Ask HN: do you keep a stash of ideas? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: do you keep a stash of ideas?

37 pointsshadowcats55 comments

And if you do, do you post them publically?

I just want to see if people actually follow the "ideas are useless, execution is everything" and "share your ideas ASAP" memes :)

Here's my stash: http://firespotting.com/submitted?id=shadowcats

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My registered domain list is a stash of ideas that made it past the 'should I buy a domain for this?' filter :) </squattershame>

That's genius. It's a bit more expensive than a notepad and a pencil, but also more scalable.

Haha I have the same thing. Every few weeks I'd get a few notifications to renew domains. They provide a laugh every time.

wow - I've been doing this for years without knowing it!

I used to keep mine in random scribbles but then started adding them to a text file.

Half-Bakery [1] was a great site full of random and crazy (and not so crazy) ideas. I'm pretty sure some of the stranger ones may even have come to pass. fwiw, I prefer that type of UI for collating ideas rather than the HN style.

[1] http://www.halfbakery.com

HalfBakery was great but you had to sift through a lot of joke ideas iirc.

From my point of view, that was half the fun.

No. Ideas are really useless.

If they are unimportant I will forget them after a while and that is OK. If I forget them they are unimportant by definition. Keeping track of such things is a waste of time.

If I get really bothered by some temporary idée fixe I will work on it: search for more information, check my assumptions, analyze my options, maybe write some code to implement a proof of concept. This way at least I gain some knowledge for the wasted time and attention.

Sharing ideas of the first kind is just noise. I doubt anything can come out of it.

As for the second kind there are blogs, github, kickstarter, etc. They all put you into some process or format. Which is good if you want to make at least something useful from your idea.

Completely agree. Idea sites like firespotting and halfbakery just turn into a really good way to waste your time. If you have a reasonable idea, do some research on it. If it turns out to be feasible, do some customer development and start building it out to really test it.

Doing these things and failing 100 times in a row will almost certainly turn out to be a better use of your time than spending even 5 minutes looking for an idea by skimming through the likes of this:

  [1] "A pinterest type service where if u spot a deal.." blah blah

  [2] a rotating tube house

[1] http://firespotting.com/item?id=1061

[2] http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/rotating_20tube_20house#13702...

I just keep them in Evernote, never thought to post them on firespotting, that's a good idea.

Do it! If you're not using them, don't hoard them :) Also, it gets the creative juices flowing, so it's a win to everyone.

Just put in my one good idea: http://firespotting.com/submitted?id=cdvonstinkpot

Same here :).

I stash many ideas to stop thinking about them, otherwise they distract me from what I'm currently building. Once I've written them down, it's easier to go back to the current one.

I usually don't share them because it would take too much time and would defeat my main purpose. But sometimes I just can't help myself and do that anyway :)

How about creating an account on Firespotting and posting your best ones?

For me it's cathartic, it spurs more creativity, and I get a very valuable reality-check on my ideas.

Also, I've met several people there already. Who knows, one of them might be a future startup partner.

Because it would require time, a commodity I'm very short of ;) But I could consider that in the future, if my current startup fails - or succeeds to the point where I'll have more free time to think about other things.

Fair enough.

I do, but I keep them to myself until they end up being a thing. (Also posted yesterday about my process: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5810585 )

That's very interesting.

Maybe you could post about your process here: http://firespotting.com/item?id=948

I've started taking a notebook with me everywhere and writing down whatever comes into my head. This includes ideas for projects, articles I'd like to write about, things I'd like to research later etc. Then when I have some free time I have a long list of interesting topics / bits of inspiration to create something with. I can't imagine making it public - I think the desire to self-censor would reduce the value of it. A lot of the ideas are rubbish and most of the stuff in there is only interesting to me but it's still valuable to have a record of those things.

Yes, ubiquitous data capture is a great way to train the brain to provide you with stuff. Write down everything it gives you, even the duds, and you will be rewarded eventually.

Firespotting is simply a more social way of doing the same thing :)

I carry a notebook everywhere with me and write down every idea I have during my "creativity hour". I have a nice large stash of ideas in it now. No I don't share my ideas, not because I'm selfish, or I think they're worth money (every personal project goes up on GitHub), but because they're personal projects with no real worth to anybody else (at least at the conception phase). When I think of an idea that will change the world, or if any of the ideas turn out to be any use to anybody other than me I'll be sure to share it.

