Some time ago I blogged on the use of cards as a means of generating ideas, learning, and thinking. Recently I’ve come to realize that the subject needs revisiting in light of an on-again, off-again quest I’ve had in my career as a guerrilla scholar.

The problem was the use of the humble index card. As I mentioned, they are wonderful places for keeping little tidbits of information destined for a paper or the like, although there are a growing number of excellent online tools to use in preparing bibliographies and other tasks for which the index card was originally used. But I had always assumed that index cards could form the basis of a sort of personal library or database crossing all or most of my many interests. I tried to set up something along these lines on many occasions, and they always ended in failure.

What made this such an exasperating exercise is that I have seen a few people who did this, and did it well. One of my former professors was legendary for his system of keeping notes on 3×5 cards””literally hundreds of thousands of them generated over a lifetime of scholarship. Somehow he could dive into his card system and pull together the grist for an article or even a book in a way that made it look much easier than I imagine it was.

While not quite the same, there was also the massive “Chronolog” of Buckminster Fuller, essentially a documentary record of his life and thought that started with a sketchbook and a box of other records and ended up as several tons of material. The Chronolog has been described by Ronald Gross as a mental bank account from which he drew all his life.

Recently I’ve revisited this question because, well, it’s a problem that’s nagged at me. Clearly it is possible, but I’ve realized that in my considerable reading on the tools of scholarship, nobody has really explained how to use index cards apart from writing a paper. This time, however, I have discovered that others have been kicking this idea around with more success than I’ve enjoyed.

One system that I am impressed enough by to actually try using is PoIC, (Piles of Index Cards) by Hawk Sugano of Tokyo, Japan. It’s hard to explain the full reasoning behind his system, which is considerable. Someone coming to this fresh must also contend with the fact that the system’s implementation is kind of spread out over an otherwise interesting Wiki and it takes patience to piece together how to use it and why it works. Mr. Sugano’s English while good, can be a little idiomatic at times, so you have to read some things more than once. I’ve seen some puzzled and condescending comments from others who have looked at PoIC and written it off as too complex, but I suspect they get bogged down in the theory and lose sight of the fact that this really is an elegant system, must simpler than any others I’ve seen (or tried to concoct).

It helps to understand PoIC by explaining what it is not. It is not a card catalog for your notes or books, and it is not a set of categories into which you pour your thinking. There is no subject list. What PoIC is, is a collection, filtering, and organizing tool by which the information you put into it also serves to structure, and illuminate itself, and to generate new ideas. The system is dynamic and can evolve on its own. It is a personal knowledge database.

There are four kinds of cards, each marked with a simple icon:

Credit: Hawk Sugano

Record cards are for data, notes, diary entries. Discovery cards are where you put down ideas that come from you. GTD (Getting Things Done) cards are for tasks, small sub-projects, and the like. Cite cards are where you put ideas that originate with others. You can also use an alias card for books, articles, etc. with the bibliographic information plus a simple alias (Jones, 1998) to put on cite cards to show where the idea came from. These little icons help you when you’re going through your cards later on.

Each card also includes a timestamp you write in the top right corner. The format is year.month.day.time. So the timestamp for when I’m writing this is 2008.01.05:1508 (using a 24 hour time format).

Cards in chronological order. Photo: Hawk Sugano

As you think about stuff, brainstorm, do research, and so forth, put it all on cards, one thought per card. Then you file them in the order you had the ideas, which is usually but not always the order in which you wrote them. Do not under any circumstances try to categorize or classify the cards for now. This chronological arrangement can give you some insights into how your mind works, what times of the day or week seem more productive, and best of all prevent you from trying to cram your thinking into imprecise categories. That kind of classification is great for large libraries or archives, but it’s death for a personal knowledge system.

Keep this up until you’ve got about one thousand cards. Now go through them, and look for patterns. See what presents itself. You will probably find that certain ideas tend to attract a lot of cards. Group the cards that naturally fall under those ideas accordingly. As these groups build up, you may find that you have the makings of an article or other project, and it will very likely generate additional ideas. Don’t feel obligated to make a group for every card in the chronological file. If a card doesn’t fit anywhere, or there are too few to work with, return it to the chronological file. The groups of cards you create are what Sugano calls “Task Forces”, and when you build them, you can store them separately from the main “dock” where the chronological file is kept.

Dock on right keeps chronological order. Dock on left is the Task Force.. Photo: Hawk Sugano

The system has the advantages of generating ideas, the bigger the file, the more the ideas you can create just by reviewing it. It’s a great way to develop projects, explore and play with ideas. Once your file reaches a critical mass, it can almost become self-perpetuating, which is one thing my personal file systems never were.

So, does PoIC work?

It’s too soon to tell. I am still learning more about the system, and Sugano is constantly coming up with more and more thinking on this system. Remarkably, he has managed to preserve the simplicity of it. I began using this system with a couple of very minor modifications about three weeks ago so I have not yet built up the critical mass of cards, I do have maybe 150 at the moment, which is still too few. But in flipping through them I can see the seeds of some interesting ideas. Most importantly, I seem to be able to keep doing this without a great deal of fuss. I will hopefully return to this subject later once I have a better idea of how well it’s worked for me.

Before you try using this system, you should read up on it, since I have left out a lot of small details that add combine to give this system much of its usefulness.

PoIC Blog: http://pileofindexcards.org/blog/

PoIC Wiki: http://pileofindexcards.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page