A Pickings board is a note wearing the Pickings paper: notes and quotes on top, two baskets for cards underneath. Make one for a topic you keep returning to, and picks from anywhere in your reading have a home.

Make one

1. Hold the note button (or the New note row in the Hub) and choose Pickings as the paper. A tap takes the last paper you used; the hold is where you choose.
2. Give it a name: the topic. “Attention”, “Mysore”, “The book”. A name is what makes it findable by name later; leave it blank and it is filed under the day.
3. Write in the Notes column what you already think. Leave Quotes for what others said.

The day page can wear the paper too: Pickings sits in the wrench, so a day that turned into research can switch paper without losing its ink.

Fill it

• From All Picks, send a card onto the board. It lands in a basket.
• From the reader, select a passage and Pick straight to the board you name.
• Write beside the cards. Handwriting and cards share the page; that is the point.
• Add a page when the baskets fill. A board is a note and a note has pages.

Find it again

• By name, in the Notebook’s search.
• In the Directory under Pickings, with a count, beside All Picks by day.
• By tag: write #topic anywhere on it and it joins that tag’s thread. See Tags and links.

Use it

A board is a draft that does not know it is one yet. When it is full enough, Synthesize on the page uses everything on it as the basket, or hand a passage to Ask with the board in view. Export it as a PDF for a desk, email it to a collaborator, or publish it to your site as a research post. The cards keep their sources through every door.