By Sheldon Greaves

One of the gifts of my age is that I have seen a remarkable period of transition. Several transitions, actually, most of which have to do with technology. I recall, for instance, that when I took high school chemistry, we had to have either a slide rule or an electronic calculator. The rich kids had calculators. My trusty slide rule (which I still have) came from a garage sale. Another transition was that replacement of the index card file by the computer database. I remember when we arrived in the Bay Area for post-graduate studies, the Stanford Library had a magnificent card catalog. Gradually, it was replaced by computer terminals.

However, every now and then it’s even more interesting to see an old technology make a comeback, and I am pleased to report that this is happening with the humble index card. There are a couple of recent articles on “The Incredible Creative Power of the Index Card” and “The Notecard System: The Key For Remembering, Organizing And Using Everything You Read“, both by Ryan Holiday. In truth, the index card never really went away. It’s been around in the form of Hawk Sugano’s Piles of Index Cards (PoIC), the Hipster PDA, and the damn near inscrutable Zettlekasten technique which, if anyone out there can explain the indexing system, please let me know.

Old School

I’m told that there are still a few school teachers who teach students how to use note cards for writing a paper, but there was a time when every scholar had some kind of personal index card file to keep track of their research. A former professor of mine was notorious for this; he was in his late 70’s when I knew him. One day I peeked into his office and saw that the bookshelves had almost no books on them. They were filled with old shoeboxes full of index cards, representing decades of scholarship.

Once he left one of his boxes of cards unattended on a library table, so some of my colleagues and I counted the number of cards in the box. I then slipped into his (unlocked) office and counted the number of shoe boxes and we did the math. The result was that he had somewhere around 15,000 cards in his office. Whenever he needed to do a paper or essay, he’d pull down a couple of boxes, and pull out the index cards for the sources he wanted to use. He’d arrange the cards on the table like some esoteric Tarot spread, map it to his outline, and start writing. It’s easy to forget that this kind of “old school” technique could be extremely productive.

It’s also the case that mobile devices and laptops have their own drawbacks, not the least of which is what they can display on a screen. There is also the very real problem of data longevity; if a hard drive failure doesn’t claim some old but valued files, changes in format and software probably will. Electronic files also a lack the deeply satisfying tactile sensation of working with the data in card form. Cards are portable; I use 3 x 5 cards partly because they fit easily in a shirt pocket. They impose limits of a healthy sort, such as one idea per card. You are required to interact with them in a way that electronic notes do not allow.

How It’s Done

I read a lot, and I am in the habit of–gently–marking my books. Ditto for articles that I find online; the really good ones get printed and read in hard copy so I can file them later. Then I go back and review the underlined parts. I copy or summarize things that still strike me as significant onto a card. The cards go into a file where I can sort them by general subject, or a project I’m working on. Every now and then I go through the cards to rearrange, cull, or add comments to cards.

This method gives me five separate exposures to a given piece of data:

1. Reading it in the book and underlining
2. Reviewing the underlined passages
3. Copying or summarizing the passage
4. Sorting and filing
5. The periodic review

Note that this does not include exposure through actually using the contents of a card in a paper or research project. I am far more likely to remember these bits of information this way than if I just stick an article in Evernote and forget about it (which I also do, frankly).

Now there is more to be said on this, and I hope to in later posts. But I’ve used index cards for a long time and consider them sort of a secret weapon because they work with my brain, not alongside it. Index cards help you internalize knowledge and create real, original thought.