208 lines
7.9 KiB
Plaintext
208 lines
7.9 KiB
Plaintext
[1]Analog Office
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• [2]Home
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• [3]Subscribe
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• [4]Archive
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• [5]Photos
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• [6]About
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• [7]Bookshelf
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• [8]Contact
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• [9]Ask a Question
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• [10]Office Holders
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• [11]Search
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The Life-Changing Magic of Keeping a File Index
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Filing systems for personal, household files don’t get much love from people
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who write about household organizing. Most books dealing with household
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organization brush it off in a page or two, and it often comes down to
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something like this:
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“Throw out all your papers! Go electronic! With the six papers that are left
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over, file them alphabetically!”
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Marie Kondo, in her first book, advised people to dump most of their papers.
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(GASP!)
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Certainly, if you don’t keep papers, you won’t need an excellent filing system.
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But what if you do want to keep a lot of papers, AND find them quickly?
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Some people collect Lego sets, or porcelain tea cups. I create and collect
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documents, both paper and electronic. And I know I am not alone in this.
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I like being able to pull out papers like my handout for folding and cutting a
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six-pointed paper snowflake (I forget how to do this every year); or the
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brochure that came with my split mechanical gaming keyboard* that tells me how
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to reset the programming, after I mistype and inadvertently create a macro; or
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the gift passes to a cool local museum when friends visit.
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And I like being able to do that QUICKLY: go to my file cabinet, pull out the
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gift passes, done. No rummaging through piles or having to pay entrance fees
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for our guests because I couldn’t find the passes.
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This is where decent filing systems come in.
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I’ll be writing more about some ways to file paper reference materials (this IS
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after all, the Analog Office) but today I want to focus on:
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• the need
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• the genius
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• the beauty, and
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• the brilliance of a digital document that most people at home don’t keep: a
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file index.
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A file index is your [12]Where Is It? document for your files.
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It’s like a table of contents for your filing system.
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Choose: Invest Predictable, Regular, Short Periods of Time?
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Or, Lose: Long, Stressful, Unpredictable Periods of Time (And Money)?
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When you can’t find a paper, you lose an unpredictable amount of time running
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around and looking through piles, and you also lose sometimes significant
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amounts of money, because some papers are stand-ins for money (guest passes at
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the museum); or cost you time and money to replace (deeds, titles).
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A file index will take a little time to set up, and small amounts of
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predictable time to maintain. So it is a trade-off.
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But I would rather spend a little time to have zero anxiety about finding my
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papers when I want and need them.
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So I spend small, predictable amounts of time entering information into my
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filing index.
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Why Filing Indexes Work So Well
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Say you have a paper policy from Zenith Auto Insurance, and say you want to
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file this alphabetically.
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Where does it go? What comes to mind for you, if you were looking for it? Where
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would you put it?
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File it under “Z” for Zenith? Or, “A” for Auto? Or maybe, “I” for Insurance?
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But maybe you think of it as car insurance.
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How about “C” for Car insurance?
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If you file it under “I” for insurance, do you keep your health insurance
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information in there too? Renter’s or homeowners insurance, does that go there
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too?
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You could; you could have a folder for, “Insurance, Car” and another folder for
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“Insurance, Health,” and another for, “Insurance, Renters.” Or, you could put
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health insurance under “H” or even “M” (medical!)… and so on, and so on…
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aaaargh….!
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Enter the file index.
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File indexes can be – and indeed of course used to be – analog, but I recommend
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using a digital format because:
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✨ You want it to be searchable. ✨🎉
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It’s also a good idea to figure out how you will make your file index
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accessible to others.
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Because I want my husband to be able to find important household files, I print
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the file index out whenever I update it, so he can have a way to find things in
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case he can’t get into my computer. You could also share the document and keep
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it all online, or print out instructions for how to access it in case someone
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else needs to.
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Make Your Own File Index
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For your file index, you can use a spreadsheet, a notes program, a single
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document – as long as it is searchable, and you have a way to share access if
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these are household files that someone else may need.
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It doesn’t matter where the insurance paper goes. It could be under any letter
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you want.
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It matters that you record your decision on a document that maps out where you
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put your files.
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Let’s say you decide that your Zenith Auto Insurance Policy goes under “C” for
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“Car Insurance.”
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So you record on the file index:
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Location; Topic or General Description; Keywords
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• “Location” = the section of the physical file system you need to look in.
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What is it filed under? That’s your location. For an alphabetical file
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system, it will be a letter.
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• “Topic or General Description” = what you call the document; the first
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phrase that comes to mind when you are looking for the document: if you
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think of it as your car insurance policy, write “car insurance policy” here
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• Keywords = MAGIC!! when combined with ✨ search functions 🎉
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Filing can be frustrating because often we think of multiple terms for our
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files. (This happens a lot in homes, less for businesses with structured file
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naming conventions.)
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I might think of it as the “car insurance policy,” my husband might look for
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“Zenith.”
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So with keywords, you list any words that you might think of when looking for
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the document, that are not already named in your topic section, above. For this
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one, you might list: “Zenith, auto, policy, policies, automobile, registration,
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proof of insurance.”
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an example of a file index made from a spreadsheet, showing sample entries
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using columns for location, topic, and keyword, and a fourth column for digital
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file locations
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Next level: after keywords, if you have a digital file that corresponds to the
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paper one, put in the location for the digital file.
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Find it all, with file indexes.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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Copy and share – [13]the link is here. Never miss a post from the Analog
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Office! [14]Subscribe here to get blog posts via email.
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Wondering how to manage your paper-based or hybrid paper-digital systems? [15]
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Ask me a question.
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
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NOTES
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* I’m not a gamer, but my son recommended this split keyboard to me, and it is
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AWESOME. Shifting rainbow color backlighting, Cherry MX mechanical key switches
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(whatever that means, I’m reading from the brochure that I quickly and easily
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pulled from my files), but the best thing is that I no longer have wrist pain.
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Plus, the cat can hang out in the middle.
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cat stepping in the middle of a split keyboard
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*****
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Written on 31 May 2023
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© 2024 Anna Havron. All rights reserved. Website hosted by [16]micro.blog
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References:
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[1] https://analogoffice.net/
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[2] https://analogoffice.net/
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[3] https://analogoffice.net/subscribe/
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[4] https://analogoffice.net/archive/
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[5] https://analogoffice.net/photos/
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[6] https://analogoffice.net/about/
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[7] https://analogoffice.net/books/
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[8] https://analogoffice.net/contact/
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[9] https://analogoffice.net/advice/
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[10] https://analogoffice.net/office-holders/
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[11] https://analogoffice.net/search/
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[12] https://analogoffice.net/2023/01/16/keep-a-where.html
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[13] https://analogoffice.net/2023/05/31/the-lifechanging-magic.html
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[14] https://analogoffice.net/subscribe/
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[15] https://analogoffice.net/advice/
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[16] https://micro.blog/
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