analogoffice-net-xmnih2.txt (8140B)
1 [1]Analog Office 2 3 • [2]Home 4 • [3]Subscribe 5 • [4]Archive 6 • [5]Photos 7 • [6]About 8 • [7]Bookshelf 9 • [8]Contact 10 • [9]Ask a Question 11 • [10]Office Holders 12 • [11]Search 13 14 The Life-Changing Magic of Keeping a File Index 15 16 Filing systems for personal, household files don’t get much love from people 17 who write about household organizing. Most books dealing with household 18 organization brush it off in a page or two, and it often comes down to 19 something like this: 20 21 “Throw out all your papers! Go electronic! With the six papers that are left 22 over, file them alphabetically!” 23 24 Marie Kondo, in her first book, advised people to dump most of their papers. 25 (GASP!) 26 27 Certainly, if you don’t keep papers, you won’t need an excellent filing system. 28 29 But what if you do want to keep a lot of papers, AND find them quickly? 30 31 Some people collect Lego sets, or porcelain tea cups. I create and collect 32 documents, both paper and electronic. And I know I am not alone in this. 33 34 I like being able to pull out papers like my handout for folding and cutting a 35 six-pointed paper snowflake (I forget how to do this every year); or the 36 brochure that came with my split mechanical gaming keyboard* that tells me how 37 to reset the programming, after I mistype and inadvertently create a macro; or 38 the gift passes to a cool local museum when friends visit. 39 40 And I like being able to do that QUICKLY: go to my file cabinet, pull out the 41 gift passes, done. No rummaging through piles or having to pay entrance fees 42 for our guests because I couldn’t find the passes. 43 44 This is where decent filing systems come in. 45 46 I’ll be writing more about some ways to file paper reference materials (this IS 47 after all, the Analog Office) but today I want to focus on: 48 49 • the need 50 • the genius 51 • the beauty, and 52 • the brilliance of a digital document that most people at home don’t keep: a 53 file index. 54 55 A file index is your [12]Where Is It? document for your files. 56 57 It’s like a table of contents for your filing system. 58 59 Choose: Invest Predictable, Regular, Short Periods of Time? 60 61 Or, Lose: Long, Stressful, Unpredictable Periods of Time (And Money)? 62 63 When you can’t find a paper, you lose an unpredictable amount of time running 64 around and looking through piles, and you also lose sometimes significant 65 amounts of money, because some papers are stand-ins for money (guest passes at 66 the museum); or cost you time and money to replace (deeds, titles). 67 68 A file index will take a little time to set up, and small amounts of 69 predictable time to maintain. So it is a trade-off. 70 71 But I would rather spend a little time to have zero anxiety about finding my 72 papers when I want and need them. 73 74 So I spend small, predictable amounts of time entering information into my 75 filing index. 76 77 Why Filing Indexes Work So Well 78 79 Say you have a paper policy from Zenith Auto Insurance, and say you want to 80 file this alphabetically. 81 82 Where does it go? What comes to mind for you, if you were looking for it? Where 83 would you put it? 84 85 File it under “Z” for Zenith? Or, “A” for Auto? Or maybe, “I” for Insurance? 86 87 But maybe you think of it as car insurance. 88 89 How about “C” for Car insurance? 90 91 If you file it under “I” for insurance, do you keep your health insurance 92 information in there too? Renter’s or homeowners insurance, does that go there 93 too? 94 95 You could; you could have a folder for, “Insurance, Car” and another folder for 96 “Insurance, Health,” and another for, “Insurance, Renters.” Or, you could put 97 health insurance under “H” or even “M” (medical!)… and so on, and so on… 98 aaaargh….! 99 100 Enter the file index. 101 102 File indexes can be – and indeed of course used to be – analog, but I recommend 103 using a digital format because: 104 105 ✨ You want it to be searchable. ✨🎉 106 107 It’s also a good idea to figure out how you will make your file index 108 accessible to others. 109 110 Because I want my husband to be able to find important household files, I print 111 the file index out whenever I update it, so he can have a way to find things in 112 case he can’t get into my computer. You could also share the document and keep 113 it all online, or print out instructions for how to access it in case someone 114 else needs to. 115 116 Make Your Own File Index 117 118 For your file index, you can use a spreadsheet, a notes program, a single 119 document – as long as it is searchable, and you have a way to share access if 120 these are household files that someone else may need. 121 122 It doesn’t matter where the insurance paper goes. It could be under any letter 123 you want. 124 125 It matters that you record your decision on a document that maps out where you 126 put your files. 127 128 Let’s say you decide that your Zenith Auto Insurance Policy goes under “C” for 129 “Car Insurance.” 130 131 So you record on the file index: 132 133 Location; Topic or General Description; Keywords 134 135 • “Location” = the section of the physical file system you need to look in. 136 What is it filed under? That’s your location. For an alphabetical file 137 system, it will be a letter. 138 139 • “Topic or General Description” = what you call the document; the first 140 phrase that comes to mind when you are looking for the document: if you 141 think of it as your car insurance policy, write “car insurance policy” here 142 143 • Keywords = MAGIC!! when combined with ✨ search functions 🎉 144 145 Filing can be frustrating because often we think of multiple terms for our 146 files. (This happens a lot in homes, less for businesses with structured file 147 naming conventions.) 148 149 I might think of it as the “car insurance policy,” my husband might look for 150 “Zenith.” 151 152 So with keywords, you list any words that you might think of when looking for 153 the document, that are not already named in your topic section, above. For this 154 one, you might list: “Zenith, auto, policy, policies, automobile, registration, 155 proof of insurance.” 156 157 an example of a file index made from a spreadsheet, showing sample entries 158 using columns for location, topic, and keyword, and a fourth column for digital 159 file locations 160 161 Next level: after keywords, if you have a digital file that corresponds to the 162 paper one, put in the location for the digital file. 163 164 Find it all, with file indexes. 165 166 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 167 168 Copy and share – [13]the link is here. Never miss a post from the Analog 169 Office! [14]Subscribe here to get blog posts via email. 170 171 Wondering how to manage your paper-based or hybrid paper-digital systems? [15] 172 Ask me a question. 173 174 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 175 176 NOTES 177 178 * I’m not a gamer, but my son recommended this split keyboard to me, and it is 179 AWESOME. Shifting rainbow color backlighting, Cherry MX mechanical key switches 180 (whatever that means, I’m reading from the brochure that I quickly and easily 181 pulled from my files), but the best thing is that I no longer have wrist pain. 182 Plus, the cat can hang out in the middle. 183 184 cat stepping in the middle of a split keyboard 185 186 ***** 187 Written on 31 May 2023 188 © 2024 Anna Havron. All rights reserved. Website hosted by [16]micro.blog 189 190 References: 191 192 [1] https://analogoffice.net/ 193 [2] https://analogoffice.net/ 194 [3] https://analogoffice.net/subscribe/ 195 [4] https://analogoffice.net/archive/ 196 [5] https://analogoffice.net/photos/ 197 [6] https://analogoffice.net/about/ 198 [7] https://analogoffice.net/books/ 199 [8] https://analogoffice.net/contact/ 200 [9] https://analogoffice.net/advice/ 201 [10] https://analogoffice.net/office-holders/ 202 [11] https://analogoffice.net/search/ 203 [12] https://analogoffice.net/2023/01/16/keep-a-where.html 204 [13] https://analogoffice.net/2023/05/31/the-lifechanging-magic.html 205 [14] https://analogoffice.net/subscribe/ 206 [15] https://analogoffice.net/advice/ 207 [16] https://micro.blog/