One way to summarize http://benkuhn.net/thinkrealhard/  is "thinking has no diminishing returns"—for me, thinking more about e.g. a tricky software design will keep improving it, long after I feel like it's "fully baked."

This made me realize you need the right tools for that to work! https://twitter.com/GeniesLoki/status/1322906270823862274

If all your thinking happens inside your head, you'll max out your working memory (or something) and start to forget earlier pieces of your reasoning. That's one thing that can make you feel diminishing returns—you can't build chains of ideas because you forget the beginning.

Writing things down unblocks this—if you forget earlier reasoning, you can look back at it to remember. It also forces you to formulate thoughts in a more crisp/compressed way that can make them stick in memory more deeply.

Another cause of diminishing returns is "going around in circles"—eventually, you'll generate all the ideas/considerations that are accessible to you.

That's when it's time to bounce the idea off someone else: they can supply new data/perspective that gets you unstuck.

Another thing you can do here is have a "conversation" with your future self—put the idea down and come back a few months later. I've found this surprisingly useful. I have one design doc at Wave that has existed since 2017 and still isn't done.

What other strategies help you keep making forward progress on ideas?