''I'm having trouble connecting my thoughts together - I get an idea, write it down, try developing it a little, then this one sentence turns into another idea, giving me a reason to write about that other thing now until the whole text stops making any sense at all.''
Sound familiar, huh?
Well, struggle no more, as I might have some solutions for moments like those.
Just today I was having this weird blue-feeling afternoon and semi-identitycrisis, scrolling through Facebook when I seemingly found something to write about.
So I started off by writing how I saw this survey about metalheads on Facebook.
Next thing I find myself thinking about how my friend list mostly consists of people whom I don't even talk to; or who am I trying to impress if I even think about posting anyting on my wall? I rarely post at all, maybe share something from my feed once in a blue moon. My friendships have faded, all that remain are memories and I only find myself sitting behind my laptop, thinking about the memories, listening to stoner metal, feeling all numb.
(A post under construction viewed through HackMD's revision feature).
And that weird bunch of thought-garbage should somehow be generated into one fully-functioning Steemit post, huh?
Then it struck me: ''I should start organizing my thoughts.''
What better way to organize one's thoughts than... MINDMAPS?
''I should start using some mindmapping-applications or sites, just burst out words through my fingers and THEN start connecting them altogether into the right contexts to make logical easilly understood right-minded paragraphs... and connect those paragraphs into fully-functioning stories, posts.''
Years back when I was still in school, and I'm speaking of my first school now (I've been to three), we had a history teacher who was also the school's activity leader - she was really cool, one of my favorite teachers (if you ever stumble upon this, Piret, thank you!).
Anyway, I think it was in 6th grade when she gave us this huge assignment of creating a file folder about all the wars we had learnt about during that year which had to have 4 mindmaps, a couple of excel tables, a powerpoint quiz (yes, a quiz, not just a slideshow) and some reports in it.
She had taught us to use the site bubbl.us to make mindmaps. And when I was making the most important mindmap of those four (about WWII), my computer froze! Right before I could save it! Can you believe it?!
I had spent like three hours on researching our materials, creating and perfecting the mindmap and my damn computer decided to freeze on me! (Well, it was a quite old computer, too. My parents had got it back when I was 3 years old). You can imagine the breakdown...
I had to re-do it... twice... all through my tears and angst. (I got a good grade for the file folder in the end, though, so I guess it was just one of those ''no pain, no gain'' situations).
And after all that I still liked bubbl.us for some reason. I haven't used it a lot since, but I just know that if I ever need to make mindmaps (like NOW as an author on Steemit, I guess), that's my go-to site.
(A mindmap made in bubbl.us).
I mean look at how cute the bubbles are clean and simple of a look the mindmap has!
Mindmaps are useful for brainstorming, letting your burst of ideas out without losing any by starting to form sentences of them right away. You can do it with a pen and a paper or in an app or an online website.
The best way in my personal opinion is to start off on a sheet of paper or in a simple .txt file by writing out words and THEN connecting them into a mindmap to make it visually better, easy to the eye, more simple to analyze and put into context.
Now that your thoughts have been organized, try out HackMD!
HackMD is a great tool for people who write their posts in markdown and would like to see the result and its changes in real time.
(This same post in HackMD).
Not only that, but it also has the default option (can be changed by the notes(?) / text file(?) owner) that anyone who's logged into HackMD and has the link to a specific post, can edit it, too, meaning it's perfect for cooperation projects inbetween 2 or more people where communication is the key.
Although I haven't found a comfortable way of categorizing notes by projects or sharing a bunch of notes with people at the same time through HackMD itself, I had an ''Heureka!'' moment of my own a couple of weeks ago: a list of links.
(My way of organizing future posts on HackMD (Yes, I STILL haven't done my #introduceyourself post)).
I would like to thank 
I've used HackMD for a while now and have enjoyed it so far.
Conclusion / TL;DR
Most of us, if not all, have at least once in their life experienced an overflow of thoughts and made the mistake of writing them out as whole sentences, forgetting about half of the ideas they had before. There are solutions for those kind of problems.
Now, I will not guarantee that this is the BEST way of organizing one's thoughts, but I'm brave enough to say it's a GOOD way to do so.
The first thing to do is 1) grab a pen and a pencil OR an empty .txt file, gather all of your thoughts in there, just let random words burst out of you however messy it seems. 2) Connect your thoughts by making a mindmap - be it on a paper sheet, in some app or on an online website (heck, use the forementioned bubbl.us if you want to) - it will make things visually easier and organized. 3) Turn the now organized thoughts into real text material wherever you're the most comfortable. Don't be afraid to try out HackMD!
PS! This post was not sponsored by any of the forementioned sites! They were just sincere suggestions!
How do you organize your thoughts?