filing

Beat Your Filing Cabinet Into Shape With A Filing System Workflow

11:45PM Jason Fitzpatrick | Whether your filing system has gotten away from you or it was never really under control to begin with, you can use our handy guide to beat it back into shape. More »

The One-Box System Minimises Time Spent Filing

5:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | You dread filing. You don’t even own a file cabinet. You’re allergic to labelling. Whatever the reason, maintaining a meticulously organised file system has eluded you. Throw it all in a box. Over at the productivity blog SimpleProductivity, they offer a suggestion that—by their own admission—is heresy to devotees of organisation: Many people, otherwise competent and some even brilliant, cannot maintain a filing system. It has nothing to do with intelligence or organisation or even self-discipline. I’m convinced it’s just the way they are wired. Their suggestion? Throw everything in a box. Keep a box under your desk, near your work area, or where you sort your mail, and put everything in the box. Everything you would normally file or save for potential future use goes into the box: pay stubs, paid bills, receipts and such all piled into the box as they appear. At the end of the year, you sit down and shred everything that you won’t need in future years and then simply write the year on the box in bold print and throw it on a shelf somewhere. While this system is completely antithetical to the systems that many of us use, ot’s a by-the-year filing system could easily meet the simple filing needs of many people. It’s also an approach that—despite its potential shortcomings—is still Better than Nothing™, which is what most of us attracted to this method are likely to do. Whether you’re horrified or not, sound off in the comments. Photo by Jonbro. Filing Heresy: One Box Filing [SimpleProductivity] More »

Cut Down On Office Clutter With A Record Retention Policy

5:00AM Jason Fitzpatrick | Businesses have policies for how long records and paperwork are to be held—and you should, too. Cut down on the clutter in your office by establishing rules for handling paperwork. Over at the organizational blog Ian’s Messy Desk, Ian has several great tips on reducing office clutter. Chief among them is creating a record retention policy. Despite technological advances, there are certain files, such as personnel records and corporate documents, that you’ll need to keep for extended periods of time. To manage this process, you’ll need a record retention plan. How this policy reads will vary depending on local laws. It isn’t effective or practical to keep paperwork beyond the point where it is required by law or directly benefits you—so goodbye five-year-old cable bills. Ian’s process starts by assigning a rule and duration for each type of document in one’s “active” pile, then consolidating and organisng your archive boxes with destroy-by dates. That way, your clean-out sessions allow you to quickly and confidently shred, burn, or shoot the documents into a lower earth orbit. Photo by Marcin Wichary. Eight Ways to Keep Your Office Clutter Free [Ian's Messy Desk] More »

Table of Contents Makes Filing Easier, More Organised

7:00AM Adam Pash | Weblog Apartment Therapy describes how to create a table of contents for your file cabinets to help make your filing system cleaner and easier to use. It’s actually a very simple idea: You just print the different folder tab names of your file cabinet onto a piece of paper you can place on top of your cabinet to give you a quick overview of what’s inside. The biggest hurdle to a clear, organised paper filing system is a lack of easy access, and Apartment Therapy’s simple table of contents method attempts to remove one more boundary to easy filing. If you’re serious about fixing up your filing cabinets, check out our extreme filing cabinet makeover. How To: Create a Table of Contents for Your Files [Apartment Therapy] More »