A queue of ideas

Finals is just around the corners again so of course, quite a portion of my time is then "delegated" to revisions and stuff like that. Normally before sitting down to write something I would spend some time in the shower trying to think of something that makes sense to be written for the day, but now it seems that the entire world is just filled with matrices and equations and theories...wew. Pre-finals syndrome is a real thing, I just won't tell you that I made that word up, heh.

So, that actually poses a little challenge to me to keep on posting every day - well, it's not like I must post every day, but it's just the desire to not break the posting streak. P;us, once you stop for a day, you will then stop for the second day, and I won't continue anymore because everyone knows what will happen next. It's just a little too hard to get a habit back on track once you abandon it for even a day, so I am just trying to prevent that. But as I said, keeping a decent stream of ideas flowing in when the world is all about numbers and equations isn't that easy.

However, there is indeed a way to keep the idea flowing.

Source

Still remember my post on the non-dominant hand? If you don't, scroll my blog for a little to see it. It looks like a normal post, but in fact I have left it in my draft list for...3 glorious months. Yeah, Busy kept the draft for me for 3 full months before I finally reopened it up to complete it then post it.

I was pretty grateful that Busy didn't set a time limit on how long drafts can be kept, and my decision to keep the draft in there without having the intention to delete it. It's just unusual for me to not delete unused things right after they are created but whatever, it turned out to be good this time. But yeah, the idea is here - keep a list of usable ideas so that you can pull something out from that list to write on when you are really desperate for ideas.

Today when chatting with @mistyexe I suggested him to write something about grabbing breads from random shops whenever he is hungry and why he prefers bread over biscuits...yeah that is some pretty random topic but I think it would be an interesting article. Then, he replied me with a list of pending posts he is planning to write on, or is on the way writing, I don't know. But the list is really pretty long - based on his posting frequency I guess it will be sufficient for the next month or two. And regarding his superb ability to build extreme text walls, it might take him half a year to finish writing everything, I guess. Lul.

That somehow reminds me that I have a list of ideas in my mind, too. I just don't really make them as "pending to be written" stuff, just a bunch of potential topics that I can choose from when I am bored or something. Yes, I also have a list of pending ideas, but not that long. The only one I remember is...one on the design of the 3.5mm plug of my earphone, and nothing else. I am more of the kind of person that generates ideas on the go, like now I just had the idea of writing on how dirty my laptop is and some tips to make it cleaner (to be honest, I am hoping to find a way to maintain its cleanliness effectively but it is just too hard in my opinion), some review on MapleStory's newest content (MONAD, and oh my god the storyline and the execution is really the best one I have seen in MapleStory till now, probably I should really write on that), and probably some other funny things I do from time to time. Yeah, as you see, I don't really keep a long list of ideas, but I try to keep myself sensible on what I can abuse around me to write something for the day.

Well, that works, but as you can see, once you got stuck in a situation like mine, it is really hard to generate ideas on the go. What fills your world is what that makes up your thoughts, and if your world is filled with sigmas and lambdas then nothing really makes sense when writing stuff. I can happily admit that for a few days I thought of writing tutorials on linear algebra so that it can help me to remember its content, but wew, no. I don't want to risk myself getting slapped by my classmates for loving this subject so much if they manage to find this blog out one day.

So, if you are free, sit down, think, and recall what is worth sharing around you, then list them down in a piece of paper as your valuable idea list. It should build over time if you do it correctly, since you will never be able to write down everything in life anyways, so ideas will always grow faster than your writing progress, differentiation says so (see? That's how my brain works now). Over time, you will realize that it will be something more than a list of ideas - you will then understand that papers remember things better than you, and it only remembers all the good things you want it to remember, then probably you can start to appreciate what nice happened before, and what you should do to show your appreciation :)

Really, trust me, keep yourself a list of ideas. No matter how you're going to use it, it's going to be beneficial.

Until next time,

--Lilacse