So I’ve started a routine where every few years, I block out a couple of days to sit down and review all my idea tools—and other rituals of how I structure my creative thinking— to see if there's something that can be improved upon.

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.