Thanks very much again to Paul for this next instalment of his wonderful guest post series.
You can find all of the 'Filohax' posts here.
Indexing your life- 'one binder to rule them all'
If
anything is going to bring people back to Filofax and journalling in
general it's Doom scrolling...(If you don't know already, it's wasting
hours every day disappearing down digital rabbit holes)
I've
been a devil for it, and once I got diagnosed as a doom scroller (only
joking...or am I?!) I realised I needed something to fill the gap.
That's where a wonderful post by Samm Menzies got me hooked on
'Indexing',
which described keeping a master index of her Filofax
insert content to make it easy to reference any subject mentioned in any
of her binders.
What struck me as the 'killer benefit' was not having to trawl through
the individual indexes of each Filofax to find a subject that may have
been covered in a number of different binders.
Instead the dedicated master index can be your first port of call. For
example, in my section showing the letter 'c' for entry 'cafe' you can
see from the third column (which is for the location/s that the subject
is located) there are three different places that I've written about
cafes. The locations can be separate binders, sections within binders,
physical books, or online resources - it's up to you.
Structure
I decided early on to use the vintage Filofax 26 letter A-Z tabs - only
made possible by housing my index in a massive ringed Cavendish personal
(and since then expanded into two Cavendish!). If you're going to take
this seriously you will quickly realise you will need the capacity!
Each
page covers only one letter, and the beauty of ring binders (versus
bound binders) is that it allows constant expansion - which you will
need.
First
column
The first column is the subject, 'cafe' in this example (I'm getting
ahead of myself, but the little circular symbol underneath with an arrow
pointing backwards denotes that there is also 'cafe' content earlier in
the 'c' section, and guess what it means if the arrow points
forward?!).
The subject can be as practical as cafes that you have visited, or more
subjective subjects such as 'Emotions'... and everything in-between.
Second
column
The second column is where the content's short description goes. The
content here should be descriptive of the full item you are pointing
towards in the source binder. What I have come to realise from doing
this for a few years is that you are collecting data in doing this, and
once you have data,
information, facts, statistics can be used for various purposes,
including analysis, decision-making, and communication.
Third
column
The third column is the location of the item in your collection. Unlike
an index in each of your binders, the master index places all references
to a key word together, making it more efficient to retrieve information
from multiple sources.
It
also doesn't have to reference just a binder - you could reference any
book in your library or an online resource (you can see in the 'Cafe'
example the word 'Google' - there are files I only have in Google
notes!)
Fourth
column
The fourth column is for the date of the entry. As you may notice, the
entries aren't always in date order - you might fill in an item from one
location that is actually before its predecessor. Part of me is
freaked out by this, but at the end of the day this is just giving me a
staging post for easier information retrieval.
Indexing
benefits for journalers
I must admit that initially I started this project on faith that Samm
was on to something, but the real benefit of the index system became
clear to me once I started to input information into the index from my
daily journalling practice.
Have
you ever tried looking for information on a subject in your journals, but had to give up as there is too much information and you can't even
remember which year to search in? Now all I need to know is what letter
of the alphabet that subject begins with and the index gives me
everything relating to it - which ever binder it resides in and however
many dates.
Difficulties
Sharp eyed readers may have noticed the biggest problem with indexing -
it's impossible for all entries within a letter tab to be
alphabetical - it's highly unlikely that the first word that you write in
'A' section will be 'Aadvark' and the last 'Azyme'! (I've also come to
realise that you never finish an index ..)
This
is because compiling a master index is ongoing and very organic,
therefore you just have to scan through the pages until you find the
word you are looking for - which has its own pitfalls, such as when
searching for one keyword but getting distracted by another one that
catches your attention!
The only way to ensure truly alphabetised entries is to use a new
insert for every new word. It's do-able but you would end up needing a
library to house all of your master indexes! I have pondered if A.I
could take on the task - and print off, crop, and hole punch the inserts
for me!
Questions
Q. But where do you find the time to keep it up to date?
A. Where this article began - I used to find time for doom scrolling
(insert your own time wasting activity here!) so it's not that you don't
have time, you've just chosen to spend it in an unfocused way.
My
method? On a Monday I review all new content in my binders from the
week before, making choices of what I need to index and what can stay un-indexed (again it's up to you but you would be surprised what may be
interesting in 6 months time, so record everything.)
Q.
You surely don't need to reference that much information unless you're a
researcher or your biographer?!
A. I don't at the moment, but what I'm beginning to realise is that you
aren't just making a master index for the current you, you're making it
for future you too, and who knows, your descendants?
Q.
I use my smartphone for everything, and the search facility on my email
can do this better?
A. There are two answers to this very good question. The first - where
is the first email that you ever wrote, and the important information
within it? It's probably easy to find that (most probably not). But how
about that journal you kept in an online app 15 years ago that closed
down five years ago, leaving you with a link to a document that requires a
specialist piece of software to access? Or if I bring things up to date -
what happens when a ' bad online actor' (enemy state hackers) figure
out ways to permanently take down online facilities that we all imagine
existing forever? Ask British company Marks & Spencers about that
likelihood...
The second answer is simple. If you are reading this I know that you
place value in physical binders, and writing within them. A master index
becomes the 'one binder to rule them all', something that you love to
pick up and open, contribute to, that builds up over a year, a lifetime,
into a record of your life - and times. Something I'm guessing that
your descendants will thank you for...
Regrets
I'm a student of 'make a start' rather than 'make it perfect' as I know
from experience that I'll never start if I waste my enthusiasm energy on
over planning. Thus, I decided to start where I stood and move forward
with what was in front of me - an insert with the letter A on both sides,
all the way up to Z.
Next, I took the previous day's journal entry and added each keyword to
its insert - 'Cafe' to 'C' - and if the second word beginning with C
happened to be 'cyan' then after leaving an amount of space to fill in
all future mentions of the word 'cafe' (the whole two sides!) then I
would add 'Cyan'. Big mistake. This means that I have to trawl through
all of the 'C' inserts to find 'cyan' (or whichever c word I want to
look up) instead of flicking to the last insert under 'C' section.
For
anyone interested in starting their own life index - alphabetise by
first, second, and third letters if possible!
Who knows, reordering my master index might become my first retirement project 
“A good idea is not of any use if you can’t find it.”
—Logan Heftel
