[NTLK] POIC (was A Day In the life of...)

Since Stefan asked earlier, here is some more background on the Pile of Index
Card method:

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

The main idea is that it is to cumbersome to tag and categorize information as
you come across it day-to-day. I can definitely relate to that, at work I used
to file emails and documents into folders, and the mental effort to decide
which is the best folder was at some point too much to actually get anything
done. The same goes for tagging, there is only a marginal improvement by being
able to chose multiple categories for information.

POIC takes the position that the only relevant main category is time, and
information can deliberately decay - it's not lost, but still available in the
older index cards, but it might not matter. If it matters, you should
re-record it again to a new index card.

The great thing about POIC is the extremely strong focus on adding information
to the system, it makes recording as simple as possible. Retrieval is a
different story, at least in the index card based system...

But how does POIC relate to the Newton? It's quite straightforward actually.
To be useful as a PDA, the Newton should anyway be always close. It is instant
on, and the Notepad is capturing notes indexed by time. As a recording device,
the Newton is unbeatable, and it has some pretty obvious advantages over the
index card method: Backups are possible, storage is almost infinite, you can
carry the whole system with you all the time, and you can search and extract
more easily.

Stefan Hassenstein wrote:
> Did you use the built-in Notepad ?

Yes, that's fully sufficient.

> Or will HyperNewt be better suited ?

It's a great app, but too much hassle what comes to POIC :)

> Do you "link" the cards together ?

Again, too much work :)

> Do you use / have hundreds / thousands of "cards" ?

Since my handwriting is really crappy, I'm unfortunately not too good at
recording all of the information as I should, so it's rather in the hundreds.

> And how is your PoIC related to Nitch ?

Right now both are unrelated, but you could use POIC as a getting-things-done
system. For me, POIC is more of an input to GTD, helping to determine what the
next action is based on earlier recorded information.

Eckhart

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