zer0th

I've been thinking about something like this years ago. Basically I wanted to implement de Bono's "Six Thinking Hats" as a website that would assist an individual to work through a problem with the help of a community. So a user would not state his problem to wait for complete solutions suggested by others. Instead, s/he'd, for example, try to explain what s/he wants to achieve and ask for strategies. The community would then suggest some options ("yellow hat thinking"). Next, the community could weed out bad options ("black hat thinking"). If there were any ideas left one could ask how everyone feels emotionally about the remaining options ("red hat thinking") and then pick the most popular one. In a next step, they could brainstorm creative ideas to mitigate possible problems with the chosen option ("green hat thinking"). Afterwards the OP could summarize the outcome and state what s/he is going to do. If after a while some more thinking turns out to be required one could continue the process again. For instance, you could discuss how to deal with unforeseen challenges or - if the chosen option turns out to be futile - investigate one of the other suggestions in more detail And so on and so forth ...

However, I worried that most people would not have the time/patience to really get involved with a problem. Furthermore, the process might be to cumbersome and rational for real world problems.

I've been doing something fairly similar for years now.

You can read about my method here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10997410

I've noticed that problem in my life as well. As a result, I decided to consume media a bit more randomly. My harddrive has a folder called "todo". This folder contains subfolders labeled "watch", "listen" (which includes "music" and "podcasts"), "read" and (a fun one) "pilates". The folder "watch" includes mostly movies and documentaries, sourced from my public service broadcaster's VOD service (which I scan weekly for interesting stuff) or youtube. The "music" subfolder of "listen" contains first and foremost dj mixes I've collected from eclectic rss feeds. "read" has all kinds of PDFs and HTML pages (mostly scientific papers, long-winded articles and e-books). The "pilates"-folder contains videos of individual exercises (I find it more exciting to not always do the exact same routine)

On top of that I've written a script which prompts me to choose a category (i.e. one of the folders delineated above). It then randomly opens a file from the respective directory. When I am done using a file the script asks me whether I'd like to archive it, keep it (in case I am not done with it yet) or delete it.

Some years ago I came up with a system which I still use extensively. I added these lines to my .bashrc file:

  log(){
  pushd ~/logs;
  echo >> $*;
  date >> $*;
  cat >> $*;
  } 

  log filename

It is super quick and non-distracting (i.e. I don't 'accidentally' get carried away by looking at previous thoughts or tweaking the config of a journal application etc.) What's more I find it very convenient that the function automatically adds the current date to each entry.

Btw, I've got another function called "show" which I can call whenever I feel like just briefly skimming through a file

  show(){
  cat ~/logs/$*;
  }

So at the beginning the list looks something likes this:

Task 1

Task 2

<!-- some details on task 2 -->

Task3

Task4

<!-- some details on task 4 -->

(comments turn gray so that actual tasks stand out)

Whenever I begin a task I place a "-" in front of its line. Now I see this red minus and thus know that I have started a task that needs to be completed. When I've finished the task I replace the - with a # and now the whole line turns blue. I've line numbers enabled in gedit so when I want to change the status of an item I simply hit ctrl+i and enter the corresponding line number. Some tasks occur daily, at least for a while. In that case I revisit a task's line again at the end of the day and remove the "#". Similarly, when I want to delete an unnecessary task I go to its line and hit ctrl+d and thus delete it. It is super primitive but I like it. ;)