Tell me about this "creativity hour" :)

I wanted to be more creative, John Cleese gave me some advice (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9rtmxJrKwc). Basically I sit in a café for an hour everyday (on my lunchbreak) with 0 distractions (no phone, laptop etc), and I get bored on purpose. Nice thing about getting bored is, your brain starts to think of things to prevent the bordem. You start to think of ideas, and you start to write those down. By the end of the hour you may have between 6 - 12 new ideas depending on what your train of thought was during the hour. When before I had no idea what kind of personal projects I could work on in my spare time, now I have too many, I don't have time them! Eventually they'll all go on my personal website once I get it up and running.

That's a cool method. Feel free to post it here: http://firespotting.com/item?id=948

I open-source them: http://willgrant.org/category/idea-dump/

Need to do some more soon...

You have some cool ideas there, consider putting them on FS :)

I use a simple text document in my Google Drive, it is pretty plain - when I have a new idea I write it into the doc and at the same time I go through all of the others and see If I have more exact ideas related to them. Also I check back occasionally to see if I am still interested in all of them (let's call it refactoring,heh).

There are some which I share, some that I do not. :-)

How many do you have? :)

I used to use Evernote to keep track of my ever growing ideas but ultimately found keep a moleskine fits me very well...the feeling of writing it down by myself, a chance to scribble, a chance to sketch etc. made it a better fit for me and I'l sticking to that. I greatly miss the fantastic Evernote search though ;-)

For passing ideas, I just stick them into an email and send them to myself. For other stuff, I keep a private github repo called 'braindump' with each idea in a separate project directory.

Whenever a project gets legs and I want to share it, it's pretty easy to then move it into a separate repo and grant access to specific people.

https://github.com/pmarreck/ruby-snippets

One day (...maybe today), I'll turn some of these into Ruby gems. I have some kind of weird open-source stage fright, even after multiple coworkers have told me some of these deserve to be gemmed out...

Not publicly as I usually end up working on them in some way or another. I use Trello to keep them organised.

Tell me more about how you do this.

I have a trello board with two columns. One has all of the ideas I come up with (title, and short description on how I plan to implement the idea). If I start work on an idea, I move it into the other column, just so I can keep track of it.

Ever couple of weeks I go through the list of ideas and change the order of the items, putting the ideas which I want to work on first towards the top.

I do keep a stash of ideas. Mainly things that I've noticed about how things could be improved.

Currently in there are things concerning drones, forums, social noise, voice recognition, encryption, new ways of programming, and data synchronisation.

I rarely share my ideas and rarely do anything with them.

Yes, and no.

I keep them in Things (a GTD-style app for iOS and OS X) in the category 'Someday'. This way I can jot them down even if I get an idea while riding the subway.

I should share them since I seldom 'Get Things Done' anyway (at least, the things categorized as 'Someday')...

Please do share them on FS :)

I did not expect to see so many ideas. We actually have quite a few ideas in common, which suprised me. I'm going to browse through all of them, and comment as needed.

I'm also starting to consider posting all of my ideas there.

Nice, thanks!

Personally, I keep a Trello board for various ideas/projects. Whenever I come up with an idea, I put it on a Trello board. I keep boards for blog posts, project ideas, and improvements to existing projects.

I email my ideas to myself, and label them "Project Idea". I also include several tags in the subject in order to find them and filter them easily later on (i.e. game music learning).

Game music learning sounds like a cool domain for ideas. Do explain?

It was just an example of tags I may include in the email subject, but I've developed a music learning game in the past [1], which I'm currently recoding from scratch for a music teacher who needs it for his students. I'm writing the remake as a web application, this time coded in Amber Smalltalk.

[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/scorer/

In a mindmap. For example Freemind http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeMind

I keep a few notes in Asana. Have started a few projects but then think of a new one and the current one becomes stagnant. And repeat.

Consider posting them on Firespotting then, good way to un-stagnate your ideas :)

I have a huge excel spreadsheet of ideas, names, description, useable content. Hope to one day find time to build everything!

I got a separate notebook for them in Evernote. I love the idea of sharing them though, never thought much about it before.

I have a ton of half implemented projects..

Hehe, hey, I was gonna say that!

i have various ideas that I am sitting on until I am well enough to implement them. if someone does it first fine,but history is filled with people who had great ideas which were ruthlessly stolen often by bigger business's, so i keep my powder dry until I can apply it

I'm drowning in them.

Unload them on FS then :)

Yes. http://hamburgsteak.sandwich.net/writ/bad_ideas/

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