Here is my killer solution.

It's called "Blitzmail" on Android. I'm sure there's an Apple version, I don't know what it's called.

Absurdly simple. It's a send-only, to only one address, email client. Pops open a texting type box, you hit send. That's it.

This has replaced so many apps/things for me. Notes, calendaring, bookmarks, etc. A really good "GTD Inbox" thing if you're familiar.

I would love something like this that just does an HTTP request instead of sending an email so it can integrate more easily with the rest of my infrastructure.

iOS: Drafts

I run forwardapp.co for this reason - I bought it from the previous developer when they wanted to shut it down. I've used it every day since it was Jot in the early 2010s. At ~60 users who paid $2 once, it's a total commercial failure, and I'm going to keep paying for it forever.

I keep count! If I know I had 4 ideas on a run, I can usually bring them back to mind if I focus. Even holding my fingers in the four position with one down helps. Sounds a little odd but I’ve found I do my best work while walking the dog/going for a run and can’t usually make notes until I get home.

I do exactly the same, so you are not alone.

I'm not sure this answers your question directly, but I have started to have confidence that my relevant ideas will come back. Indeed, this is a natural filter. What happens when you don't worry about trying to get them written down? I think this will (paradoxically?) improve your brainstorming, and you might find your brain finds its own ways of integrating your ideas.

The above strategy seems to work well when I'm trying "to hold" an inspiring creative spark; e.g. what are the right questions to ask or "what are the key connections or people to make X work?".

It might work less well when there are a lot of moving parts. For example, I find I usually will need to draw with pencil and paper when it comes to physical designs or complex algorithms.

Also, some ideas about to get your head back in the same creative space where you had the idea... go back to the same place, play the same music, ... the brain's memory is highly associative.

Same here. I was going to comment pretty much the same.

I tried to write and record stuff in the past. The very act of doing would make me lose focus, give up on early ideas because I couldn't put them in a linear form or creating useless notes (I either remembered them already or they didn't make any sense).

In contrast, I tend to write a lot of notes when I'm actively working on some idea and not just brainstorming. My code in WIP is often full of comments, my desktop is full of .txt files, etc.

I use Obsidian[0] - but find the mobile app a bit clunky for quick thoughts. So I have Craft[1] which is lovely and I was using as a temporary home for "just thought of thing" type ideas.

But - someone recently pointed me to Quick Capture [2] (AFAIK iOS only) so I'm trying that. It's mega quick and a good way of getting something down with zero friction. I'll then copy stuff into Obsidian later when I've got more time to structure.

[0] https://obsidian.md/ [1] https://www.craft.do/ [2] https://quickcapture.xyz/

I do pretty much the same thing but with Google notes or an SMS instead of Craft.

Obsidian is freakin sick!

Carry a rite in the rain notepad and small pen at all times: https://www.riteintherain.com/ and https://www.penheaven.co.uk/kaweco-classic-sport-green-ballp... or https://www.lamy.com/en/lamy-pico/

For the Rite In The Rain notebooks, I recommend a pen that takes a Fisher Space Pen cartridge.

I simply have such a kind of notebook placed in my shower (with a run-of-the-mill pencil) to jog down any ideas I have while under the shower. I have a variant that encourages ripping out pages.

A thought after reading these many great responses:

We keep hearing how programs like ChatGPT are going to "rule the earth" or whatever, that they are smart. They are not. They are only "stochastic parrots" -- they repeat what they were taught, albeit in an elegant and sometimes accurate fashion.

What's missing?

What's missing is apparent in many of the replies here: embodiment. That which we get for being humans doing thinking. To me, that means something like "in the moment" - you have these flash ideas, sometimes while driving, sometimes in the shower or on long walks (read: wherever it's borderline impossible to record the ideas) or even in that fog just before being fully awake (hint: when you realize you're onto something an not fully awake - you can train yourself for that - do not open your eyes until you have fully rehearsed the idea), the very process of changing thoughts in order to get the new idea recorded changes the moment; the moment of invention is gone, even if some broad sketch of the idea remains. The embodiment of that idea is gone.

Bots will need zillions more transistors to come even close to that capability.

