Do you have trouble finding paper documents that you've already filed away? Or find it difficult to quickly file anything in your current filing system?
A filing system work flow is the answer, says Jason Fitzpatrick in Beat Your Filing Cabinet into Shape with a Filing System Workflow (LifeHacker).
What is it? A road map for papers to follow as they navigate through your office. Now obviously, as no two offices are alike, this is a one-size-does-not-fit-all solution. But by answering the questions Jason poses in his article, you can quickly assess your filing system's organizational problems and figure out what your own filing system workflow should look like.
One of the things I really like about Jason's idea of a filng system workflow is the way he organizes it (there's that word again) into daily, monthly, quarterly and yearly tasks.
For instance, Jason Fitzpatrick suggests the daily and monthly filing system workflow tasks for a typical home office would be:
- "Daily: Empty inbox and sort mail. File or shred new documents by end of day."
- "Monthly: As new bills come in, shred old statements. Once a month take a few minutes to read over the labels in your file cabinet and determine if any files can be shifted to deep storage. January is a critical month for being merciless about what goes to deep storage, lest you start the new year with the old year's clutter."
The hard part of setting up such a filing system workflow? You guessed it; the purge. But Jason provides lists of what he calls "Candidates for Shredding" and "Candidates for Deep Storage" that are a help in deciding what should stay and what should go. So all you really have to do is gird your loins, roll up your sleeves and do it.
(One warning: things are different in the States. In Canada, business and tax records need to be kept for six years.)
The reward for your labour truly sounds sweet; once it's set up, Jason says, just "follow the workflow you've set down for yourself and the documents and files will naturally find their way to where they belong and practically march themselves to the shredder when their time is up." Definitely worth beating on some file cabinets for.
More on Organizing Filing Systems
- Mastering Your Filing System
- Filing Tips for People Who Hate Filing
- 3 Steps to Creating a Document Management System
Related: Get more tips about working more productively and getting and staying organized by taking the Organize Your Office Course. Sign up today - it's free.
Image (c) S. Manly