Hi. I’m Stepa Mitaki. Morning Walk is a personal weekly newsletter where I share some musings on tech, working on startups, productivity and some nerdy stuff.
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In this issue
My system for structuring notes in the early stages of idea development
Some interesting things I read/watched/listened to lately
📝 My system for structuring notes in the early stages of idea development
The early stages of developing an idea are the most chaotic. You have lots of assumptions. You do tons of research. You talk to an immense number of people. The less structure you have at this point, the better. It keeps ideas flowing; there is a better chance of serendipity for new insights, and chaos helps your creativity.
For the same reason desks of most creative geniuses were dreadfully cluttered.
We’ve been working on launching this new healthcare consumer service for a couple of months now, and this is the best example of that early-stage idea development. I’m learning a lot about all kinds of new stuff; I’m heavily researching specific topics, my mind is constantly throwing some new assumptions and ideas at me. Some of these are great for the future. Some of it I need right now. Some of it I don’t want to forget but don’t know how to use right away either.
How to store and structure all that stream of information? I’ve struggled with different setups, but I finally found a setup that works best for me at this stage. And today, I wanted to share that workflow with you.
TLDR: I use one enormous Miro board for literally everything with themed sub-boards inside of it. I structure these big “islands” (e.g., fundraising, product design, legal, market data, etc.), but inside of each “island,” there is no structure whatsoever. I just throw stuff at it.
Here is what I needed to store when I started working on this idea:
Bookmarks
Random notes and ideas
Quotes from somewhere
Documents, graphs, raw data
Visual references and inspiration
And I also wanted to be able to visualize things I was working on. Create a user flow right in there, sketch something out, all that kind of stuff.
Instinctively I came to Notion first. It’s an industry standard now for collaborative notes. But I quickly hit the wall with visual thinking. Notion isn’t that good with that.
Then I turned to Muse. Muse is a phenomenal iPad app and deserves its own post. I believe in their creators’ vision, but unfortunately, they are simply not there just yet. Muse is still limited to the iPad, text input isn’t that good, and you can’t zoom in and out inside the boards.
But look at how delightful their iPad interactions are:
I hope I’ll get to switch to Muse eventually.
At the same time, I was saving all the links I came around in mymind. Mymind is excellent for storing and forgetting, but that was the issue – I was never reminded of what I had there. I needed something in front of me for all these links. I needed some structure but just a tiny bit of it. I didn’t want to waste precious time and energy maintaining a complex system.
What I eventually did is throwing everything into one gigantic Miro board.
Inside of that board, I’ve created big-themed “islands.” I have islands for naming, market data, customer experience, fundraising, legislation, GTM strategy, pricing, finances, vendors, org design, 25 islands for now, and new popping up from time to time.
Each island sits under one of the three categories: Now, Next, or Later.
I don’t need fundraising island now, but there are some contacts, ideas, and bookmarks I’ve already collected on that matter I’ll need in the next couple of months. So I just keep throwing stuff in there to deal with it later. Some islands are just a couple of links. Some are more complex with the full-blown work happening there every day. They are all different. At any moment, I can instantly see what I’m focused on right now and get back to work there.
Here is a quick video of it:
Gigantic Miro board for early stage product development - Watch Video
I’ve been working with that setup for more than a month now, and this chaotic mess does wonders for my creative flow. I can easily find anything I want, stumble upon something by accident, or eliminate all distractions to focus on something specific. It seems like this setup is here to stay.
P.S. As for the product itself, we are moving along. Almost finished with the first alpha version and preparing to allow the first ten early-stage customers in early March. Super exciting.
👓 Things I've been reading/watching/enjoying
Levels Productivity Series: Treat People Like Adults
I have already shared some bits about the Levels company and their distinctive culture. In this 13-minute video co-founders, Sam Corcos and Josh Clemente discuss one of the key principles at Levels, Treat People Like Adults.
This means that we trust one another to use discretion and make decisions with good judgement in order to move projects and the business forward. This principle extends from our workplace through to our benefits philosophies.
Fast success and slow failure: The process speed of dispersed research teams
Another excellent research gem from Ethan Mollick on remote work:
Geographically dispersed teams are more efficient when working on successful projects, but are bad at dealing with failure, tending to keep bad projects going & falling prey to the sunk costs fallacy more often.
This one was conducted on the research teams, but there are many great lessons for IT teams as well.
Flow Club
This is weirdly fascinating; bear with me. Flow Club is a live video co-working. Here is how it works:
You join a group video call.
For the first 5 minutes, everyone tells about their intention for the session (what they want to work on).
For the next 50 minutes, everyone is muted with their video still on, and everyone dives into their work.
At the end of the session, everyone quickly shares their progress.
Call ends.
I haven’t tried Flow Club, but a friend of mine hosted a co-working session that worked the same. My impression: weird, a bit uncomfortable, but fun and highly productive for some tasks. I will be using that again from time to time.
That’s it for today. Thanks for reading. Until next week 👋🏻
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If you're curious about social accountability sessions, you should check out Groove (https://links.groove.ooo/substack) I'm biased since I'm on Groove's team ;) but I'd use it all the time even if I wasn't.
Pretty similar concept, but Groove is free, the groups are only up to 4 people, and you're off video and sound after the initial check-in until the regroup (Not as awkward!). We like to say it's a way to get sh*t done the fun way.
Would love to see you on a Groove!