The summary is an arbitrarily deep tree/list of nodes. The notation for index card headings is similar to the way we typically do outlines (1, 1/1, 1/1a, corresponding to the typical 1, 1.1, 1.1.a, etc.). Searching was easy as you could find cards grouped by the first index, then the second, then the third (so 1/1a is next to 1/1b, and anything that might sit between them is a child of 1/1a). So for a physical system, despite its size, it remained manageable. References to cards located in other branches allowed for an effective-cross referencing system, and could be paired with things like index (no pun intended) or topic cards which might list a bunch of related indices.
I suspect the physical limitations may have made it more manageable than an equivalent set of mind map nodes or a wiki, and the simple indexing (and consistent, never changing, once a number was assigned it was assigned) means everything is "static" once in place, but can have an arbitrary number of children to expand on it. This means no rewriting cross-references and/or indexes.
With a wiki you might be tempted to retitle (or find the perfect title) for a page, with this it's simply done. If you think of a better descriptor you can put it on a new card and include the index as the reference.
That's just two cards, one with an apple pie recipe and one with a tiny javascript snippet but you get the idea.
3-x-5 ended up being a bit of a limitation so I made the cards auto-size as you put more text on them. I thought it would be a funny interface to a hypercard like stack with javascript as the language but I didn't pursue the idea any further.
What I did end up doing was butcher it and turn it into a tool that I use daily to do my work, but it lost the index card looks.
Egged on by Luhmann, whom I read obsessively in my youth, I started a Luhmann-like hyper-text.
Been doing it for a long time now.
There are several implementations based on Luhmann's Zettelkasten, e.g.
[1, 2, 3], but I've not used those myself, so can't comment on their usefulness. My own system is just HTML, grep and a few handwritten scripts. It's extremely lightweight.
It's been spectacularly useful for me. In my experience such a system becomes more useful with time, and with effort put in for curating.
I spend maybe 2-3 hours every day with my private 'index cards'.
I guess most prolific writers in human history have been following a "write down every idea and refine it later" type system.
But it must be so much easier now, with smartphones, computers, internet etc.
Thank you for your interest. I'm afraid I have nothing in public.
The technology is near trivial, mostly scripts to generate HTML5/CSS on demand, and grep for searching. The magic comes from how I use it. Short summary.
- Write down every idea, and every insight. Write down half-baked ideas. You can later refine it.
- Don't censor yourself. (That's why I don't write a public blog.)
- When writing about some subject X, think carefully about how to link X to other pages. When making a link to another entry, read/browse the entry and let what you read give you inspiration about looking at X from another angle. This can be rather inspirational.
- Curate carefully, I spend maybe 3-4 hours every day on your ZK. Have a long-term view: this is to be used your whole life. To longer you do it, the more useful it will become.
- Be clear what you want from this system.
- The whole system wasn't useful for the first couple years. Why? Because I could still remember what I had written. That changed after about a decade.
That's very interesting. Do you use it for ideas exclusively, or "personal logging"/journaling too?. I've found a program called Connected Text[0], which bills itself as a "personal wiki", and. I'm also looking at refining my use of OneNote Desktop which I've been using for years, and it has a [[link]] feature.
I used to consume stacks of them. Schematics, notes, CD catalogue, address book. It was by far the easiest format to keep structured data in paper form. I still miss them, but searching files is much quicker and database tables have a power all their own.
For whatever reason, whenever I need to work out a problem on paper quickly, I find myself reaching for a post-it note or index card instead of my notebook. I'm not sure why I prefer the smaller format for scratch work.
I suspect there's an important psychological factor in the idea that the post its or cards are disposable while the paper in the notebook is bound in.
I had to work to learn to use my lab notebook for this kind of thing. In school I only recorded lab setup and results. Once I got a "real job" I realized (well it was sternly told to me) that even random calculations and stupid incomplete ideas could be very important to my employer at some point in the future if something related later came out. This included crossing things out in a way that was still legible.
When we'd sign each other's notebook pages nobody ever commented on the half-assed stuff in my notebook and I saw it in others' too.
> Once I got a "real job" I realized (well it was sternly told to me) that even random calculations and stupid incomplete ideas could be very important to my employer at some point in the future if something related later came out.
I got this lecture too, but (unfortunately?) all that really changed was that my post-it notes were stapled into my notebook.
It does seem like the best solution, in a way. But the higher up people still seem to think it's incorrect and ugly. It's definitely ugly, but my handwriting is completely illegible anyway, so no fixing that.
I think you are as well but it does mean the person signing has to include a signature that spans both the post-it and the book's paper to show that the post-it wasn't put in later. Also it raises questions as to what is not getting recorded (which is absurd since of course you could simply use a notepad and hand copy in what you want, but this is human nature and suspicion, we're talking about).
I understand the US Secret Service has analyzed lab notebooks in some major disputes.
(To the best of my knowledge nobody has ever looked at my notebooks after I was done with them).
Hmm... you could paint a wall with magnetic whiteboard paint, and then get one of those packs of 100 magnetic whiteboard cards - write on the wall if you want, and then write on the cards too - erase the cards if you want, or just lift them off and move them around... I might do that.
For several years, I used index cards extensively to track my to-do list and capture notes on the go, inspired by Merlin Mann's "Hipster PDA"[0].
The flaw in my system turned out to be that there was just no convenient way to carry the cards around in my jeans pocket. They always wound up getting bent or wrinkled, and I couldn't find a way to keep the cards together that was both pocket-friendly (a binder clip isn't; it pokes and scratches) and quick-releasing (undoing e.g. a rubber band is just too much work for a quick note).
If anyone's still using a hipster PDA I'd be curious to hear what your physical system looks like and how you carry it with you.
