---
created_at: '2017-03-14T15:11:17.000Z'
title: Index cards are pretty cool (2009)
url: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/may/09/health-and-wellbeing
author: Tomte
points: 65
story_text: 
comment_text: 
num_comments: 28
story_id: 
story_title: 
story_url: 
parent_id: 
created_at_i: 1489504277
_tags:
- story
- author_Tomte
- story_13868090
objectID: '13868090'

---
A few sentences into this week's column, I'm going to reveal that I am
obsessed with index cards, and you're probably going to mock me. That's
OK; I can cope. But first let me just remind you of the company I'm in.
Vladimir Nabokov wrote several novels on index cards. The celebrated
nonfiction writer John McPhee has developed a whole system of research
and writing around them, and Ludwig Wittgenstein reportedly used them to
develop the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Which means that index cards
played a critical role in modern literature, journalism and philosophy.
(And, incidentally, in the French Revolution, which some say was when
they were invented: the new government used the backs of playing cards
to record details of the books held in libraries seized from private
ownership.) Impressive, no? All right. We can proceed.

I am obsessed with index cards.

A number of us, actually, suffer from this condition. For several years,
the largely blog-based movement known as "lifehacking" has embraced the
unassuming index card as an unrivalled tool for personal organisation -
a dirt-cheap, portable medium for keeping lists, taking notes,
brainstorming, memorising, organising your schedule, or leaving
reminders for yourself. You might recall the "Hipster PDA" - a
tongue-in-cheek proposed replacement for electronic organisers,
consisting of a stack of cards, a bulldog clip ... and nothing else.
(For more uses of index cards, see the blogger Dustin Wax's exhaustive
summary at[tinyurl.com/cmov4s](tinyurl.com/cmov4s). And for photos of a
truly alarming effort to organise one's entire life on tiny card
rectangles, see [tinyurl.com/cfmttq](tinyurl.com/cfmttq).)

To get theoretical for a moment, the cards fulfil two requirements of
any good information storage system. First, it's easy to put stuff in:
I'm far less likely to record a thought if I have to fiddle with a
handheld device. Second, it's easy to manipulate stuff once it's in. You
can't, by contrast, endlessly rearrange the pages of a notebook in order
to prioritise tasks, structure a piece of writing, discard things you no
longer need, etc.

But might the power of index cards be greater still - mysterious,
almost? I've wondered this ever since reading Robert Pirsig's novel
Lila, in which the lead character is a philosopher who lives on a boat,
writing his magnum opus on thousands of cards. As each thought occurs,
he records it. Then, for hours, he rearranges the cards, grouping
similar ideas together until a structure begins to emerge, seemingly
independent of his will. This kind of "emergent order" is a hallmark of
the web - think Wikipedia - but it's somehow spookier when it happens on
paper, and involves only one human.

The German sociologist Niklas Luhmann did something similar in reality,
creating what he called his "secondary memory": an index-card system
that held, eventually, a lifetime of research notes. He came to think of
it not as an archive but as a collaborator: as in Lila, an order emerged
from the bottom up, and when he followed cross-references through the
system, he'd discover connections that took him by surprise. Since being
able to surprise someone is a characteristic of true communication,
Luhmann argued "that there was actually communication going on between
himself and his partner", writes the blogger at
takingnotenow.blogspot.com. Personally, I don't talk to my index cards.
But maybe it's only a matter of time.

• [oliver.burkeman@theguardian.com](oliver.burkeman@theguardian.com)
