Confessions of an Office Supply Junky - Episode 5: The Hipster PDA - YouTube<br /> by [[Joe Van Cleave]] video circa 2016<br /> accessed on 2025-09-15T12:38:20

Joe Van Cleave had a pencil box with index cards and a pen with which he used to keep a "Random Access Journaling System, using index cards and topical filing by subject" (dated March 2004). He was using 4 x 6" index cards.

He had a 3 x 5" hipster PDA based on Merlin Mann's idea that had thin metal covers with index cards and a book ring to hold it all together. He used colored cards to create section dividers in his hipster PDA.

He mentions the overlap of the hipster PDA with David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) movement.

JVC started using a hipster PDA in February 2007

He archived them in chronological order.

Grass roots use of the hipster PDA nudged larger stationers like Oxford to make vertical lined index cards specifically for hipster PDAs.

JVC also shows a storyboard done on index cards with two book rings as binding.

Renaissance Art has a 3x5" index card holder made out of leather as a wallet.

JVC was also using a bulldog clip to hold together his index cards.

https://warrenpaper.com/product/1003/

I really don't like this David Allen quote which is often seen in these spaces. It's usually used by people who haven't spent any time training their memory.

I'll give BD the benefit of the doubt that the entirety of this PKM paragraph is sidelining the "PKM scene" altogether.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/156407303710

Pocket note card portion of the Memindex System

According to each of the printed cards, the system was patented on 1904-12-06.

Zettelkasten is a method for creating "slow productivity" against a sea of information overload

Some of the framing goes back to using the card index as a means of overcoming the eternal problem of "information overload" [see A. Blair, Yale University Press, 2010]. I ran into an example the other day in David Blight's DeVane Lectures at Yale in which he simultaneously shrugged at the problem while talking about (perhaps unknown to him) the actual remedy: https://boffosocko.com/2024/09/16/paul-conkins-zettelkasten-advice/

It's also seen in Luhmann claiming he only worked on things he found easy/fun. The secret is that while you're doing this, your zettelkasten is functioning as a pawl against the ratchet of ideas so that as you proceed, you don't lose your place in your train of thought (folgezettel) even if it's months since you thought of something last. This allows you to always be building something of interest to you even (especially) if the pace is slow and you don't know where you're going as you proceed. It's definitely a form of advanced productivity, but not in the sort of "give-me-results-right-now" way that most have come to expect in a post-Industrial Revolution world. This distinction is what is usually lost on those coming from a productivity first perspective and causes friction because it's not the sort of productivity they've come to expect.

In reply to writingslowly and Bob Doto at https://discord.com/channels/992400632390615070/992400632776507447/1285175583877103749<br /> Conversation/context not for direct attribution

highlights link to this video: https://youtu.be/sz4YqwH_6D0

via https://www.reddit.com/r/gtd/comments/1b984sc/fellow_gtders_which_tools_do_you_use_to_track/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/aki_oda/albums/72157606070587225/

Another writer in Japan using the Pile of Index Cards method with visualizations in Flickr.

The creator of the Today System was definitely aware of GTD, Bullet Journal and likely other methods, and intended his to be an added piece on top of them.

Example of someone suggesting the migration of uncompleted tasks from one day to another in 1998.

reply to verita-servus at https://www.reddit.com/r/gtd/comments/15pfz8o/comment/k7iqjwa/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Last year I had a Field Notes card with the year's calendar on it that I kept with my daily cards when necessary. (I think it came included with their "Ignition" edition.) Many companies give these sorts of calendars away as PR.

This year I used a Mizushima Perpetual Calendar Stamp to create my own custom card with the coming years' dates. (I also often use this stamp for individual months on other types of cards.) I'm sure you could also find something online to print out or draw your own if you wish. These index card specific templates might give one ideas: https://www.calendarsquick.com/printables/free.html.

Pretty much any spread one might make in a bullet journal can be recreated in index cards. Some of the biggest full page spreads or double page spreads are still doable, they may just need to be shrunk a bit or broken up. I've also printed things onto larger 8x12" card stock and then folded them down to 4x6" before to use as either larger notes or mini-folders as necessary. Usually I do this for holding the month's receipts.

This set of calendar cards from Present & Correct which are done in letterpress looked nice if you wanted to go more to the luxe side as well as to the larger side.

Given the sticker market for Hobonichi and other similar planners, you could also buy some custom decorative stickers which you could attach to cards as well. And there's nothing keeping you from just writing it all out by hand if you wish.

Options abound.

via u/MortenRovikGTD at https://www.reddit.com/r/gtd/comments/n6g3d2/comment/iv6s0eh/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Capture wallet was a site he ran with his wife as a side project for several years from 2019 to late 2022.

https://capturewallet.com/

Previously a licensed franchise partner of David Allen Company in Norway.

https://web.archive.org/web/20211223144733/https://capturewallet.com/