A Smart System To Process Your Paperwork
May 2, 2008 · Print This Article
As much as we want to have everything organized inside our computers, there is still a lot of real paperwork sent and given to us. What are we going to do with it?
I’ve been searching for the best way to organize my digital documents for a while now, tried different systems and found great new ways of doing so. Very interesting indeed, but what if too much attention is going to organizing our virtual documents and while inventing and tinkering our best digital file system to date, the papers, letters, presentation or lesson handouts and other printed documents pile up around the computer cluttering our desk.
During a conversation I had with a colleague he described how he organizes his paperwork using a smart and simple system. It goes like this:
Two Drawers
Take two empty drawers. Collect all the documents and pile them up in the first drawer. That’s it for now. For the coming six months, keep putting new articles in this drawer. If you want to read something during that time, take it out of the drawer, read it and then archive it somewhere else, or throw it away if you don’t think you’ll need it again.
After half a year you take the documents that are left and put them in the second drawer. During the next six months you can again just take any document you want, read it and archive it or throw it away. New articles go in the first drawer just like before.
Be Ruthless
Then, after a year, take all the documents from the second drawer and throw them away. You gave yourself a year to read them and if you didn’t, they are apparently not that interesting after all. It’s save now to say that you will not read them anymore. Try not to look at each document, be ruthless and just get rid of the whole pile at once. After that you take everything from the first drawer and put it in the second again.
What if there is something in the second drawer you really don’t want to get rid of? It’s questionable if you will ever read any of the files ending up in the second drawer in the first place, but if you discover something in there you really don’t want to get rid of, you can put it in the first drawer again. This is dangerous though. Make sure you don’t have a lot of those files circulating in your system and never do this for a second time.
Which Documents?
This system works for the papers that you have to read. It’s not for invoices and things like that, but for those handouts you get, articles someone printed for you to read, interesting magazine articles, sheets of notes you took and want to review, all those documents you have lying around. You want to read them but didn’t take the time time for it yet.
After a good amount of time we will discover that a lot of the articles that seemed important aren’t that interesting anymore. But it’s impossible to know this beforehand. So before we throw everything away, this system gives us a buffer. So when we want to review those sheets of paper with notes from an interesting conversation or inspiring brainstorm, they’re there waiting for us in the drawer. And it also prevents us from having an unnecessary amount of old paperwork lying around.
Do you use a system to organize your paperwork? Please share your thoughts and leave a comment!
Picture by dailydog
Really good idea…I like the “being ruthless”part! I’ve got things filed away for reading that are years old…and seriously, they probably are not worth reading now…so I like this system! Thanks for sharing!
I’m part of the comment challenge. I love this blog post and admire your colleage’s system for dealing with paper. I always collect handouts and make notes at presentations that I never look at again. I’ve also begun to be ruthless in how I deal with the paper I accumulate. As I start to put more of my class lessons and units on wikis I’m starting to dump the paper I have. I wonder if I could eventually get rid of the filing cabinet in my room?
I’m going to use this as inspiration to just throw away piles of articles that have been sitting around for more than a year. There is a constant flow of information, and esp for the paper articles, even if I did find something I could use, I’d be able to find it way faster online.
The other challenge I have found since I have moved most of my professional development reading to the blogosphere are the piles of trade magazines. They are going out also.
My recycle bin is going to be very full this week.
Really speaking, I hate to work with papers. Through you have a very well written article. I’m a computer guy, and love to be nature friendly as well.
That system would work great for anyone but a genealogist!
I have folders for my different family groups, and when I have to access that folder for something I will purge old junk, but most of the time I keep stuff in case, years down the road, it is a lead. I keep a lot of my electronic files in a main genealogy folder by my surname and my husband’s, and then do sub-groups for allied families. I think your system would work great for my home files though. Good idea, thanks!
[…] a follow-up on my previous post A Smart System To Process Your Paperwork I would like to take a closer look at what can be done to get rid of as much paper as possible. A […]