The Twenty

Further to last night's post, I've finally got a handle on what kind of form I want my note-taking-and-linking method to take: pictured the bare bones of a system, which I've nicknamed 'The Twenty'. The core of it all is the little homemade ring binder of folded three-by-five record cards, which each take a single, short note: a reference to some external idea or resource, for instance a book reference. Each note is given a unique ID number and a title, and each can be linked to other cards and ideas by adding their unique IDs to the card. So far, so Zettelkasten, mentioned several times before in these pages, for example September 23rd. 2020. The comments and responses to the post reflect the ongoing process of my 'formalising' a methodology for my researches and writing, as much as the post itself.

The starting point for a note entry can be something written on the desk pad, which can remain there until I feel everything has been dealt with, including day-to-day stuff, such as ordering stationery items, etc. However, this is where a lot of references will start out, as it's readily to hand by my keyboard and mouse. I can triage out ideas for The Twenty from there, or I can create notes and cross-references directly in the mini-binder, which is deliberately pocket-sized and allows you to lay a record card flat on the table for writing on: I field-tested this in the pub yesterday and it works perfectly and is easy to carry around. Twenty folded cards seems a decently sufficient number to have to hand, and is only twenty millimetres thick, making it very manageable. When each - numbered - binder is completed, it will be filed in stacks of twenty in a suitable container. I figure twenty boxes would make a convenient 'stack', and twenty stacks would make a tidy-sized 'library' of notes: a potential for storing 160,000 notes in a convenient hierarchy of four levels. The apparently arbitrary nature of this architecture is of course, misleading, as it is based on the duodecimal system - like our pre-decimal monetary system, which is inherently superior and intrinsically human in scale and scope.

I think maybe I should have discovered blogging and developed this note-taking method long before I did, but there you go: life isn't as linear as it might first appear, and you're never too old to learn or re-invent yourself [which I've done many times over the decades], as I've discovered writing this thing over the past four and a half years. One thousand-six-hundred-and-eighty-five posts later, equating to close on a million words, thus far. If I'd tried to visualise that when I started out, I would have packed the whole thing in immediately. Yesterday, a writer , speaking on Radio Four - I can't remember who it was or even who it was they were quoting - said that the key to writing is to treat your daily output as just 'something that has to be done', much like the washing up. And so it has transpired for me, and I think I'm almost ready to try something in a longer form than these dailies, bearing all of this in mind. As always, I'll keep you posted.