Pile of Index Cards � Blog Archive

Impression

“Might depend on what you need to file. I have a colleague that tried to file his emails chronologically and could never find anything. He finally started using the technique I use, which was to set up personal folders by subject names using the groups and topics I interact with most. …”

Ref. : @web, D*I*Y Planner, Comment by Star

“I’m kind of like him. I can place things on a calendar in my mind. I have an idea when I did/wrote/filed something, but not necessarily why and where. I used to try to sort my photos via subject–that lasted a month. I have thousands upon thousands of photos, both in film and on hard drives, and trying to sort them all by subject or whatnot was just too much for me, so I resorted to a chronological system. Everything is filed by date, and even has a file name, based upon date. I’m able to find just about any photo in mere minutes now, and usually seconds. …”

Ref. : @web, D*I*Y Planner, Comment by jonglass

I found an interesting discussion above in a thread at D*I*Y Planner. They discuss about sort file by subject or chronological order. Failure and success. What makes difference? Following is my analysis.

In the case of Star’s friend, the matter is “email” which is mainly send by “someone else”, brute-forcely, no matter what he want. Even if he try to manage file like email by chronological order, it will be difficult because the information is “less impressive”, and as a result, is forgettable.

In the case of jonglass, on the other hand, the matter is “photo” which is mainly taken by “himself”. We can imagine when and what situation we take photo. We take photo as a record or of something that moves our heart. Even though the information is come from outside, the motivation to take photo is comes from completely “inside”. They are “more impressive”, and therefore remains in mind.

Return to PoIC. Among Four Cards, strength of impression can be expressed as follows,

Strength of Impression : Discovery >> Record = GTD >> Reference

Discovery cards are something like “snapshot” of our mind/thought. We write them because they are impressive. The ideas are loop, loop, loop in a brain, and then come to this world as index cards. If the Discovery cards are dominant in a system, “sort-by-chronological-order” works good, because, like jonglass’s case, most of information comes from “inside”, as a result, “more impressive”. Each of us have own time-axis. Index is directly connected to our own history. In addition, our own idea right here and right now is includes own past ideas.

Now the difference between two cases above is clear. Star is talking about most right-hand-side, and jonglass is talking about most left-hand-side of the equation, respectively. Note that needs for sort-by-subject has completely opposit sign of inequality in the equation.

Jonglass says about this skill as “I suspect it’s a brain thing…” in the title of his comments. In my case, I learned the word “chronological order” in twofold : from Noguchi Yukio’s book “Cho-Seirihou” and Joan Cusack’s movie “High Fidelity“. I’m quite not sure this skill is special. Because people in flickr first manage their pictures in chronological order, and later organize “set”. In the movie “High Fidelity”, a guy stack all of his record collection (huge) in chronological order, and later organize “compilation album” for his girl friend. They don’t have index because simply they don’t need it. What is different from PoIC’s chronological order and Task Force? This is a matter of a strength of impression and whether one aware time-axis inside oneself or not.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 28th, 2007 at 7:37 pm and is filed under Reference. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Pile of Index Cards

Impression

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