This is my first “real” post on the blog since moving to my own domain. Hopefully, you are seeing this because: 1. my subscriber import worked (it was done the old-fashioned way, adding you in using a hand-built import file) and 2. my email is working (this is my first time running email that wasn’t managed by the web hosting company).
Bear with me while I get to the point
Anyway, sometime last year I came across an old wallet I had purchased many years before. At least, I think it’s a wallet. It might also be exactly for the purpose that I gave it — to carry around 3×5 cards so I could jot things down or sketch ideas when I was on the go.
At some point I stopped carrying it around with me and it got shoved in a box. When I rediscovered the joy of 3×5 cards, I came across it again while searching for blank cards.
The problem is that it’s another thing to carry around. Back when I bought it, smartphones (of a sort) were expensive luxuries; keeping this in my back pocket was a convenient and handy way to write down a recipe a co-worker shared, or sketch something I wanted to try to build, or to jot down a website I wanted to check out at home (because the job at the time didn’t include internet access). But today I carry a smartphone with me all the time. And I sort of feel like I have to.
So, while there is a side of me that is mildly mistrustful of technology and wants an analog backup, the part of me that will 100% put this thing through the wash doesn’t want another thing to carry around. I waffle between taking it everywhere and just keeping it on my desk.
But, that’s not what this post is really about. This post is about…
Keep an open digest note
Whether you carry around a few 3×5 cards, or you carry around a smartphone, one of the things that has helped me enormously is a “digest”1 note. Either a note on my phone or a card that I keep with me. It’s a catch-all. Anything goes in it. After a few days (or daily), scan through what you’ve added to the digest and file it where it needs to be. It seems many people are more prolific thinkers than I am, so daily might be better.
In the Zettelkasten world, these are called “fleeting notes” and I started out in my ZK journey by totally overthinking these. I tried timestamping and tagging everything and it caused a lot of fatigue, almost causing me to drop the method entirely! I found that I just need a bucket to stick things in. When I start a fresh card/note, I put the date on top. That at least pins the card into a range because my brain still organizes things chronologically. Process them out and start with a fresh, empty bucket.
The cool thing about the card-wallet is I have a convenient place to keep, not just the active card, but a few blank backups and some space to store “full” cards until they’re processed. If it just had a pen loop, it would be perfect … I should jot that down.
At processing, I usually make a note on the reverse for either a resolution or a destination for the idea. Blog ideas get put in the blog file, sketches get sent to a sketch/project folder (sometimes digitized by scanning or photographing). I’m sure you get the idea. Reminders or tasks get added to my phone’s calendar, since it’s better than paper at dinging at me when something is overdue. I also think a journal would work fine for this method, I just personally prefer the cards. And I also keep a digest note in my notes app on my phone.
I’ve found this to has less friction than the methods I was trying before. The real trick is to be discplined about processing. Set aside the 20 minutes or so to transfer items from the digest to their proper place. And if you know what the card-wallet thing might be, let me know.
Notes:
- This is in the sense of a compilation and not in the sense of digestion. ↩︎
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