Pile of Index Cards

I have been thinking that my experience about information management can be expressed in a single equation. My experience about information (or a stuff) is,

• If a stuff is far from me, I don’t access (dependency on spacial distance)
• I easily forget about a stuff (dependency on elapsed time)
• Frequency of access drastically decrease with space and time
• If I don’t see a stuff, I forget it (dependency on visibility)

I assume they are represented as following simple equation,

where A is frequency of access (or just “accessibility”), V is visibility (0

In case you see it (V = 1)	In case you don’t see it (V = 0.1)

This equation is visually understand through above two graphs. Assume you are at origin (x=0, t=0). Accessibility is maximum at the origin, and it decrease exponentially with spatial distance and elapsed time. The left graph is for V = 1, that is you see a stuff all time. Something just in front of you. Then the accessibility is the highest. The right graph is for V = 0.1, that is you don’t see a stuff. For example, a stuff in a closed drawer. In this case, the accessibility is almost zero even though the stuff is spatially and temporally close to you.

ref : 2006.09.17 10:40

Jason Corso made a Vi-style keybind plug-in for Cocoa applications called “Vi Input Manager“. It realize Vi commands on Safari and Xcode etc..

At this moment, it doesn’t work on TextMate. As I wrote in this article, I’m both Vim and TextMate user. This plug-in will combine the two great text editor together. I’m really happy if it work on TextMate someday.

Give us this day our daily bread. This is quote from the Bible. I hadn’t know true meaning of this quote, perhaps because I am not christian.

Dale Carnegie quoted this words in his book “How to stop worrying and start living (or Japanese version)”. He suggested that we must live in more simple way. Before I read this book, I had had meal just because of hungry. Just as daily custom. There is no special meaning for me.

Now I have been trying to have meal If I could feel satisfaction for my work. I don’t eat while I achieve a certain objective. Sometime it takes long to finish the work, and then I have lunch at 17:00, for example.

If I could finish the work in satisfaction, on the other hand, the meal have special meaning for me : it is given to the achievement. This story may sounds primitive. But it really works good for me.

When writing indexcard, I found indexcard I just write (that is previous indexcard) triggers next indexcard (ref. article “Avalanche writing”). The new topic is sometimes related to the previous topic, but with some new idea is included.

What is important here is that the previous indexcard must be in my sight. It makes easy to trigger new idea. If I don’t (or can’t) see the card, the chain may be broken.

I had used the KM2P as indexcard holder. A problem, however, is that it is difficult to see inside the pockets.

Lately I start to use card stand to make indexcard stand and visible. In case I have to take indexcards I pick up indexcards from the stand and put it in the KM2P as before.

ref: 2006.09.16 21:04

A classification of indexcard by project is tiny tiny matter. It takes only few second in time maybe. But it incredibly reduced number of indexcard I write.

Same is true for text editor on computer. I do love to use Vim for programming. The Vim (or just vi) enables to move line to line only with keyboard. It helps to connect thinking and writing, brain and hand more seamlessly. I also use TextMate because of it’s friendly interface and useful templates. If I use it for programming, however, I feel I don’t want to write program anymore with TextMate. This is not due to TextMate, of course, but I’m just frustrated every moment I use mouse.

Difference between using mouse or not may be less than a second in time, and few tens of centimeter in distance. This sounds really tiny matter. But my subconscious honestly react for it.