3x5 index cards

a method of farming autistic rumination

theory

• neuropsychology
  • default mode network
  • neuroplasticity
  • autistic rumination
    • our superpower
    • our curse

• productivity

• list making in general

• why 3x5s in specific
  • fully offline
  • built-in limits on pedantry
  • visual-spatial memory
  • no limits on formatting, layouts, or sorting

technique

• card choice
  • brightly colored, random sort

• pen choice

• dedicated rumination space
  • easy for stoners
  • windy? pretty rocks

• discard is critical
  • grounding = reducing potential energy to zero
  • frequent recopies and resorts
  • tidy lists feel better
  • often better to write an idea on the wrong card than lose the thought
  • wad up and throw old cards

• card layout
  • unlined side
  • title on side vs on top
  • line overflow
  • overflow to back side

• lists (usual case)
  • hyphen lists or naked lists
  • double-ended lists
  • stars on important things
  • dots for units of work
  • scribble out for reasons of
    • move to new list
    • typos
    • other
  • different styles of crossing out are prolly not useful
  • loose topics
    • recopy when too much scribble on list
    • splits & resorts
  • list density
    • leave room for sublists or loose sort = okay
    • divider lines = usually don’t

• stack layout
  • multiple cards = a stack
  • stacks go deep
  • layouts go wide

• state collapse
  • driven by having two homes
  • goal is one single stack of all cards

• grounding stubborn cards
  • write a digital document, file it somewhere
  • box of ideas

specifics

2025-09-01, full restack

• 8b
  1. generic — 11
  2. fox — 2
  3. money — 3
  4. facing — 4
• rails
  5. metastack — 2
  6. ground — 2
• not nows
  7. upstairs — 2
  8. deep upstairs — 2
  9. worldbuilding — 6
• entities
  10. truck — 1
  11. mom — 1
  12. adobe — 1
• todo lists
  13. online — 1
  14. todayish — 1
  15. secondary todayish — 1

• missing cards — 1
• found laying around after — 3