index cards

Why index cards?

• They’re like little pensieves: thoughts I might mull over for a long time, crystallized to fit on an index card (something I can look over quickly), so I don’t have to retrace my steps.
• An idea is something that fits on an index card but encompasses a lot more when you think about it.
• For things I commonly think about, it’s inefficient to grope for a way to express it every time it comes up - an index card is like an elevator pitch.
• Our ability to conceptify, including building larger concepts out of smaller ones, is a key to our intelligence.

Other people’s thoughts, organized in a similar way:

• Trefethen’s index cards
  • See some online at http://trefethen.net/
  • Maxims: http://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/trefethen/maxims.html
• Zeilberger’s opinions http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/OPINIONS.html

See also Bite-sized writing for powerful thinking and Forget your index cards.