Index card system to track daily, weekly, and monthly routines

This system is a mini tickler file system. But rather than tracking things through a year, this one is based on a weekly rhythm.

I use it to track my prayer schedule, and prayer requests. I’m a clergywoman, I get these requests pretty often, and I am breathtakingly forgetful. If someone asks me to pray for them I want to be able to honor my promise to them to do so. I write down prayer requests in the moment into my pocket notebook and then at the end of the day I write it on an index card and file it into this system.

And, you could certainly also use full-size folders and papers for this, as in an old-school office tickler file.

You could use this system to remind you of anything you want to repeat on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, such as:

household chore routines
workout routines
a rotating household menu (index cards for shopping lists, and for recipes could work nicely for this)
homework assignments
flashcards, memorization
keeping a prayer schedule - see “Notes” section below for more on how I personally do this

Any routines you’re using that can reasonably be written on an index card, can work with this little system.

Setting up a weeks-based index card tickler system

Ingredients:

Index cards (I personally use 4x6 inch index cards because my handwriting is big, and I’m verbose)
Index card tabs (see photos below; get the blank ones because the pre-labeled ones are set up for alphabetical or annual tickler systems, and we’re doing a weeks-based one here)
paper clips - whatever kind you like
a box or case to put your index card tickler in

Instructions:

Oh no, we have to start with a decision! So hard! Go get some coffee! We can do this! …ready?? Deep breaths. Now let’s do it:

Decide whether you want to clip your index cards before the tabs, or after the tabs; then write that decision down, so you don’t get your cards mixed up:

note on tab reads, 'tab goes first, then cards follow'

I use two cards for a daily category: I labeled one card “Today” for things that are urgent (see the picture above), and get changed frequently.

I labeled the other card “Daily” for things that I consistently want to attend to, each day.

Label seven tabs with the days of the week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. (I like a Monday start, myself, but some folks like to start with Sundays.)

Oh no, here comes another decision!

We have four cards for things we want to attend to, once a month.

For things you want to attend to on a monthly basis, do you label your tabs with “Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4?”

Or, do you go with numeric dates, and label your tabs with a date range covering roughly four weeks: “1-7,” “8-14,” “15-21,” “22-30/31?”

I prefer using numeric dates, because ambiguity needlessly costs me time. I don’t want to have to figure out whether we’re in Week 1 or Week 4 of a month when the first day of a month is on, say, a Wednesday; or we’re hitting the fifth Sunday of a month (fifth Sundays happen about four times a year).

This is why more formal filing systems use the convention of date ranges.

Here’s a mid-century office tickler file system which divides months into the first half of the month, and the second half of the month:

Here’s a schedule of readings from a lectionary cycle, note that the series of readings occurs on Sundays that fall between July 24 - 30:

And – ta da – here are the monthly frequency index card tabs I use:

Here are all the tabs, with all the cards clipped to them:

…which all fits nicely into my nifty Cat Lady ~~pencil case~~ card file box. >^..^<

Go forth, and be organized!

Notes

A little more on using this system for keeping a prayer schedule: I got the idea for this from Paul Miller’s book A Praying Life. Miller is a U.S. conservative evangelical and I am …not, but his prayer card system inspired me to create my own.

For each weekday, I pray for a certain category, and name some specific people or situations in each category. Broad prayer categories can include topics like: the workplace; home and family and friends; people in need or in crisis; the church; the natural world; the political world. The weeks of the month tabs are for things I want to pray for regularly (monthly!) but not necessarily each week. I set aside time for morning prayer and pull out the cards in the intercessory part of my prayer practice.

If it’s Tuesday and within the first seven days of the month, I would pull out the “Today,” “Daily,” “Tuesday,” and “1-7” tabs as I begin morning prayer. If I’ve already prayed for the concerns on the “1-7” tab, I can rotate that behind the others so that the “8-14” tab is next.

References

Progressive Indexing and Filing. Fifth (1950). New York, New York: Management Controls Division, Remington Rand Inc.

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (eds) (2006) Evangelical Lutheran worship. Pew ed. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress.

Miller, P.E. and Morey, A. (2017) A praying life: connecting with God in a distracting world. United States: The Navigators. << Note: Theologically, this book has a conservative U.S. Protestant evangelical stance. Miller describes his card system at the end of the book.

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Wondering how to manage your paper-based or hybrid paper-digital systems? Ask me a question.