How do you process ideas when building complex systems as a one-person team?
I'm curious how IndieHackers brainstorm and keep up with; ideas, development thoughts, or with iterations, as you're building complex solutions.
I recently watched How Notion uses Notion. I liked how their culture revolves around documentation. For any technical or product-level changes, they post a document and request comments from anyone in the organization.
I wanted to use that concept as a one-guy team, so I did a little twist. "Blueprint Docs". I posted this on Twitter.
I'm curious to hear processes from other members. How do you collect your thoughts into one cohesive idea/system/solution?
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I must say I also prefer pen and paper on the inital phase of the process. For me it helps to thing and visualize.
After that I use AirTable projects with a Kanban view to keep my tasks organized, since I'm also sometimes working on several project at the same time.
oh nice! I've worked with Airtable in the past and it definitely has nice features. I really like the different views you can create from your database.
Thanks for sharing your process in here
I use pen and paper for most things but also emacs org mode where I'll add things to a backlog and scribble down ideas etc. Makes it easy to search as well using
grep.I also think code comments are underappreciated since documenting "why?" can be especially useful as an addition to commit messages.
it seems like pen and paper is the clear winner! I think that's fair, I use pen/paper as well. Especially in the very early phase when I feel stuck, and I'm trying to manifest an idea. Afterward, I have scattered notes that I highlight on my notebook and then transfer over to digital format so I can structure and make adjustments on the fly
+1 for code comments, that's actually how I proceed with writing code. I add code comments with the general idea of what the logic will look like and then write the code. Rephrase the comments to represent the code block and leave it in there. That way I can quickly browse code and read the summaries.
Thanks for sharing how you process ideas!
I keep a paper journal. I am a team of one and nothing beats paper and pen.
100%. paper/pencil has helped me as well. Actually, that was step zero of this process I posted. I've found paper/pencil mostly reflects my brain's scattered thoughts. Which is good, as you want to keep the creative juices going.
Once I have collected all of my ideas, I've found organizing them in a portable format such as Notion helps me improve my ideas as I'm working on a problem.