The process of letting your subconscious solve problems has been explained by David Gelertner in his book _The Must In The Machine_ as a process where the conscious mind, and its censors (logic circuits), are somehow inactivated, which allows the subconscious to play. Wires connect and some kind of aha! moment occurs.

I try the loci method [1] if it is really important and I have nothing to write it down.

There is a number of ideas that I can keep in my had. If I surpass that, I lose memory of most of them. It would be nice to write them down, but the threat of losing ideas also helps me to stay focused on the first idea.

I am a happier person since I have stopped taking long showers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci

Obsidian, Quick Notes, and an Apple Watch shortcut that dictates text to a reminders list (I was using Drafts, but am trying to minimize the number of different platforms I use).

I keep notebooks. I feel like manually writing them down is the best way to strengthen the memory of the idea.

Plus information flows from my brain more easily with pen and paper than with computer typing or even talking into a recorder. Sometime about the extra brain cycles needed to speak aloud or type, it distorts my idea expression.

But I sometimes have ideas so fast that a new one will come in before I finish writing down the current one.

Usually I make use of roman room variants, method of loci or memory peg variants.

It works well while walking or hiking or waking up the middle of the night with some ideas or a schedule to remember. Or memorizing pi, etc. Funny to remember grocery lists from 30 years ago too.

https://artofmemory.com/wiki/Main_Page/

I avoid needing to rely on my human memory (recall) when possible - if my phone is around, I make voice notes on it that are automatically synced to desktop which are then transcribed using Whisper[1].

When I do need to recall, I just use the strategy of "hold the items in my head as intently as possible, for as little time as possible until I'm able to get to my phone or some paper".

On the rare occasions when neither my phone or paper are immediately available, I try to visualize the ideas, projecting them onto a mental canvas, and try to use connections between them or mnemonics to remember them as best as I can.

I avoid the problem of "I sit down in front of my computer in order to write down or do a thing" by building the discipline necessary to prevent myself from getting distracted in that manner.

[1] https://github.com/openai/whisper

I do a lot.

1) An iPhone with a voice memo running

2) A plug in sony voice recorder that's on as a backup

3) Voice memos on Apple Watch for specific things

4) Notes and reminders on iphone

5) iPhone with voice recording near shower during shower

6) If I need to store something in my head, I use memory techniques to remember it - for example, don't append new items to the list, prepend them. i.e. 3rd item you thought of, 2nd item you thought of, 1st item you thought of.

7) I'm building an iOS app that will show me a running live transcript of the last 30 minutes I spoke out loud. (Contact info in my HN profile if you'd like to get on the beta) I haven't found a transcription app that has a paid plan with enough minutes to be left running 24/7 (Otter limits to 4h at a time, and 100 hours per month). And voice memos has no live transcription. So building this instead. If there's an existing alternative that works though, please tell me so I can save the time!

Now that you mention it, why doesn’t Voice Memos have transcription? Voicemail does, the keyboard does…that seems like an obvious feature at this point.

To record "bookmarks" for interesting sections of podcast episodes (that I want to revisit some time later), I use my own (Android-only) app called "Stop It!" [0]. The mechanism that creates a bookmark is to pause and immediately unpause the playback (works with any headset). For each bookmark, the app records the audio player's Android package name, the artist / album / track name, the time code (in seconds) and other meta-data (if available). For selected audio players, the user can resume playback for bookmarks at a later time.

I have not worked on the app for a while, because it (still) works on my (old) Sony Android phone.

[0] https://github.com/MShekow/stop-it

We were walking 700km through Norway and I created poems during the walk. About 5 each day. I remembered one word of each and told it myself the whole time, then wrote the poem down in the evening. In the end I wrote a poem book with all of them (most of them, some I forgot ;-)

Very cool!

The muses occasionally speak to me, e.g. when I was making funny songs to entertain my daughter, but the next day the muses stay away, and I can't remember the parts that made it fun.

It's not problem while walks and other activities where you have phone at hand, shower is more difficult, I used to remember either first letter of each important word or just keywords for each topic/activity I need to write down later and repeat them ad nauseum until I get out of shower to phone to write them down.

