Ah, the lowly index card. So basic, so common, so cheap — so useful. Index cards are one of the most versatile parts of the productive person’s toolkit — small enough to travel anywhere, cheap enough to keep hundreds or even thousands on hand at all times, and basic enough that one never hesitates to…

A long-time standby in the productivity realm, a tickler file is a reminder system intended to act as an adjunct to your regular calendaring and scheduling system. Although there are several different kinds of tickler file, the most well-known (thanks largely to David Allen’s Getting Things Done and Merlin Mann’s…