Idexa Cards

A few days ago, Paloma Kop shared the really neat Are.na Cards they created to get a better handle on the many creative ideas, directions, projects and so on floating around their head. The end product was neat, and this part of the rationalle:

If you have a brain that even remotely resembles mine, you can probably relate to the situation of having more ideas for projects and things to do than you actually have time to do within a reasonable planning period. This can make me feel a bit paralyzed when trying to decide what to do next, because anything I choose also means choosing not to do a lot of other things.

Oh, so very much this. The scope (not vague areas of interest, but much broader than a task) felt exactly right for me. I’ve been stumbling around looking for a way to organize (except not really “organize”, more like “get my head/hands around”) my own projects at that level and not finding anything satisfying. The tactile nature of the cards, in particular, seemed very promising. I really wanted to try a version of this.

Except I have no experience with are.na (other than having seen a lot of neat things there). Kop’s description of how they use it for this is compelling, but the idea of starting out by entering a bunch of stuff into an unfamiliar web UI, before I could really start refining, prioritizing, and the like, felt a bit intimidating. And looking at the source Kop shared, I could feel myself being pulled down rabbit holes, rather than just letting things be. I still think that might be a sensible place for me to end up, but it wasn’t the right starting point. And I really wanted to play with something here.

So this morning I started off by making a simple bullet list of projects/ideas/whatever at roughly this level, with a tag (or two or three) for each, in my pocket notebook. Once I got the granularity at the level that felt right, there were even more things on the list than I’d realized, and I keep remembering more. Just making this simple list has felt a bit overwhelming in the past, but something about having Kop’s model of an endpoint and a bit of New Year’s optimism made it feel a lot more manageable. I then took some largeish (3.5" x 6"?) index cards, cut them in half, and dedicated each to one project. I put a short name on top, a 1-3 sentence description on most of the face, and the tags at the bottom. On the back of several I put a few important open questions or key pointers on direction for the project.

The results:

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I’m only on Day 0 of having these so it’s too early to tell if the artifacts themselves will prove actually useful, but the process of making them definitely was (not to mention fun). I like that I can stick several in the outside pocket of my wallet and carry blank index cards in my bag if I need more on the fly. It certainly feels promising.

The name is a mediocre pun from having written “index idea cards” and then the regexp “in?de(x|a)” for the first two words. I’m not in love with it but it works for now.

Much thanks to Paloma Kop for sharing the process and output; they have many other interesting things on their site.