I used it for a week and found it cumbersome, but the binder clip / bulldog clip has lived on (and strong) as my new wallet. Just clip together the 1/2 dozen cards I use regularly. Slim profile compared to regular wallets.
I still use a 'hipsterPDA' type system for notes on the go and don't find the binder clips to be a hassle (I use small ones?) and the wrinkled and bent state the cards always get into I just look at as 'patina', which I find comforting - gives me the sense that they are being used.
Not to mention the cards have a short life span: I end up capturing what I need digitally and then recycle the card.
I put a Levenger Pocket Briefcase[0] on my Christmas wish list many years ago, and I still carry it around today. As a bonus I always get to show off how big my wallet is compared to everyone else's wallets.
If you like organizing your thoughts in index cards, consider checking out Gignko App (created by friend to write his physics PhD): https://gingkoapp.com/
30 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 88.6 ms ] threadIt's really interesting to see early solutions to things we take for granted with modern technology.
[0] https://www.ft.com/content/0de32666-b9fd-11dd-8c07-0000779fd... (Access it via Google to get past the paywall.)
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13852785
http://takingnotenow.blogspot.com/2007/12/luhmanns-zettelkas... from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13851727 is accessible and describes the gist of the system.
The summary is an arbitrarily deep tree/list of nodes. The notation for index card headings is similar to the way we typically do outlines (1, 1/1, 1/1a, corresponding to the typical 1, 1.1, 1.1.a, etc.). Searching was easy as you could find cards grouped by the first index, then the second, then the third (so 1/1a is next to 1/1b, and anything that might sit between them is a child of 1/1a). So for a physical system, despite its size, it remained manageable. References to cards located in other branches allowed for an effective-cross referencing system, and could be paired with things like index (no pun intended) or topic cards which might list a bunch of related indices.
I suspect the physical limitations may have made it more manageable than an equivalent set of mind map nodes or a wiki, and the simple indexing (and consistent, never changing, once a number was assigned it was assigned) means everything is "static" once in place, but can have an arbitrary number of children to expand on it. This means no rewriting cross-references and/or indexes.
With a wiki you might be tempted to retitle (or find the perfect title) for a page, with this it's simply done. If you think of a better descriptor you can put it on a new card and include the index as the reference.
I put some extremely un-secure features in it (ability to evaluate code on an index card) so it never was public.
Let me see what I can do.
Edit:
Ok, here you go:
https://jacquesmattheij.com/3-x-5.png
That's just two cards, one with an apple pie recipe and one with a tiny javascript snippet but you get the idea.
3-x-5 ended up being a bit of a limitation so I made the cards auto-size as you put more text on them. I thought it would be a funny interface to a hypercard like stack with javascript as the language but I didn't pursue the idea any further.
What I did end up doing was butcher it and turn it into a tool that I use daily to do my work, but it lost the index card looks.
It's been spectacularly useful for me. In my experience such a system becomes more useful with time, and with effort put in for curating. I spend maybe 2-3 hours every day with my private 'index cards'.
I guess most prolific writers in human history have been following a "write down every idea and refine it later" type system. But it must be so much easier now, with smartphones, computers, internet etc.
[1] http://zettelkasten.danielluedecke.de/en/
[2] http://www.verzetteln.de/synapsen/
[3] http://zettelkasten.de/tools/
The technology is near trivial, mostly scripts to generate HTML5/CSS on demand, and grep for searching. The magic comes from how I use it. Short summary.
- Write down every idea, and every insight. Write down half-baked ideas. You can later refine it.
- Don't censor yourself. (That's why I don't write a public blog.)
- When writing about some subject X, think carefully about how to link X to other pages. When making a link to another entry, read/browse the entry and let what you read give you inspiration about looking at X from another angle. This can be rather inspirational.
- Curate carefully, I spend maybe 3-4 hours every day on your ZK. Have a long-term view: this is to be used your whole life. To longer you do it, the more useful it will become.
- Be clear what you want from this system.
- The whole system wasn't useful for the first couple years. Why? Because I could still remember what I had written. That changed after about a decade.
[0] http://www.connectedtext.com/
I had to work to learn to use my lab notebook for this kind of thing. In school I only recorded lab setup and results. Once I got a "real job" I realized (well it was sternly told to me) that even random calculations and stupid incomplete ideas could be very important to my employer at some point in the future if something related later came out. This included crossing things out in a way that was still legible.
When we'd sign each other's notebook pages nobody ever commented on the half-assed stuff in my notebook and I saw it in others' too.
I got this lecture too, but (unfortunately?) all that really changed was that my post-it notes were stapled into my notebook.
I understand the US Secret Service has analyzed lab notebooks in some major disputes.
(To the best of my knowledge nobody has ever looked at my notebooks after I was done with them).
The flaw in my system turned out to be that there was just no convenient way to carry the cards around in my jeans pocket. They always wound up getting bent or wrinkled, and I couldn't find a way to keep the cards together that was both pocket-friendly (a binder clip isn't; it pokes and scratches) and quick-releasing (undoing e.g. a rubber band is just too much work for a quick note).
If anyone's still using a hipster PDA I'd be curious to hear what your physical system looks like and how you carry it with you.
[0] http://www.43folders.com/2004/09/03/introducing-the-hipster-...
You can get small pocket versions, and hole punches.
Younger readers might be interested in just how popular filofaxes used to be.
Losing one was like being shut out of your Gmail account today, maybe.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2002/mar/20/internet....
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/mar/23/politicalco...
Both of these are from 2002 which isn't that long ago.
Not to mention the cards have a short life span: I end up capturing what I need digitally and then recycle the card.
[0]http://www.levenger.com/FOLIOS-579/POCKET-BRIEFCASES-304/Bom...