As an advocate of David Allen's GTD practice, I constantly look for ways to improve my productivity and organize the million things around me. Inspired by Merlin Mann's hipster pda, I set out to create my very own version I called mind.Depositor.
The index cards I use have to be 4x6 in. since anything smaller will increase my writing pressure and makes me feel confined. The cover has to be leather because of the love of my Midori Traveler's Notebook. The index cards have to be secured and removed very easily, thanks to a paper clip I found last year in Japan, now I can make it happen.
To make it shot for this post, I uploaded the instructions to a Flickr set here. It is pretty easy provided you found the right tools and parts.
Instead of just inserting plain index cards for random note taking, I created a GTD template to print 4 tabs on these 4x6 index cards: Next Actions, Projects, Wait for, Someday/maybe. The tabs are highly useful to classify index cards into groups, just check the box and start writing to-dos. I also used plastic index cards from KOLO's Havana box to divide "Office Work" and "Personal" index cards (labeling done with Dymo's embossers). I wish I can find better quality index cards in cream color but it is difficult, so for now I'm settled with these ugly blue lined index cards.
The most magical part of mind.Depositor is the clips I found in Japan. They open up wide to accept index cards. When you push a stack of index cards in them, they close and hold them in place pretty tight.
How to close the cover securely I learned from Takeo Paper in Japan. They have a bookmark with elastic band, when inserted to a notebook you use the elastic band just like how you do with a Moleskine. The brilliance of this bookmark is that the elastic band is not a part of the cover, it is in the content! Thanks to Keita san who brought me these notebooks/bookmarks as a gift when I first met him last year.
Why the name mind.Depositor? I treated my Moleskine as a place to store all my notes and actions but it is just a notebook afterall. I named my Moleskine mind.deposits in numbers and now it is time to move on and make a GTD/hipster pda version to start organizing better.
Material used in this project: KOLO's Havana box plastic index cards, Midori Traveler's Notebook's name card holder, CIAK notebook's elastic band, Cavallini's paper, Jointex's paper clip, Lihit Lab's plastic folder, Dymo's embosser tapes.
Blog responses: GTDTimes, Moleskinerie, Koloist, David Allen Co., Lifehacking.jp, Geeks Guide To Productivity
