Pile of Index Cards

Google Earth-ed Tokyo. Example of the “Raindrop“.

相転移（そうてんい、phase transition）とは、化学的、物理的に均一な物質の部分である相 (Phase) が他の形態の相へ転移することの熱力学あるいは統計力学上の概念であり、それらを発生機構とする物理現象の総称でもある。相転移の発生は特定の原因に由来せず、原子あるいは分子間の相互作用を初めとし、結晶構造や局所構造あるいは磁場や温度・エネルギー分布など、場合に応じて複数の要素が複合的に作用して発生する現象である。

PoIC マニュアルの「再生産する」の冒頭で、私は「始めの頃は単なる日記の延長だった PoIC が、この頃になると知識のデータベースとして機能するようになります。」と書いたんだけれども、この現象は「相転移」として理解できるかも。つまり、ある点を境にして、それ以前とそれ以後ではシステムの「ふるまい」がガラリと変わると。水を沸かすと、100℃に達したところで、急にぽこぽこと泡が出始めるように。どうも PoIC にも、そういう点があるらしい。

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

I found simple law in PoIC. This is about scale of Task Force v.s. its frequency. I measured scale of task force for writing index cards, blog, and wiki, and how many time I organize Task Force (=frequency, f). I found the distribution of scale is nearly 1/f. The PoIC follows power law, one of fundamental law in nature.

You may hear about Long Tail somewhere, before. According to Wikipedia, the Long Tail had been proposed to explain business model of successful Amazon.com. An 80% of “less important matter” is much more important than 20% of “important matter” in internet shopping. This is also true for success of Apple’s iTMS.

Further, the Long Tail phenomena is understood as one of the “power law” case. So the PoIC and Long Tail is connected through power law, the language of nature. PoIC follower believe “less important is more important” intuitively as we capture and accumulate all “tiny”, apparently less important ideas using fieldnote and index cards. Or maybe remind David Allen’s “great habit of collection”. Now we can say this rules-of-thumb in PoIC is right as we see in the successes of Amazon.com and iTMS. Nature rules.

Not only about the Task Force, but also a distribution of Four Cards seems follow the Long Tail. I had written this article without paying attention to the Long Tail. The dots are connected now. The number of Discovery Card dominates 81.2% of my index cards @ home. This results can be understood as “80% of less important Discovery is more important in personal productivity.” This sounds somewhat paradoxical, but true. In fact, if I don’t have a tracking system like PoIC, all tiny discovery disappeared into darkness.

In this article, I showed only two examples of the Long Tail phenomena in PoIC currently I found. I think there are more such rules in index cards productivity. Have you found such curious “Mushrooms” in your system?

I found two kind of “chronological order (CO)” is possible. I had to define the meaning of CO in PoIC carefully. O.K. Let’s see the difference of possible two CO.

One is “absolute” CO, which is along universal, public, social, or common time axis. Let’s see the example. This morning, I saw roadside tree leaves just have turn yellow (R1). This evening, my friend visit my office (R2). In absolute CO, the event occur R1, then R2. This is trivial, of course.

PoIC adopt another CO. Here is example. Before go to bed, I write diary about today. I remind about R2 first, and next R1. According to PoIC, I write and stack index cards in CO. The CO here doesn’t mean “absolute”. I write index cards as it emerge in my mind. I define it as “relative” CO, which is along time axis in individual person’s mind. Important here is time of emergence. In relative CO, the event occur R2, then R1.

The difference of these two CO is shown in figure above. Absolute CO (bottom) and Relative CO (top) is not always equal. If we try to follow the absolute CO, we have to pay huge effort. Of course, we can coincide them though. PoIC says, “Don’t do that. Follow just your own mind”. We write index cards as it emerge in our mind, that is, along relative CO. This difference seems, however, not trivial. In fact, some people seems afraid of “chronological order” because maybe they imagine that they have to follow “absolute” CO.

Relative CO is possible thanks to piece-by-piece index cards. We can sort the order in absolute CO when we really need. No way to be default as far as we follow to relative CO. As a result of PoIC’s relative CO, what we see in dock is our “stream of thought”. And we will see there is certain “time axis”.

単純に「時系列」と言っても、「実際の社会の中の時系列」と、「自分の心の中の時系列」には違いがある。思い浮かんだ順に書く、「自分の心の中の時系列」で良いんだよ、というのが PoIC。

# I added this definition on Chronological Order and Task Force section.