Pile of Index Cards

Report from Jon in personal communication. I send him a rings for hipster PDA. Now he use it to bind 4×6 index cards. Tips and tricks about his hPDA. :)

Jon’s hPDA

“Hello Hawk,
I just wanted to share my immediate discoveries after using the binder rings.

1. I decided to use a single ring only on a card stack. I’m still using my original cards (4×6) as I’m experimenting. I realised that by using 2 rings, I’d have to open and close them both to add or remove a card, and this would be a step back. One binder clip becomes one binder ring.

2. I used a standard 2 hole punch on the short side of my cards, which was easy to line up. This put a hole close to the bottom right corner, but not too close to make the corner week. However, i quickly disliked this, as when I turned the cards, they pivoted around the corner ring and it became awkward to use.

3. So I punched a hole in the centre of the short side. This was tricky to measure up well and to keep batches of cards punched exactly. I realise I need to prepare a lot of cards at one sitting (1 pack) and my office punch was better than my punch at home. The grid cards might be easier to punch, because they have 15 squares on the short side, so the hole is #8 square.
(I noticed the cards you sent have a number printed on one side. I mistakenly punched some on the plain side and some on the number side. When I put them together with the same sides together, the holes are very slightly out. This is because square #1 and square #15 are not the same size.)

4. But as soon as I started using the cards with a centred hole, they were much easier to use. They turned like pages in a book very neatly. I can write up to the edge of the card with little interference from the ring.”

cont.

“What is important with card is not classification, but to flip some times.”

Umesao, Tadao, Chiteki Seisan no Gijyutu, p. 59.

Long time I had misunderstood what Umesao said. I had thought he suggest ‘flip’ cards to search a certain cards frequently. But it is not for search, but for review.

Search and review are resemble in action. Both ’scan’s the cards in a box. But the meaning is completely different.

Search : scan with narrow band, narrow interest. This is something like SETI project. Scan all stars and search for extra terrestrial intelligence. We know SETI provides screen saver and uses huge number of CPU all over the world.

Review : scan with broad band, broad interest. This is something like gazing stars in the sky. We see lights of stars, and also pattern of distribution : a constellation.

So Umesao’s words mean that we should scan the dock with broad interest. Enjoy finding pattern. When we find a new discovery, write it on a new cards. And this is a ‘productivity’.

Instead of stop searching, I introduce an idea of “holy cards”.

This idea is originally from Noguchi filing system (1993). Any reusable files are called “神様ファイル (holy files)” and separated from chronological order. Address, recipe, book info are belongs to this holy files.

I prepare a partition in the dock for the holy cards. I personally call this place as “Sanctuary”. This is out-of-law from the PoIC rules. In this place, we can classify and search index cards as we want.

In the PoIC, a key is how to search. The search become more difficult with system grows because of it’s analog nature. Also, we adopt simple chronological order. Only search criteria here is our own time axis, that is history and memory.

However, in my experience, the search is not frequent at all because,

1) I concentrate to extract new ideas.
2) If I completely forget about a topic in past, I don’t need search at all. In other words, no way to search what I completely forget.
3) If I remember some part of a topic in past, I write it on a new card, rather than search the card in past. This is much faster.
4) Search area is quite limited, say 3 days to a week past, because of my memory. So (2) works for older than a week.

Anyway, I must say only few time I need to scan all card in a dock since I use the PoIC.

At certain point, a time when cards about a project enough accumulate, we pick up all cards to organize Task Force for the Project. This time we search all topics about the project. That is, the “search” process comes very last point of the project. Same is true for a “classification”.

At the (3), we will have some similar cards resemble each other. But they have slightly different contents. It is good to express one topic in different ways. It is a measure of how we understand well about the topic.

In addition, it is frequently happen for me, but while searching a card, I already forget what I’ve thinking. When I find the card, I already lost the idea. It seems searching card is most of time harmful, especially for capturing idea.

Originally uploaded by Akiyo Kano.

Akiyo Kano shows how she modified a Moleskine Memo Pocket into icPod.

She use Japanese colored paper (千代紙) for decoration. She also use ribbon for side edge of the accordion. This is good not only for decoration, but also for protection.

とてもきれい！ :)

# 2007.02.16 : Fixed link for photo set