Ideation is the process of idea-having—it matters because ideas have a massive influence on what we do with our time (even how we experience it in the moment). The first section of this post contains some philosophical thoughts; skip ahead for the tools.
My philosophy of ideation (in brief)
Ideation is also an important part of ‘getting started’, and it’s trendy right now to to try using AI to kickstart this. Although that works (to an extent), I think ideation is still something worth practising for ourselves.
Why? Because we need to have ideas all the time—preferably good ones.
The great thing about conscious ideation is that it can happen anywhere, and it feeds almost automatically on whatever we do with our time (what we read, conversations we have, work we experience, etc.). The technical challenge is logging all this stuff in a low-friction way (i.e. staying in motion).
To my mind it’s helpful to think about ideation as a kind of ecosystem; a kind of ‘garden‘ of agents and artefacts that influence the ideas that are had and how they are captured and/or used. This concept goes beyond ‘knowledge management’ to address the fact that we likely want to make something with the material that we accrue, and that there is a whole host of other factors at play (e.g. how we feel on a given day, whatever agenda our collaborators or gatekeepers might have).
The ‘agents and artefacts’ of the ecosystem don’t just include physical things—concepts have an influential presence too. Notably, a theory of drafting provides some scaffold for refining raw materials, and without a concept of publishing (/implementation/shipping/delivery) the ecosystem probably won’t deliver much to the outside world. Publishing is especially important because it feeds ideation by opening space for ‘what’s next’.
Tools for implementing conscious ideation
The point of conscious ideation is to prospect for worthwhile ideas, and a carefully cultivated ecosystem helps these ideas to flourish.
This is the stack of tools I use to keep things going:
- Obsidian for writing and general idea management (this one is probably my ‘everything’ app)
- Notion as an Obsidian alternative for collaborative projects (or if I need a prettier alternative to Obsidian)
- Word for formatting things nicely when necessary
- Zotero for referencing
- Readwise/Reader for aggregating highlights and remembering what I’ve read (experimenting with this; I used Devonthink religiously until very recently)
- Kindle + Audible synchronised via whispersync where possible for books (I don’t like reading books on a device; but having the book read aloud with Kindle allows for easier highlighting)
- Snipd for podcasts (mainly because it synchronises with Readwise)
- Google drive for file storage
- Logic Pro for recording muisc and other audio work
- Apple voice memos for capturing audio away from the computer
- Midjourney for image creation (e.g. the logos on this site)
- Pens and paper everywhere (literally everywhere, even a waterproof notepad for shower thoughts)