The Incredible Creative Power of the Index Card

An old-school tool that rivals its digital competitors

Photo: Martin Barraud/Getty Images

It's just a blank little piece of paper measuring a few inches across. And yet, it may be one of the most powerful mediums ever created.

I'm talking about the index card. 4-by-6. 3-by-5. Ruled. Blank. Colored. You're probably familiar with the variations.

As unassuming as index cards are, they've managed to produce:

• the brilliant novels of Nabokov.
• the provocative documentaries of Erin Lee Carr.
• the powerful books of the strategist Robert Greene.
• the speeches of Ronald Reagan, that ended the Cold War.
• the research and theories of German sociologist Niklas Luhmann.
• the classifying and naming of all organisms and minerals by Carl Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy.
• the Oscar-winning movies of screenwriter Dustin Lance Black.

They've also been instrumental to me. In the course of my career as a writer and researcher, I've written on at least 10,000 4-by-6 inch notecards (not including daily to-do lists, which I also use them for). They've now served as the backbones for 10 books, and close to a million words of published prose.