A slip-box for everything you think
File every thought before it slips your mind.
Index turns scattered notes into a catalog you can actually search — cross-referenced, dated, and never lost in a folder you forgot existed.
Reading list — Q3
Borges, “The Library of Babel.” Re-read for the catalog metaphor — note the hexagonal galleries.
SEE ALSO 0042
Spaced repetition
Review at 1 day, 3 days, 7 days, 21 days. The gap is the point — recall should feel a little effortful.
SEE ALSO 0042
Why we forget
The forgetting curve drops fastest in the first 24 hours — unless the thought gets filed somewhere it can resurface.
SEE ALSO 0117, 0203
The method
Cross-references, not folders.
Folders force a single home for every thought. A card catalog doesn’t — the same idea gets filed once and referenced everywhere it’s relevant. Type SEE ALSO and a card number, and Index links the two cards in both directions, permanently.
A note filed in 2019 still surfaces in 2026, the moment something you’re writing now points back to it.
On card 0042 — “Why we forget”
SEE ALSO 0203 — reading list, Q3
Index quietly adds the reverse reference
The cabinet
Four drawers, one cabinet.
Get a thought onto a card in under five seconds, from wherever you are.
Add a SEE ALSO line and Index draws the connection both ways.
Search by subject, by date, or by whatever you half-remember.
Nothing expires. Old cards stay exactly where you filed them.
Circulation desk
Get your card.
Reader's Card
FreeFor anyone starting their first catalog.
- —Unlimited cards
- —Cross-references between cards
- —Search by subject or date
Researcher's Card
$8/moFor people who live in their notes.
- —Everything in Reader's
- —Full-text search across every drawer
- —Card history, every revision kept
- —Export the whole catalog, anytime