👀🌲This is why I hate productivity systems that help you "capture ideas".
Ideas are great but fuck ideas.
westwind@mcmoots I think there's some value in "capturing ideas" to get them out of your head and focus on current priorities, _as long as you evaluate and prioritize them later._ If I didn't write down my ideas or systems issues I notice, I'd either forget them completely or I'd be dropping everything to change priorities "right-the-eff-now" waaaay too often.
@westwind Here's my working theory: Capturing ideas helps if (1) ideas are a scarce resource, and/or (2) your brain gets attached to ideas & won't let them go w/o some level of action.
(1) has never been true for me, except in limited contexts like boring work projects, where I do end up writing stuff down more. For (2), I've found cultivating detachment about my ideas more helpful than interrupting myself to write them down. ADHD means even minor interruptions like that can have high costs.
Midcentury Modern Cockatrice@mcmoots @westwind
I keep running lists of ideas in public, and encourage people to take them and run with them.
It doesn't help with actually getting things done, but it makes people think I'm smarter than I really am (because look at all these wild ideas I came up with) and sometimes makes them feel gratitude for me ("Enki gave me/inspired this great idea I used; he's a cool guy").
It works out well for me because I'd rather be influential than productive.
@enkiv2 @mcmoots
I ride waves of motivation to Do Things depending on my level of depression; my list is for me to take up when I have spoons to spare.
Either that or it's boring work stuff like you described, @mcmoots, where I realize something needs to get handled but I don't have the bandwidth for it, so I make a note and put it out there for my team to look at (or more likely, for me to deal with later myself).
@westwind @mcmoots
My ideas basically never overlap with what I'm paid to do (and I'm in a work situation where productivity isn't particularly rewarded). I very occasionally will get the urge to actually implement something off my idea list, but it's much more common for someone else to do it.
(I sometimes post more than 30 ideas in a day, & some of these lists have been going for upwards of 10 years. The number of ideas implemented by anybody is in the double digits.)