Huh. I do almost exactly this, but with an always-present vim instance in screen:

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      [x] mention screen
          [x] what is that other one? -- tmux
          [x] mention it? -- nope
      [x] should I produce an example? -- yes, easy
      [.] demonstrate '.' as current work item
      [ ] hit reply

Interesting technique. But I cannot help to think that it is good mostly for people who are already good (or at least not that bad) at context switching anyways.

What I mean is that many people, inherently are more chaotic, and over-structuring their lives is counter productive. It could make productivity constant but overall worse.

Thinking about psychology of this, I believe this might be good to "right brained" types, but it would be such a burden for someone who solves problems mainly via extroverted intuition - random thoughts that are generated so quickly and without any structure - you would need to write down something every few seconds basically, forget about actually doing something.

I do something similar, and I'm very chaotic, not at all structured. When Im doing something I have my notebook open, if an idea pops into my head I write it down, maybe make a few notes about it, then go back to what I was doing before. Whatever I'm currently working on has a star next to it in the notebook. And once I finish I cross it out (usually). Its not organized like a list, basically just a brain dump. ( Examples of old pages: http://paste.click/VvnUdA http://paste.click/RZyWLG http://paste.click/CsVaoa ) Doing it in a text editor would be just one more thing to get distracted by, and it doesn't really work for the brain-dump/brain-map style, since spatial relations between what I write has significance. This way instead of going off on a tangent I can finish what I'm actually trying to get done, but still keep track of the unrelated ideas/thoughts.

Obviously it won't work for everyone, but it's boosted my productivity massively, and I'm the furthest thing from structured and awful at context switching (Well I'm great at switching, its the switching back that I'm bad at :) )

I used to write stuff down, but in my case on sheets of paper that got filed with the project. But I kept thinking "Dammit, I know I've met this problem before, what was the solution?". Doing the same note-taking thing, but using the PC instead of paper, makes it searchable. You're right about the mind-map diagrams though.

Yeah I have plenty of pages filled with the project. Not having them searchable is a pain, but every time I've tried to use vim for it, it ends up being a bigger distraction than the ideas themselves.

When do you get to research your unrelated ideas? Do you have a set time of the week for it? Or do you just go through your list one by one as and when you finish the current item?

I usually go one by one. They end up in a chain of ideas so I just follow that chain down.