How to organize 'research ideas'

[carlyhylton]

You have an inspired moment...

''THAT would be a good research question!''

How do you organize your ideas?

Do you have a notebook? .doc file? Is there an app for that? Somewhere online?

I'm curious

[Eigen]

I have a moleskin notebook that I use as an external brain.

Usually, ideas are written on whatevers handy to remember... And then when I get back home/to my desk, I get out my moleskin and transcribe the idea and add in any necessary additional details, references, etc.

I do usually keep a small pocket sized moleskin on me most of the time for quick idea notations, but it can also be a napkin, the back of a receipt, a voice notation on my ipod, etc. It's not so much about writing it down initially as getting it into a relatively permanent form.

Usually, as the idea progresses, I take the time to sit down and write up a semi-formal proposal in word, complete with citations and figures. Then I can either present it to my boss, or keep it in hold for the future when I have time to work on it.

[runonsentence]

I have friends who love Evernote for things like this.

[InquilineKea]

Posting via email to a WordPress blog (and then searching the blog whenever I need to search for something).

I also use Quora as a way of organizing things (haha).

[Behavioral]

I usually write a note on my phone if I'm away from my computer. If it's a little more well-developed, I record a voice message and transcribe it later.

[InquilineKea]

Wow - the "record a voice message" idea is quite creative - I should try that sometime.

Edited February 1, 2012 by InquilineKea

[Behavioral]

Wow - the "record a voice message" idea is quite creative - I should try that sometime.

I try not to use it as much as I can -- my best ideas usually come when I'm somewhere public, and talking to my phone while looking extremely pensive doesn't give the best impressions.

[Xiaowen Lei]

I have a moleskin notebook that I use as an external brain.

Usually, ideas are written on whatevers handy to remember... And then when I get back home/to my desk, I get out my moleskin and transcribe the idea and add in any necessary additional details, references, etc.

I do usually keep a small pocket sized moleskin on me most of the time for quick idea notations, but it can also be a napkin, the back of a receipt, a voice notation on my ipod, etc. It's not so much about writing it down initially as getting it into a relatively permanent form.

Usually, as the idea progresses, I take the time to sit down and write up a semi-formal proposal in word, complete with citations and figures. Then I can either present it to my boss, or keep it in hold for the future when I have time to work on it.

Thanks for advising the proposal part. It sounds cool, we should do proposal quite often even without doing the whole research. That practice exercises our mind.

[MediaMom]

I have a Word document that I add to whenever I come up with an idea. It's a stream-of-consciousness brain dump mess, but it makes sense to me!