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Miguel Piedrafita
Miguel Piedrafita

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Permission to forget

I am one of those people who get obsessed over ideas. Whenever I have a project idea, I can't stop thinking about it for days. For example, I know to the detail how I'd implement the logic to make Ship or Source work, how I'd design the landing and how I would market it. And that's before even starting to code.

This has had some effects on my life. There are times when I go to bed, then spend three hours thinking about projects before I finally fall asleep. It also makes concentrating on unrelated things (like school, for example) very difficult, and makes me unproductive for anything else than my idea.

I've recently found a solution to this problem. If I write down my idea immediately after it comes to my mind, I give my brain "permission to forget" my idea and I get to move on with some thoughts.

This is also true for coding. If you write down your ideas as you code instead of holding them in your head (for example, you see some code and think hmmm I should refactor this later. Instead of just remembering and keeping it in your head, write it down and come back to it later) you reduce mental effort, and may even reduce the possibility of burnout.

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Alexandru Trandafir

Hey, you should definetly do your best to keep balance and take care school responsibilities.

It happens to me too from time to time, to get that rush of ideas and not be able to sleep because of it.

Good point to get it written on paper.

But also the other curious aspect of this is how you can use it as motivation.

Last time this happend to me I ended up building this MVP for managing my personal pictures: allmypicz.com

For 3 days in a row I couldn't or maybe wouldn't want to focus on anything else.

Btw I've dropped out of school at your age and at 18 started to work as junior web dev. Hope you find the reasons to stay and to enjoy it longer because after that you'll work for the rest of your life :-) and you might miss friendships and general knowledge. But indeed stay involved and have real experience working on projects, that will help a lot after finishing school.