Pile of Index Cards

I received an email from one of PoIC reader.

Hi,

I just read about your system and thank you for outlining it. I thought it was interesting that you set up your system to cover ALL aspects of life since I had recently started writing a book and unknowingly came up with a similar system (but only used it for writing the book).

My question: how often do you go through your cards to collate (bring together) your related “Discovery” cards (or even your “Record” cards - if one is tracking weight changes)?

Regards,

C. H.

Hi, C. H. Thank you for your question. Your question is about Task Force (TF). The frequency of organizing TF and the scale depends on person/occasion/situation. In my case, there are two kind of TF according to its scale.

• Medium Task Force (MTF) : The MTF is consisted by 5 - 25 index cards which is used for writing a blog contents, for example. The MTF includes just flip through dock. It is “medium” because I think writing index cards is already organizing “small” TF. Josh DiMauro uses 5×8 index cards for this kind of midium size reproduction called “Second-Draft“. The MTF index cards are returned to dock after task.
• Large Task Force (LTF) : The LTF is consisted by about 500 - 1,000 (or more) index cards. In my case, it is used for complementing PoIC wiki manual. The LTF index cards are not returned to dock after task.

Following is the results “how often I organize TF” via PoIC activity. The period is divided by organizing LTF.

• Case 1. 2006.08 - 2007.03 : In this period, I frequently organize MTF to write PoIC blog. It was main PoIC activity, since I didn’t have PoIC Wiki yet. As a resluts, I wrote 156 blog contents. At the end of this period, I organized first LTF to the complement PoIC manual (wiki). So the frequency of organizing TF in this 8 months is,

• Case 2. 2007.03 - 2007.12 : After organizing the LTF, my activity migrates to the wiki, rather than blog. I already finished basic development of PoIC until period 1. I had just kept accumulating index cards in dock, and leave them. I write 38 blog contents in this period. In 2007.12, I organized second LTF about PoIC, which includes 1,050 index cards. In this 10 months,

My analysis. The case 1 is better, because when I decide to build a house (wiki), I have already enough bricks (blog) and mortar (LTF index cards). The enough MTF helps to move on organizing LTF. At the same time, shuffling index cards, three times per week, is too much for me.

The case 2 is better, because I can concentrate to accumulate index cards without disturbance, that is shuffling cards so frequently. I can leave the system as it is. However, at the end stage of productivity, I have to make all bricks at once to build a house. It requires huge effort. It took 2 days for me to finish piling/grouping process of nearly a thousand index cards.

Our thought is nonlinear. So, it is better to leave system and don’t touch some time. Then we can see a certain pattern. I think two cases above are both extreme : Too much and too less. I still need to tune the frequency. I guess there is a “sweet spot”. Perhaps it will become “weekly review” in the GTD as a natural conclusion.

How often in your case?

Updated : 2008.01.27 14:57

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 26th, 2008 at 4:11 pm and is filed under Discovery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.