How to Make a Complete Map of Every Thought you Think | Page 9

Include whatever you want. I also have a date marker at the top of the page, for the Chrono archives. Whatever you want.
DO NOT PUT THOUGHT NUMBERS on the Pan-Subject Speeds page though. Bad idea. The purpose of the Pan-Subj speeds is to be a TEMPORARY placeholder for ideas.
So what are these four things:
Transcription Checkoff: You check the box after you have moved the idea OUT to where it needs to go. Don't check it when you first put the thought in.
Subject: This will tell what subject the thought will go into. Remember: The subjects are the big things divided by the tab delimiters that have their whole own infrastructure on their own, that I will describe later.
Hint: Now, this is a quick 1-2 word, maybe 3 word, description of how this thought fits into things.
Something I learned late, but that is very important, and very essential to this whole process, is that:
WHEN A NEW THOUGHT APPEARS IT DOESN'T DO SO IN A VACUUM IT DOES SO IN A CONTEXT.
Words to the wise.
So the "hint" describes the context. This is VERY IMPORTANT!
The context is fresh in your mind when you get the thought! It would take a while to recognize the thought, and then identify the context, if you didn't.
I used to try to think of every context a thought could fit in, and then try to place it in as many places as I could. WHILE THIS IS THE STRATEGY TO PERSUE WHEN USING A COMPUTER SYSTEM (see http://speakeasy.org/~lion/weird.html to see an example of this), this is NOT the strategy to persue in the paper system..!
Besides, the thought is MOST useful in the ORIGINAL context, 95% of the time.
And your hint- that's going to be USED. In some respects, it's EVEN MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE THOUGHT ITSELF! Because, as you will see if you do this for a while, it is STRUCTURE and INTEGRATION that is important- the actual contents of the thoughts are far less meaningful. Once you have the structure in front of you, the content because almost obvious..! We'll use that fact in a bit, as we shorten titles to just Speed#'s. Don't worry about that now, though.
And then there's the content of the thought itself.
Now, say you're in a hurry- right? You just want to jot down a thought. You're running medical records, and you can't carry your carry-binder with you as you do so. Hey, there are limitations in life. But you were good, and folded up a pan-subj speeds with you to carry around. You unfold it, and write down the content of the thought, greatly abbreviated, into an open "content" slot.
Do you have to fill in the hint as well? And the subject?
NO!
Just wait for break. In break, you can flesh out the content if you like, and you can also fill in the subject and the hint. It won't be hard. Just don't wait a whole day to get to it- do it SOON.
Now focus your thoughts on the very next work step, because you want to STOP thinking ASAP.
Note that the pan-subj speeds paper is FAR better than a blank piece of paper, because it provides order and space to fill in. Believe me: When you start transcribing off the pan-subject speeds to the speed pages, you'll understand how useful this is.
NEXT:
NOTES COLLECTED IN YOUR CARRY-ABOUT BINDER
Your carry-about binder will be YOUR BEST FRIEND.
That's right: You are going to carry this EVERY PLACE THAT YOU CAN. Going to the movies? Riding the bus?
Wherever you go, your carry-about binder is going with you.
Thus you will want to be very particular, even religious, about your carry-about binder.
(Note: As mentioned, there will be times where you will be ripped apart from your carry-about binder by force of circumstance. If you can, bring a pan-subject speed with you. Always keep your carry-about well stocked with pan-subj speeds so that when you depart, you can carry a catch away with you.)
A "Catch": "Catch" is a word I use to describe any device that is used to keep thoughts as they come.
There are two basic types of thinking: Intentional and Incidental. Intentional is you sitting down, thinking some issue out. You'll be doing that, mostly amidst POI's ("Point-of-Interest Pages"). But most of your thoughts will come while you are out-and-about. So you'll have to catch them. There are various traps, called "catches", that do this. The speed lists are the first good line of defence. You have some poor ones to: the aforementioned napkins and fortune cookie slips and envelopes, and blank pages. You also have the peg's ("Tie Noah Ma Rye Law Shoe Cow Ivy Bee Dice Tit Ton Tomb Tire Towel Dish Tack Dove Tub Nose..." - yes, I chose Dice-Tit-Ton, I know... Though Toes-Tot-Tin were harder to work with.) But those require a