Ask HN: How do you recall ideas/eureka you get during walks, showers, etc.?
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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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 164 ms ] threadIt 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/
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.
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.
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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.
Reminds me ideas I get when smoking pot. Writing them down yields more regret than not to.
> 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.
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.
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.
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/
Obsidian is freakin sick!
thanks for something else to worry about ;)
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.
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.
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.
Check out Stephen King's take on this: https://youtu.be/lwhOd65gGoY?t=30
At work, I have a notepad in my desk with all the perl and python shit I always forget.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.