First of all, spread the pieces of paper on the desk so that you can see the whole at a glance.

The working memory is limited. (*10) So, if you think only in your head, the pieces of thought disappear more and more. In the previous sections, I recommend using the "to write all out" method. By writing out, your fragments of thought stopped to disappear.

Next, we need a mechanism to return this fragment of thought outside the brain into your brain at a low cost. One method for the purpose is to spread the pieces on the desk so that you can see the whole at a glance. (*11) After spreading them, you can return information into the brain by just moving the eye without moving your hands. (*12)

Since we move the pieces in the subsequent steps, it is better not to arrange them tightly, but to have room. On the other hand, there is a limit to the area of ​​the desk, so sometimes it is difficult to arrange with overall clearance. As a practical dropout in such a case, I put new pieces near the edge of the desk and use the center of the desk as a work area with a clear space.

Fig: Put pieces near the edge of the desk and use the center of desk as a work area

I sometimes use the floor of my home. As I am Japanese, I take off my shoes in the room. So I can use the clean floor as a workspace.

I use 50 mm × 38 mm fusen. If you use a larger 70 mm × 70 mm sticker, you may lack the area on the desk. In that case, you can use a whiteboard or a wall. If you have written out as digital data, try to use a wide monitor. The goal is that you can see the whole pieces at a glance.

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Footnote

(*10) In 1956 the psychologist George A. Miller wrote a dissertation that says the capacity of human working memory is 7 ± 2. In 2001, psychologist Nelson Cowan claimed it is four.

(*11) This method is just one specific implementation example. Since this is an example of an implementation that was born in a time when computers were not widespread, advances in information processing technology and technology to connect humans and machines are likely to yield better implementations. By one-step abstraction, what we need is a means to re-internalize externalized thought at a low cost.

(*12) In the Douglas Carl Engelbart model described in (Column) Naming the pattern, tools, and methodologies augment human working memory.

(*14) If you place 70mm square stickers on a general 1760mm x 905mm whiteboard, you can place 300 sheets of 12 sheets long and 25 sheets wide. You may be surprised, but if 50mm x 38mm sticks are lined up on a 1m square desk, you can line up 520 sheets of 26 sheets in length and 20 in width. The size of the piece has a significant effect on the density of the information.

(*15) The problem with using a vertical wall is that the movement of the gaze in the vertical direction is restricted by the effects of gravity and height of eyes. The tallest part of a typical whiteboard is 180 cm from the ground, so many people can not see it horizontally.