pizza box project stack — alexander cobleigh / cblgh.org

Pizza Box Project Stack

a pizza carton with a hole

Appreciating Ratfactor

One of the people who writes for an internet audience and whom I really enjoy reading is<br>Ratfactor. I find that Ratfactor has a generally great attitude towards things.<br>On his site he does lovely, lovely deep dives into personal projects of high<br>personal importance and is generally fantastic at putting in the effort to<br>document what he does, why he does it, and how he thinks about it. If you&rsquo;ve read<br>a massive web page documenting everything about Chuck Moore&rsquo;s Forth programming<br>language, you&rsquo;ve come across Ratfactor.

One of those projects is his paper-based project tracker, or project<br>stack. The concept is as if you smash together a Zettelkasten, the concept<br>of a stack (data structure), and a TODO tracker.

The system features one piece of paper per project task with the task you&rsquo;re<br>working on right now at the very top. Finished tasks get removed from the stack and<br>discarded, revealing the next one. I really liked his idea and wanted to try it<br>out.

Instead of Ratfactor&rsquo;s sticky paper, I used defunct business cards from a<br>startup I worked at 7 years ago. The card stock is rigid and feels pleasant to<br>handle, the back is blank and the size is just right for writing a couple of<br>sentences. My take on Ratfactor&rsquo;s system involves three stacks: one stack of<br>blanks, one stack of project tasks, and one stack for the finished tasks. The<br>finished stack I have because It&rsquo;s gratifying to see it grow and helpful to be<br>reminded of what I most recently finished.

Ratfactor went further in his idea and made a cute display of cardboard that<br>shows the first task in what looks like a little retro-arcade<br>cabinet.

First prototype

Before I went so far as to build my own display I wanted to prototype my use of<br>the project stack idea and see if I found it useful. My prototype was very<br>simple: three stacks on a piece of paper where I&rsquo;d written Done, Tasks,<br>Empties in three different areas of the paper. I attached the paper to a cardboard folder<br>so I could, somewhat precariously, move the collection of stacks around as<br>needed. This flimsy prototype worked well! In general I greatly enjoy systems that let me<br>offload things I have to keep in my head, while also being of such a variety of<br>system that I can retain complete autonomy using it and keep its use-friction<br>low; and for getting project ideas and personal task out of my head, this hit<br>the spot for me.

the first prototype was a labeled sheet of paper on a folder

One benefit of using physical pieces of paper is how effortless it is to work<br>with and change: reorganizing, splaying out all cards, quickly striking things over<br>and amending them, ad-hoc organizing a series of tasks by writing a little label in the<br>top right. When I use paper that also means I get to use my fancy inks and pens<br>to write, increasing the satisfaction of the system even more. This particular<br>paper-based system is great because of the simplicity and focus (one task only!<br>it&rsquo;s waiting for you indefinitely until you have the time!) and for how<br>gratifying it is to toss the top most task into the Done stack when I have<br>finished it.

After trying the system out for some time (weeks? months? not really sure!:) I<br>wrote a task to make a cardboard organizer. The card lay dormant<br>until one day when I had made sure to have everything necessary to execute on it<br>and felt the fresh tailwinds necessary to getting a new project under way.

Making the cardboard organizer

What I used to make my display was a set of pretty average city-life stuff: a<br>piece of cardboard (cut out of a pizza carton), a pencil, a glue gun loaded with<br>golden glitter glue, a knife with which to cut cardboard, and some clips<br>to help hold sides together.

the cardboard organizer being made

I winged the design based on the dimensions of my stacks. I put three cards in<br>the middle of the cardboard to measure out the approximate size, drew lines<br>where I wanted to cut the borders and other lines with indications of where I would cut for folds<br>and then cut the cardboard accordingly. One thing I wanted in this revised<br>organizer was for the Tasks stack to be angled such that I can easily see what<br>it reads. To do that I used a cardboard offcut and folded it into a triangle<br>which I glued to the middle of the area that would host the Task stack. Another<br>offcut I used to separate the empties stack from the other two stacks by cutting<br>a hole in the base and passing it through from the bottom.

the finished organizer without cards

I threw it together quickly once I had gotten started and have been using it<br>since! It works great! Compared to my previous version I can move it around a<br>lot easier, which helps since I often rest the organizer on the docked laptop I use for<br>working. The angled Task stack helps a lot to keep the next project in view<br>and top of mind. Pizza box...