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.
At last, our tour of paper productivity concludes with my favorite tool
of all: the SwiftFile. "The what?" you ask. The SwiftFile is, in my
opinion, the best version of the tickler file ever invented.
"What's a tickler file?" Oh, my dear reader. A tickler file is a
collection of 43 folders that can help make sure you never forget
anything with a deadline or a due date. It's that powerful.
The 43 folders are numbered 1-31 for days of the month and marked January-December for the months of the year. Therefore, every month, each day gets its own folder, into which you can put invoices to be paid, papers you need for a meeting, notes to yourself to do something you do on a regular basis (like "back up your data").
Remember, on Monday, we discussed action files and how they're the perfect place to put papers where the ball isn't in your court, or there's no obvious next action step. But if there is an obvious next action step, the paper goes into the SwiftFile, specifically into the day where you've decided to take that action step.
And that's another great aspect of the SwiftFile: it makes you decide when to do the things you know you need to do. When you have to assign a specific date to your to-dos, they're a lot more likely to actually get done.
Productivity guru David Allen swears by tickler files; devotees of his Getting Things Done system even created a site called 43 folders dedicated to life improvement based on Allen's system. Another productivity guru—my mentor, Barbara Hemphill—swears by the SwiftFile.
You can get the combo I use, the SwiftFile with a mesh box for your desktop, at this link. And to learn the best way to use the SwiftFile, Barbara Hemphill offers a teleclass full of tips that you can purchase here. I've taken Barbara's class, and it's shown me how to get the most out of this fantastic tool, the ultimate member of the Sorted Seven.
So there we are: a complete system to handle every piece of paper that comes into your office. I hope you've enjoyed the tour. Let me know how it was in the comments!
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