Also while I sit at computer and surf I get some idea what to visit or check and often it used to happen to me that I forgot it within few seconds, so now I don't take any risks and immediately open new tab with thing I thought about to not forget it and just return back to original tab without necessity keeping it in mind and stress about forgetting it.

I have pocket notepads with mini pens stashed everywhere. When I go walking I like to take a tiny recorder that I can start the recording as I’m getting it out of my pocket(I have two from Zoom, highly recommend their products)

I set up a "notes" contact on whatsapp. I had to invite someone then immediately kick them out, so it's just me. But it makes a nice easy way to jot stuff down on the run without requiring a separate app.

They go on my dumpster fire of a to-do list.

The first thing I do is never try to just remember them myself.

As displeasing as it probably is to HN readers, I have always-on Google Assistant listening and ready to add things to my list.

Otherwise.... my phone is water resistant and has a rugged case!

I think pen and paper is probably best though. I have a boogie board with the smart pen and occasionally have gotten an entire hour of design work in 5 minutes woth it because it's so much less distracting.

Drafts app is awesome for quick capture and then to integrate with other systems for processing. The recording function for it works pretty well.

I pretend to explain what I just cooked up in my head to someone in very simple terms. I can't explain something I don't understand, so this helps solidify the idea in my noggin'. Then I pretend to explain it again to myself on the walk back.

But I do this out loud, speaking out loud seems to be the key. Like those japanese guys that point. I can "remember" my voice.

If it's a really great idea, it will stick around in your head. If it needs to be written down, it's probably not a very good idea.

Check out Stephen King's take on this: https://youtu.be/lwhOd65gGoY?t=30

But how would you know whether or not it’s a good idea if you don’t remember it? Any intuition you have on this is probably at least a little marked by survivorship bias

I use whatsapp, create a group with one other person then remove that person, it's then synced with the browser app. I use this to send short voice notes and things like PDFs I might want to print out on a work machine but without having to log in to my private email account etc.

I send myself emails or text messages.

I appear the only one here who tells someone else (relevant) about my “brilliant” ideas from walks and showers.

It’s often my wife about a thing related to our lives, but can be something work related that I share that morning with a trusted colleague or even an email to a friend.

I take voice memos mostly. I have Nextcloud sync to them and then a simple bash script run by cron to look for and transcribe new notes. It puts them in Nextcloud notes where I then look for them. Doesn't work well in the shower though.

I write it down in a WhatsApp chat with myself.

An idea that strikes in the middle of the night just won't come back the next day. Or any other serendipitous idea. So I note it down using the path of least friction.

You can also make groups where you're the only member and divide stuff by theme/subject. You can export the chat and get a log of all your chats.

I have either my phone (Todoist) or blank business/index cards

The cards: idea on one side, further notes on the back. Review them later when I'm back at a desk :)

Shower specifically is a hope Siri understands me situation

I use GTD so either an email to myself or an entry in Things.app (via the Apple Watch is particularly convenient) means I’ll pick it up and store it in the next 24 hours

Physical notepad and pen. This works for me because I have a lot of calligraphy and art experience and can condense a lot of thought into a few phrases and pictures.

DM myself on Signal, further writeup when I get home.

I've never thought about it ( ironically ). I wonder how much i've forgot that I wish i hadn't...

thanks for something else to worry about ;)

I use the voice assistant on my watch to set a reminder to note the idea when I have access to a note taking device.

Mind palace + notes on iOS.

At work, I have a notepad in my desk with all the perl and python shit I always forget.

For the shower I have a slate with a pencil, intended for scuba divers. Works great.

I must be the only person who solves things just fine outside this shower.

I send myself a text or write myself a slack.

Obsidian app on my phone.

"Hey Alexa..."

I dictate them to my watch and let them transcribe to my notes app.

Same. This is, for me at least, the killer feature for a smart watch. I've recently bought one and use the voice recorder feature on a daily basis.

Previously I've used wonderfully "low tech" standalone Sony voice recorders but those are separate devices you have to carry, care for, charge, download from and most importantly remember to take with you. High friction. In case of the Apple Watch I just turn on my laptop and the recordings are already there, ready to be listened to and processed. Very low friction.

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