Writing is a drudgery, so I have always advocated writing prose, rather than thesis writing, thesis writing in the writing time often need to consider the idea of the author and other issues, in the writing inevitably tied hands. Prose with their own temperament to wanton splash ink, there is a greater probability of a good article. However, there are also times when we programmers need to write essays, which we’ll cover separately at the end of the course.
Today, I’m going to talk about inspiration for writing articles.
Writing is not easy. You need to organize all the ideas in your head into one clue, and then combine all the clues organically to form the skeleton of an essay, supplemented with various materials, full of flesh and blood, and finally use modifiers to make the statement smooth, so that a good essay is created.
But for the vast majority of people, the problem may not be that, but that they have no idea what to write about.
In fact, it’s not that you don’t have inspiration, but that you don’t know how to seize your fleeting inspiration, so that when you need to write, you don’t have inspiration and can’t find what to write.
In this lesson, I’m going to teach you a few ways to collect your own ideas, help you catch your own ideas quickly, and help you find what you want to write about.
What inspirations need to be grasped?
Any word, phrase, sentence that makes you feel worth studying is a source of inspiration. All you need to do is record them when they show up. After all, our brains aren’t very good at thinking.
How to catch inspiration
For me, the process of catching inspiration is also an evolutionary process, so let me tell you a little bit about the process that I went through.
1. The age of cards
In the beginning, I used traditional cards and pens to collect ideas.
I bought some cards from Taobao to record my inspiration anytime and anywhere. Just a pen in your pocket, seven or eight cards, is enough to allow you to keep track of your occasional inspiration throughout the morning. When you have an idea, take a pen and paper out of your pocket and jot it down. You don’t need to worry about the format or font, as long as you recognize it and can write it down quickly.
The efficiency of paper and pen is undoubtedly the highest, and the whole process is very natural, which can easily complete the recording of inspiration. However, it also has its own problem, that is, the storage of inspiration is very troublesome. If you do not digitize, when you want to use it later, the cost of searching is very high. You need to go through the bottom of efficiency over and over again.
In addition, there is another problem with pen and paper, some of the inspiration even pen and paper are not enough to record, because some of the inspiration may have a lot of words, if the writing speed is not fast enough, it is a problem.
Digital Age: iOS Evernote
After failing to record my ideas well for many times, I began to consider using digital solutions to record my inspirations.
The requirements are as follows:
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It can be easily searched
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Can the recording
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To be able to type
Convenient search is for subsequent induction and sorting, from trivial inspiration to dig out ideas, recording is to cope with some very fast inspiration input.
First, I chose evernote, which I use a lot.
I’ve been using Evernote for a long time and have a Chat (I’ll link to it at the end of this article), so when I wanted to go digital, my first thought was Evernote.
However, AFTER using it for a while, I finally gave up evernote because the evernote client never updated and started slowly, which slowed down the process of inspiration recording when I wanted to record inspiration.
The Digital Age: Workflow
Later, I learned that Workflow is such a powerful software, which can easily transfer various apps and reside in the small toolbar. Although it is sometimes opened for too long, Workflow in the small toolbar cannot be started, but on the whole, The use of happiness is extremely high.
So I combined Workflow with Evernote, and put the inspiration record in Workflow. Workflow stored the data in Evernote, so I didn’t have to open the slow Evernote to record the inspiration.
In the links below, I’ve shared an implementation of Workflow that uses iOS memos as flash-capsule data stores, so you can try it out first. If you want to use Evernote as much as I do, just replace it with the memos section called Evernote.
The digital age: Flashbacks
The hammer flash capsule came out, and I was blinded by titanium dog eyes. Lao Luo’s phone is not good (I don’t like the UI to be honest), but this function is really needed. Especially when I often need to record inspiration, I really need such a system-level application to help me record my inspiration.
Unfortunately, my phone is a notoriously closed iPhone, so it’s hard to replicate the flashcapsule functionality on the iPhone. Still, some developers are trying.
Flashmind App is an App that can help us experience the flashmind capsule function on iPhone. I quickly paid to use it.
To be fair, this App is not bad, and all functions are well done. Unfortunately, being born on the iOS platform, it can’t really play its power. The information cannot be collected at the system level, but you still need to use the small toolbar to jump to the application to complete the record.
You can find the Flashback App Store link in the link below, currently priced at $3.
The Digital Age: Flash capsules
Eventually, I succumbed to Luo and bought a Smartisan phone (The Nut Pro 2) just for its “flash-capsule” function. The openness of Android system gives full play to the advantages of Flashmind Capsule in Smartisan system. Now I usually have two mobile phones when I go out, with iPhone SE in the left pocket, which is mainly used to deal with tasks on Todoist and messages on wechat. The right pocket holds the Nut Pro 2, which is mainly used to take it out of the pocket anytime, anywhere, and press the Flash Capsule button to record fleeting ideas.
By far, the Hammer’s flash capsule is still my best tool for collecting ideas.
Digital age: Others
In addition to the five main ways introduced above, I will also include some other ways to collect inspiration:
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Use wechat’s file transfer assistant to record inspiration: As a national App, we all have wechat in our mobile phones, and we always open wechat, which makes the opening speed of wechat amazing. There was a time when I chose to put the File Transfer Assistant at the top (it was convenient to find it in the message list of wechat and quickly send content to it), and used the file transfer Assistant as our flash capsule, sending texts and voice messages to him. The only problem is that I occasionally use wechat for file transfers, and the two parts are mixed together, making searching extremely difficult.
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Use Bear to record inspirations: Sometimes, WHEN I just go out with my iPhone (such as running), I will record trivial inspirations in Bear. Bear has a very simple grammar and a very fast start-up speed, which is very suitable for recording inspirations quickly. Equally useful is App Drafts.
A record of inspiration during a run
In addition, android users who are not Smartisan phones can try the Flashmind Todo App, which is said to function like flashmind capsules. See the link at the end of this article for a download.
Comparison of recording methods
Finally, I made a table for you to record the advantages and disadvantages of various schemes, so that you can choose according to your own needs:
Points to note when writing inspiration
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Recording inspiration must be fast: recording inspiration do not pursue their own words how beautiful, can understand the line, the key is to be fast, to be able to record before the inspiration disappears.
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If possible, the record of inspiration must be comprehensive: this is especially when recording inspiration, when recording can be incoherent, the key is to speak the words in your mind truly and quickly say. If you’re trying to process your thoughts before you say them, chances are you’ve forgotten what you wanted to say.
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If you can afford it, buy a Smartisan: Flashmind capsules work best on smartisan phones. I wonder why other Android programmers don’t do something similar. It’s much better than iOS because the system has so much access. IOS can’t do it.
Supplement: cube collection
Cube collection is a tool to collect fragmentary information. I always knew it, but I always thought it could only collect pictures and texts. My friend @Mike in Knowledge Planet reminded me that cube collection also supports voice collection, so I also downloaded it and tried it.
The style of the app itself is very nice and clean, and it supports Web, iOS and Android, so if you have data syncing needs, or if you have both iOS and Android devices like me, cube collection is also a good choice.
A link to the
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Evernote’s official website: www.yinxiang.com/
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Productivity: Use Evernote to increase your productivity: gitbook.cn/gitchat/act…
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Workflow: Workflows. Is /workflows/ C…
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Split second App:itunes.apple.com/cn/app/id13…
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Split second Todo:www.coolapk.com/apk/com.kdf…
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Cube collection: funp.in