Proselytizing a 3 by 5 Index Card

Last night Erica and I were out shopping. She carefully looked through the selection of index cards and chose a colored stripe/ruled selection. I'm so proud of her.

Wait. I started this story at the wrong point. Let's go back to last Tuesday.

On Tuesday, my organization had its 2nd annual holiday party and it sucked: dinner and a basketball game. No "and a guest"s whatsoever. Yawn. Erica went. I spent my Tuesday evening doing what I do every Tuesday evening: sitting in a sports bar enjoying the interval between life and death. The plan was that at some point during the evening the basketball game would theoretically end and Erica would meet up with me.

As fate would have it, somewhere around the fourth quarter of the Cavs v. Hawks game Erica showed up. There we were: I and the regular Tuesday night dinner crew I know and love, and Erica and a couple of people from work. We push some tables together so we can all sit for another round or two.

I don't recall precisely what it was that caused it. I think it was Erica mentioning that she wanted to get a copy of The Dead Milkmen's "Punk Rock Girl" on MP3. It may have been when Doug mentioned that he wanted a copy of the original thrash metal version of Cub's "New York City", a song that got exponentially more famous after it was covered by They Might Be Giants. Either way, I did what I always do in that situation.

I made a note of it. Literally.

I reached into the breast pocket of my coat and extracted my Hipster PDA. You may have seen these things before. A Hipster PDA is, simply, a stack of index cards clipped together by one of those black binder clips. It costs all of two or three dollars to assemble one and has an unlimited number of uses. I go everywhere with mine.

And the guys from work look at me funny. As well they should, I suppose, whenever one of the uninitiated sees somebody writing on the wrong side of an index card. So they ask me what the strange multi-color stack of cards is. And I tell them.

"This is my Hipster PDA." I explain to them that it's a segmented to-do list of sorts that I can reorganize, color code, add to, and remove from easily and without the need for batteries or a USB cable. Folks around the table smile and nod approvingly, and I'm just happy that they are now informed about what I'm doing. Was I advertising? I didn't think so. I was just explaining the advantages of the system and essentially justifying my use of it.

Apparently, it caught on.

So now we're back to where I began: last night, and Erica picks out a pack of index cards. Whatever for? Apparently, she's decided to build her own Hipster PDA. I'm so proud of her. I'm like a parent watching his child go out and learn the ropes. I am so tempted to build one for her and walk her through the basics, but I know that I must not. I wanted so very much to say "Honey, I have like a hundred index cards I haven't even touched yet. You can use mine!" I want to give her one of my many binder clips, yet I know I can't.

You see, a Hipster PDA is far more than just a means of storing and reindexing information. Sure, paging through mine I can recall what I need to do today, who owes me money, and what the main switchboard number to Microsoft headquarters is. (I'm not even sure why I put that in there. And even more ominously, it's under the "Someday/Maybe" category. Someday, maybe, I'll call the switchboard? I need to take better notes.) A Hipster PDA is a tiny microcosm, a reflection of the life of its owner. To that end, it is most effective — some could argue it is only effective — when it is completely customized. I'll state this again for emphasis:

You cannot Get Things Dones with someone else's Hipster PDA. It must be your own, and that means building it yourself. It's like Jedi making their own lightsaber. Once you learn how a lightsaber works you can use somebody else's in a pinch, but you aren't a true Jedi Knight until you have made your own, until you have made it a part of you.

So for Erica, I'm going to be as hands-off as I can because she will make a Hipster PDA completely unique to her that serves her needs and I don't want to pollute that with my own ideas. I can point her at 43 Folders and David Allen and lifehack.org, but what she takes from those sites is entirely up to her.

Looks like my little Padawan is growing up.