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0 pointskd5bjo6y ago0 comments

Write the topic of the note on the index line, and store them sorted. If a card connects multiple topics, pick one and make cross-reference cards that point to the topic with the actual note.

The act of filing new notes will force you to at least glance at your old ones, which can generate serendipitous mental connections. You'll also see when you have multiple cards covering the same topic, which helps to link disparate facts about the same thing together in your head.

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DailyHN6y ago

Yes, filing the notecards is essential.

Something I try to do is keep my physical notecard files small. Besides the inbox file, urgent and important notecards are the only ones I keep in a physical file.

It's surprising how fast you can go through a thousand notecards. So effective filing is a must. And for me, that means maintaining digital archives. Something that, on its own, is a whole topic for discussion. Once again, I recommend GTD by David Allen if you'd like to dive deeper and avoid reinventing the wheel.

kd5bjoOP6y ago

GTD's a wonderful system for keeping track of things you should be doing, but I find his filing system for everything else to be a bit lacking. I've supplemented it with ideas from The Card Index System¹, traditional library card catalogs, and Umberto Eco's recommendations in How to Write a Thesis. At the moment, my card index fills most of my center desk drawer. It may outgrow that soon, but I have no intention of culling it down; it's quite literally an index into my own memories, to help me remember things.

¹ https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.216804/page/n7

DailyHN6y ago

Yes, I agree that GTD isn't a one-size-fits-all solution.

David Allen, in GTD, recommends an alphabetized system. Something that I don't do because all of my reference material is digitized and easily searchable.

Search-ability is the primary reason I avoid keeping a large physical file system.

I take inspiration from multiple books written about productivity and organization. Other books that have been highly influential in my systems are:

- Principles (Dalio)

- The ONE Thing (Keller)

- Organize Tomorrow Today (Selk, Bartow)

- Productivity Planner (more of a journal than a book)

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DailyHN6y ago

Yes, filing the notecards is essential.

Something I try to do is keep my physical notecard files small. Besides the inbox file, urgent and important notecards are the only ones I keep in a physical file.

kd5bjoOP6y ago

¹ https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.216804/page/n7

DailyHN6y ago

Yes, I agree that GTD isn't a one-size-fits-all solution.

David Allen, in GTD, recommends an alphabetized system. Something that I don't do because all of my reference material is digitized and easily searchable.

Search-ability is the primary reason I avoid keeping a large physical file system.

I take inspiration from multiple books written about productivity and organization. Other books that have been highly influential in my systems are:

- Principles (Dalio)

- The ONE Thing (Keller)

- Organize Tomorrow Today (Selk, Bartow)

- Productivity Planner (more of a journal than a book)

1 more reply

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse