I Kept Losing My Best Ideas—Until I Did This

2 minute read

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It always starts the same.

I’m in the middle of a meeting, someone says something, and boom—a new idea sparks in my head.

Or worse… I’m out for a walk, enjoying the breeze, and suddenly my brain decides now is the perfect time to solve a problem I’ve been stuck on for a week.

And just like that, the moment passes.
Because I didn’t write it down.
Because I had no frictionless place to store it.

Sound familiar? I guess so!

That frustration pushed me to look for a simple, zero-barrier way to capture thoughts on the go—without overthinking, without opening ten apps, and without getting distracted.

Fleeting Notes

Fleeting notes changed the game for me.

These are not polished thoughts. They’re not organized.
They’re not even meant to be permanent.

They are just quick brain dumps—snapshots of insight that your mind throws at you when you’re least prepared.

I’ve learned to catch them:

During meetings (a flash of an idea? I write it instantly)
During walks (I tell Google Assistant to take a note)
While reading (underline a sentence? That’s a fleeting note in disguise)

And here’s the thing:
I don’t keep all of them.
Once a fleeting note is processed—turned into a proper note, task, or discarded—I either delete it or archive it.

But Where Do I Store Them?

Now here’s the next pain point.
People often say, “But if I take a lot of notes, how do I find anything later?”

Great question. I struggled too.

I tried fancy apps, Zettelkasten templates, even color-coded notebooks.
Nothing worked quite like I wanted.

Eventually, I found my sweet spot: Google Keep.
Lightweight, syncs across devices, opens instantly, even while walking.

But there’s a trick…

The Simple `#Hashtag` Trick

To make your Keep notes findable, add a # tag at the end of your note.

Let’s say you had an idea about YouTube scripting.
Just end the note with #quote or #content.

Later, when you search #quote in Keep—boom—all your fleeting notes related to that pop up.

No more hunting. No more forgetting.

Real stories. Practical lessons. Right in your inbox!
No spam—just once a week !

TL:DR

If your brain throws gold at you during random times, don’t lose it.

Use a frictionless inbox (Google Keep is mine)
Don’t worry about polishing—just capture
Add # tags to make it searchable later
And once processed, archive or delete

I no longer fear “losing” good ideas.
I know they’ll be there, waiting for me, when I’m ready.

What’s your system for catching fleeting thoughts?

👋 About Me

Hi, I’m Shuvangkar Das, a power systems researcher with a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Clarkson University. I work at the intersection of power electronics, DER, IBR, and AI — building greener, smarter, and more stable grids. Currently, I’m a Research Engineer at EPRI (though everything I share here reflects my personal experience, not my employer’s views).

Over the years, I’ve worked on real-world projects involving large scale EMT simulation and firmware development for grid-forming and grid following inverter and reinforcement learning (RL). I also publish technical content and share hands-on insights with the goal of making complex ideas accessible to engineers and researchers.

📺 Subscribe to my YouTube channel, where I share tutorials, code walk-throughs, and research productivity tips.

Shuvangkar Das, PhD