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Ask HN: do you keep a stash of ideas?

37 points by shadowcats ↗ HN
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

56 comments

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danmaz74
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 :)

shadowcats
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.

danmaz74
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.
feint
Not publicly as I usually end up working on them in some way or another. I use Trello to keep them organised.
shadowcats
Tell me more about how you do this.
feint
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.

jumblesale
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.
shadowcats
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 :)

ragatskynet
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. :-)

miguelrochefort
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.

bromagosa
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).
shadowcats
Game music learning sounds like a cool domain for ideas. Do explain?
bromagosa
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/

m4tthumphrey
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.
shadowcats
Consider posting them on Firespotting then, good way to un-stagnate your ideas :)
rblstr
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.
shadowcats
Tell me about this "creativity hour" :)
rblstr
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.
michielvoo
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')...

amirmc
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

shadowcats
HalfBakery was great but you had to sift through a lot of joke ideas iirc.
amirmc
From my point of view, that was half the fun.
dietervds
I got a separate notebook for them in Evernote. I love the idea of sharing them though, never thought much about it before.
emilis_info
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.

dgunn
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...

Bigkate
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
keeran
My registered domain list is a stash of ideas that made it past the 'should I buy a domain for this?' filter :) </squattershame>
themstheones
That's genius. It's a bit more expensive than a notepad and a pencil, but also more scalable.
rfnslyr
Haha I have the same thing. Every few weeks I'd get a few notifications to renew domains. They provide a laugh every time.
oxplot
wow - I've been doing this for years without knowing it!
jurre
I have a ton of half implemented projects..
larsmak
Hehe, hey, I was gonna say that!
67726e
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.
lectrick
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...

6d0debc071
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.

bmilleare
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.

chrish16
I have a huge excel spreadsheet of ideas, names, description, useable content. Hope to one day find time to build everything!