24 Things You Can Do With an Index Card. While many of us are almost completely digital, and do just about everything on the web, there’s a growing movement to go back to analog.
Paper is retro, it’s portable, it’s quick and dirty, and even aesthetically appealing. And of paper systems, along with my Moleskine notebook, index cards are my favorite. They’re cheap, they come in stacks, and they’re infinitely adaptable. How can using index cards keep me organized, you ask, ever so quizzically (almost mockingly)? I’ve already got the ultimate web apps to do that?
Glad you asked. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Adopting a “Does It Really Matter?” Philosophy. As developers, we’re naturally obsessed with details, conventions, and semantics.
There are only a few professions that I know of that will take the time to avoid moderate compromises like using conditional comment hacks or failing W3C’s auto-validation services; we’re in league with stalwart saints and by-the-books building inspectors. There’s nothing wrong with that, the nature of the job requires us to be perfectionists, if for nothing else than our fear of peer criticism. And our peers are a harsh bunch – they’ll berate us for the div tag that should’ve been a block-styled h2 tag, or for creating a layout that breaks in Iceweasel 1.05.
I know this only because I do it myself and because I’ve produced work that I’m not proud to say came from the fingers typing this same article. Some take this to extremes (and again, guilty as charged). This takes up time, quite obviously. The "Does It Really Matter? " The DIRM philosophy isn’t for those of us that are just starting out. The Process. Getting Things Done. The GTD method rests on the idea of moving planned tasks and projects out of the mind by recording them externally and then breaking them into actionable work items.
This allows attention to be focused on taking action on tasks, instead of recalling them.[2] First published in 2001, a revised edition of the book was released in 2015 to reflect the changes in information technology during the preceding decade. Themes[edit] Allen first demonstrates stress reduction from the method with the following exercise, centered on a task that has an unclear outcome or whose next action is not defined.
Allen calls these sources of stress "open loops", "incompletes", or "stuff".[1]:13 He claims stress can be reduced and productivity increased by putting reminders about everything you are not working on into a trusted system external to your mind. Workflow[edit] Logic tree diagram illustrating the second and third steps (process/clarify and organize) of the five-step Getting Things Done workflow. David Allen, Getting Things Done and GTD. David Allen: Getting Things Done.