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.
After detouring into reference-file country, we're back in the land of action. Just to review, 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 talking about a unique hybrid of those latter two options: your action files.
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?
If the information doesn't need to be put into your calendar or contact management system, move on to: Do I need to perform a next step with the information on this piece of paper?
There are a few different ways to answer that one: "Yes, and I know what that next step is," "Yes, but I'm not sure what that step is," "No, but this information does pertain to something I've got in play right now" and "No, because the ball isn't really in my court right now."
Action files are where papers go when the answer is one of the "No"s. Just as reference files contain papers you no longer have an immediate need for but want to keep around, action files contain papers for which no immediate action is required, but that you want to keep around for current projects.
If the info pertains to something you're working on, it goes into one of the numbered action files. As with the reference files, the numbering system might seem a little weird, especially if you're used to filing by name. But once you get the hang of it, you'll save astronomical amounts of time, thanks to your file index (paper or electronic).
If the ball isn't in your court, or the info doesn't pertain to a current project but isn't reference file caliber just yet, it can go into into a categorical action file. These are named, but there are only a few of them, and the names don't change: Awaiting Response, Data Entry, Potential Purchases, To Read, To Write -- plus additional categories that might pertain to your individual business.
When the ball isn't in your court? Awaiting Response. When you've got a business card but don't have the time to enter the info in your contact management system just yet? Data Entry. An article you want to read but don't have time to right now? To Read.
The trick with these categorical files is that you have to make a date with yourself each week or two to go through them so they don't become a collection of holding tanks for information.
How do you make and keep that date? We'll talk about that on Wednesday. See you then!
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