Human attention is constantly moving; thoughts are spontaneous and fleeting. A great and important idea may occur to you and be gone within seconds.
To capture the notable thoughts in those precious seconds, you want a method that is extremely lightweight / minimal-friction. Aspirationally, the action should be a subconscious gesture.
A secondary benefit to lightweight capture is minimizing the disruption that the capture causes. A heavyweight capture method requires time and effort, thus distracting you from the interaction that prompted the thought. Interactions can occur via:
- Conversation
- Reading or watching
- Tasks; Context-switching is the main productivity killer for developers
- Physical; places and things
Create a lightweight method across every domain:
- Vehicle for capturing: Writing (raw or annotations), dictation, photos and recording
- Devices: Phone, smart watch, laptops, work devices, tablet, book.
- Interaction type: Conversation, literature, tasks, physical
Aspirationally, the captured note automatically goes into an In-box that is reliably processed and depleted later. My most used method is a Apple Shortcut for adding to the vault inbox. I put it everywhere (home screen, lock screen, action button, in widgets) so that I am always a click or two away from it.
- A clear mind starts with thought capture to be able to let go
- After Syndicating Garage content is set up, can I somehow connect to the Reddit posts:
- Still trying to figure out How to set mental threshold for when to capture fleeting thoughts. Find the balance between capturing enough but not too much to where it is burdensome.