In my line of work as a writer, there’s a near endless stream of new applications coming out that touch different stages in my workflow: e-book readers, notetaking apps, tools for managing PDFs, word processors, bibliographic databases. The problem is that it’s very tricky to switch horses midstream with these kinds of tools, which means you have a natural tendency to get locked into a particular configuration, potentially missing out on better approaches.

I quickly found myself in the ironic situation of spending so much time building a tool to help with my schoolwork that I stopped actually doing my schoolwork.

It occurs to me that keeping a “wish-list” of intellectual/creative challenges, even if you’re not exactly sure yet what the exact subject matter will be for those challenges, would be a productive routine to have, for writers and non-writers alike.