Stashing thoughts

Sometimes, I feel like life and creative work is similar to open world games: a lot of side quests may show up when you least expect them.

I have been doing a lot of exploratory projects lately around NixOS and homelab. In that development flow, my “enterprise software developer” brain often finds forks on the thought path.

💡 Oh this could be a neat separate project!

–Me

I used to be able to leave such thoughts in my head and come back later, picking up where I left off. That has not been the case in the recent years. Usually it would turn into:

• Distracted from the main path of work
• Forgotten and realizing it was left behind after too long
• Half-assing the main path because I worry that I might forget that sidetrack.

The last two somewhat points to: if it’s important, it will come back. Sure, but it will come back with incomplete picture and usually it implies an unactionable state.

The generic solution and response is “note it down”. I was never a big notetaker, despite the many attempts to “get into the habit”.

Surprisingly, the resistance to note-taking workflow appeared to have changed in the last week. I still don’t definitively know why, especially since I don’t think there is anything distinct about the new note taking application I have compared to, say, regular Apple notes. Certainly too soon to tell if the habit stays, but it has been significant enough to feel the improvement.

Upon I encountering a fork of thought flow, I started stashing them in my notes. At the end of my focus session, I would revisit and add any additional information that I didn’t capture first time around.

I have Bear notes always on in the background so getting to it requires so little activation energy — takes about 1-2 seconds with muscle memory for the hotkeys.

1. Open application switcher (Cmd ⌘ + Tab ↹)
2. Select Bear
3. Regardless of current state of application, create new note (Cmd ⌘)
4. Hide everything except for editor (Ctrl ^ + 1)
5. Write out just enough to revisit later
6. Go back to whatever I was doing before that intrusive thought kicked in

Now I have dozens of half-baked idea, waiting to be revisited. Future me will find out, and possibly report back, on how useful they are.