https://web.archive.org/web/20180227130424/http://pileofindexcards.org/blog/2006/12/25/start-indexcard-provider-service/

Hawk Sugano apparently offered the Pile of Index Cards as a physical product offering by combining Correct's index card dock and Kokuyo's fieldnotes in late December 2006.

https://flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/275215540/

Fascinating commentary here

Read [[Edward Vielmetti]] in Noguchi filing system on index cards from hawkexpress

https://flickr.com/people/hawkexpress/

Hawk considered PoIC a "software" and licensed it as such. :)

https://web.archive.org/web/20170321132112/http://pileofindexcards.org/blog/

Hawk Sugano's blog Pile of Index Cards

Hawk Sugano's Pile of Index Cards method is laid out visually in his Flickr account using photos of several of his cards along with descriptions of what each is for and how they work.

These include: 0. PoIC Format/Template 1. Record Card 2. Discovery Card 3. GTD Card 4. Cite Card 5. How to link between cards

<small><cite class='h-cite via'>ᔥ <span class='p-author h-card'>Manfred Kuehn</span> in Taking note: Luhmann's Zettelkasten (<time class='dt-published'>08/06/2021 00:16:23</time>)</cite></small>

Note the use of the edge highlighted taxonomy system used on these cards:

Similar to the so called high five indexing system I ran across recently.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/albums/72157594200490122/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/189972895/in/album-72157594200490122/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/192480328/in/album-72157594200490122/

The PoIC system allows linking of cards using date/timestamps for indexing/finding. Interestingly they were all kept in chronological order rather than in idea order as in Luhmann's zettelkasten.

What are the pros/cons of this?<br /> - more searching and hunting through cards certainly is a drawback for lack of "threaded" ideas - others...

hawkexpress apparently learned this technique on the 2-channel.

(Edited 2022-10-13, 2023-12-27)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/189972899/in/album-72157594200490122/

Despite being used primarily as a productivity tool the PoIC system also included some features of personal knowledge management with "discovery cards" and "citation cards". Discovery cards were things which contained one's own ideas while the citation cards were the ideas of others and included bibliographic information. Citation cards were tagged on the 5th block as an indicator within the system.

Question: How was the information material managed? Was it separate from the date-based system? On first blush it would appear not, nor was there a subject index which would have made it more difficult for one to find data within the system.

Introduction to the Pile of Index Cards method.

These are more similar to zettelkasten and commonplacing traditions. They comprise the majority of the system.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/hawkexpress/194730263

Hawk Sugano used a Correct Indexcard Dock (C-153DF) box for some of his index card practice.

Interesting to see a passing mention of Hawk Sugano's Pile of Index Cards here in a note taking context rather than a productivity one.

This post was via Den https://www.blogger.com/profile/15319877273178044093

What are these references to Umedao and Buhmann? Quck searches don't yield much. Need to look deeper.

https://lifehacker.com/the-pile-of-index-cards-system-efficiently-organizes-ta-1599093089

LifeHacker covers the Hawk Sugano's Pile of Index Cards method, which assuredly helped promote it to the GTD and productivity crowd.

One commenter notices the similarities to Ryan Holiday's system and ostensibly links to https://thoughtcatalog.com/ryan-holiday/2013/08/how-and-why-to-keep-a-commonplace-book/

Two others snarkily reference using such a system to "keep track of books in the library [,,,] Sort them out using decimal numbers on index cards in drawers or something..." and "I need to tell my friend Dewey about this! He would run with it." Obviously they see the intellectual precursors and cousins of the method, though they haven't looked at the specifics very carefully.

One should note that this may have been one of the first systems to mix information management/personal knowledge management with an explicit Getting Things Done set up. Surely there are hints of this in the commonplace book tradition, but are there any examples that go this far?

I would echo Bob's sentiment here and would recommend you keep that material like this in a separate section or box all together.

If it helps to have an example, in 2006, Hawk Sugano showed off a version of a method you may be considering which broadly went under the title of Pile of Index Cards (or PoIC) which combined zettelkasten and productivity systems (in his case getting things done or GTD). I don't think he got much (any?!) useful affordances out of mixing the two. In fact, from what I can see looking at later iterations of his work and how he used it, it almost seems like he spent more time and energy later attempting to separate and rearrange them to get use out of the knowledge portions as distinct from the productivity portions.

I've generally seen people mixing these ideas in the digital space usually to their detriment as well—a practice I call zettelkasten overreach.