Classification become bottle-neck in writting
I have two dock system, in my room for my life and my office for my work. I have been keeping simple chronological order for life indexcard system. For work indexcard system, I classified inxcards by project then keep in chronological order. I believed classification increase productivity especially for work.
After several months later, the difference of the two system become clear. Indexcard for life increase successfully, and doesn’t for work… The only difference is classification of the indexcard. But the effect is obvious.
I found what is important for writing is not convenience by classification, but keep capturing idea sequentially in simple chronological order.
November 26th, 2006 at 8:58 am
Very interesting. I’ve heard people claim that chronological order is best, but to have actually demonstrated it for yourself with a direct and simultaneous comparison must be wonderful.
I’m interested what exactly the problem was with classification. Do you mean you would hesitate to write cards because you were subconsciously worried that you wouldn’t know how to classify them?
November 27th, 2006 at 4:16 pm
>>Rick,
It depends on the situation. In library, classification is better. Because many people share same system. For personal use, however, chronological order is better. Because classification needs much effort.
I have two dock system, one in my room and another in my office. I tried chronological order for dock@room, and classification for dock@office, as experiment. The result was obvious. several month later, system of dock@office dead. So I decided to reorganize it in chronological order.
ref. : Reorganization of indexcards @ Flickr
July 5th, 2007 at 5:13 am
Hawk,
How has the dock@work been coming along since you switched to chronological order? I have a lot of projects to track in parallel at work. I am trying to decide if I can work in chronological dock, but wonder if I will lose the 50,000 ft view of each project. I also wonder if I will lose tasks that have been mixed into dock. Any advice?
Thanks,
vdrblack
July 5th, 2007 at 8:28 am
>>vdrblack
Thanks for your comment.
Dock@work works good as well as dock@home. There is slightly different character though. In case of “work”, I think it is possible to classify by project much easier than “life”. So if projects are completely pararell, we can separate index cards by projects.
Here is another idea. I have been thinking an intermediate of chronological order and classification for index cards system. That is, accumulate index cards in chronological order first, and then a week later, for example, classify by projects. Time first, then space next. The classification won’t be bottle neck at first stage of idea/information capturing. It takes benefit of both chrono- and classification. I actually use this technique in my filing system, but not yet in index cards system.
If you don’t want to lose tasks you have, you can rise index cards like this picture. It is efficient for open-loop GTD cards, too. :)