Pile of Index Cards

I think human brain have a ‘filter’. It limits information going into brain.

For example, I put Afghanistan lag on a sofa in my room. The lag has a big hole on it. But in daily life, I don’t mind it at all. If I have guest, he/she may immediately notice the big hole. In this case I have a filter about the hole, and the guest doesn’t. The filter works convenient sometimes, but it filter-out something we must notice in same time.

To get rid of the filter, I started training with asking ‘why?’ for everything I see. Once I find a question, then, following to the law of mushroom, I find there are many questions around me. Most of time I can’t answer the questions immediately. Sometimes it takes a year to answer to single question. But this is not quiz show. There is no time limit. What is important is think by my own brain. For such thinking process, Pólya’s strategy is quite useful.

Removing filter is a beginning of thinking by myself. Now I feel I got different view point of the world.

If I go to mountain to pick up mushroom, for example, I can’t see anything in a forest at the beginning. But at certain time later I find a mushroom. Then I find there are many mushrooms around me.

The forest doesn’t change during the time, of cource. Just my eye used to find mushroom. I call this phenomena as ‘law of mushroom‘.

Once I start writing indexcard, I can’t stop writing sometimes. I call it ‘avalanche writing’. In this state, the contents of certain indexcard trigger another topic. In other word, it’s like a ‘chain reaction’ in chemistry. Sometimes I write an indexcard every minutes.

The trigger is alright with small thing, like an avalanche in nature. I usually start up writing indexcard of the day with diary. What time I got up, what happen on a way office, weather, health.

I found a list of self-help books in Wikipedia.

I could find David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” and Dale Carnegie’s “How to Stop Worrying and Start Living” and “How to Win Friends and Influence People” etc..

I have been using the KM2P for two month now. I had made some modification for the system.

• Order of index for a week-day is reversed. Newer is closer now.
• “Next Action” index is added to gather unfinished GTD cards. To prevent dissipation of what I must do.
• All cards are put in front of each index. To see how many cards inside each pocket.
• I use a sponge to bottom up indexcards of the day. From view point of visibility and accessibility.

The GTD card possibly have two kind of date/time stamp as its nature ; written and finished time.

In the previous version I put only ‘written’ stamp. I found only one stamp causes confusion. The finished time is more important than written time.

In version 2, I introduced two time stamps. I put written time stamp bottom-right first. And put new time stamp as finished on top-right. Then the finished GTD card is put on the date it finished in the card box.

# This is refer to comments by B. K. I appreciate it a lot. :)

Revised 2006.12.29 12 37 : According to David’s advise, this version is not used anymore.