Honestly the goal is to just write everything down. When I had been working on some too big to swallow projects during highschool I had lots of ideas but I couldn't implement them quickly. What happened is that by the time I was done with one major feature I had already forgot all the cool features that I planned in my head. Now I just write everything down even if my issues in the ticket system consist of just a title with no body. That way you can stop working on a project for 2 months and pick up right where you left it. The projects end up having a 50:50 split between issues and actual commits. In theory it also makes it easy for other people to contribute.