Research ideas, part 4: Keeping track
What do you do with your ideas? If you’ve been following along, we’ve worked through how to generate research ideas, why you need to have lots of ideas (and be willing to have bad ideas!), and how to figure out which ideas are the best ideas. It’s easy for this to sound like a linear process that you walk through for each idea, but of course the reality is much more complex. You might have an idea that is initially not that great, but after months of thinking and refining, becomes something you are excited about. Or, you might have two ideas that on their own don’t go far, but become amazing when merged together.
In short, developing your ideas is less like this
And more like this:
So, how do you manage this process? How do you keep track of multiple ideas over several months (or years) in a format where you can continually add to and evolve your thoughts, and where you can find all of the information when you need it?
At this point, I need to make a confession – I am not the person who should be writing this post. I’m terrible at keeping track of my ideas. They live across a combination of paper scraps shoved in my backpack, post-it notes stuck to my desk, notebooks I keep losing, and my failed attempts to use OneNote. I’ve primarily resorted to just telling my ideas to the members of my lab in the hopes that they will remember them. It’s a good thing I work with incredible people! I know I need to do better, so I turned to the experts on twitter for advice, and they delivered!
By far the most popular option was electronic notebook apps, such as OneNote, iPad notes, and Google docs: