I used to worry about this a lot, particularly when brainstorming. I found that I would start with a breadth-first search for ideas, but then as soon as one was moderately appealing, I went into depth-first mode and not only did I stop the breadth first search, but I also forgot much of the initial set of ideas.

I created a tool for myself to avoid this pattern, which is effectively a kind of interactive map-reduce system.

Also, I really like insights like this. Is there a dedicated place where people discuss these kind of meta-cognitive topics?