Lord help us, we're spending the rest of March celebrating the seven desktop tools that are essential to managing paper in your office! I call these tools The Sorted Seven, and you can see an overview of the whole system here.
We've spent the week talking about action-oriented things you can do with stuff taken from your In shelf, but today we're taking a slight detour. Remember, there are essentially only three things you can do with each piece of paper: you can toss it, act on it or file it. Today, we're going to investigate that third option: filing it.
Once we've asked the crucial questions about whether or not the item can be tossed and have decided to keep it, there's another set of questions to ask, and they all boil down to: Is the ball in my court?
Do I need to put this information in my calendar or contact management system? If so, the ball's in your court, and we've discussed how to handle that info.
If the answer to the above question was "no," move on to: Do I need to perform a next step with the information on this piece of paper? You might need to call someone, write something, plan something, etc. If the answer to that question is "yes," we'll discuss what to do with that piece of paper on Monday.
If the answer was "no," our final question (where the scores can really change) is: "Am I waiting on someone else's action regarding this piece of paper?" Again, if that's the case, we'll learn what to do with the paper on Monday.
But if the piece of paper doesn't require action from you or anyone else, then it falls out of the "act" category and into "file." Specifically, your reference files (as opposed to your action files).
You might notice in the picture above that the reference files are numbered, rather than named. When I joined the Paper Tiger program and heard Barbara Hemphill's recommendation to number files, I thought that sounded weird and counterintuitive. Now, I swear by it. "But how do you know what's in what file?" By the contents of that very first file tab: File Index. Your file index tells you what is where by using keywords—you know, the same things you use to search in every other part of your life.
You might prefer to put your reference files in manila folders with alphabetized labels on them. And while you're certainly free to do so, I'll be more than happy to tell you why that method is less than optimal.
If you're intrigued by the Paper Tiger filing system, drop me a line and we can discuss it further. If not, hang in there until Monday, when we discuss action files. Have a great weekend, everybody!
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