When I was 14 or 15 my older brother one day told me “The way to become smart is to make lots of lists.” So I bought a pocket-sized notebook that I carried around with me and filled it with lists.
I don't really remember what the lists were!
I think I generally just picked some random attribute and listed things that had that attribute. Like "Anime connected to baseball in some way" with entries such as "FLCL" and "Paranoia agent."
Maybe I was doing it wrong, but none of those lists seemed to make me any smarter.
I guess I still make lists, but they are more of the aspirational variety. Like books I want to read or things I should write about. Rather than writing the lists down on actual paper in a notebook, I just use the Notes app on macOS and iOS, since it automatically syncs between my computer and phone without any setup.
I just looked through what I have, and here's the list that seems not quite as idiotic as the rest (they're all pretty idiotic) so I might as well share:
[URL=https://i.imgur.com/kYqLYpY.png]
[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/kYqLYpY.png[/IMG][/URL]
This was in the context of me feeling the games I makes all follow more or less the same formula (platformers with weird unintuitive physics), so as an exercise, I wanted to try coming up with my own reinventions of different subgenres and at least prototyping them. Well... I haven't done that yet. But maybe someday!