A chunk of this afternoon has been dedicated to a "system review." I've been going through files and project boxes to make sure that everything is where it should be (at least theoretically).
The process has also involved reading notes to myself and discarding ideas that once were deemed brilliant. Only a few of those notes have survived and they'll probably get chopped next month.
Most of one large project will be going to the shredders. All is now in place to keep The System working smoothly but for one vulnerability: The above-mentioned notes.
It is a rare day when I don't scribble in a Moleskine notebook or on 3 by 5 note cards. Those are nice reminders but they cover a variety of subjects and so then must be shifted to a Fat File.
[For those who are new to this blog, I keep Fat Files on topics due to the fact, learned through brutal experience, that items placed in Fat Files are not lost while those put in small specific Thin Files become needles in haystacks.]
There is an Absent-Minded Professor aspect to all of this which has its pros and cons. At least I don't resemble the newspaper publisher who had to buy the evening copy of his paper in order to find his home address but I can already hear the groans of FutureLawyer and other tech types.
Let them groan. I can see daylight.
2 comments:
Your "fat" filing system reminds me of a brilliant household paper management system I once read about:
1. Buy a nice looking box with a lid.
2. Put items that you need to file in the box. (There was a whole other discussion of what constitutes "need" - but I digress...)
3. Go through the box once or twice a year (preferably with a glass of wine in hand, and a sappy historical drama on the TV).
I can't tell you how much better I felt when I read that!
The whole point of filing is so I can find it again if I need it. If it's in the filing box, I can find it.
CincyCat,
The box idea has much in its favor.
I use project boxes in addition to Fat Files. Levenger used to sell some neat blue project boxes from Germany [I think they stopped] but manuscript mailing boxes can often do the trick.
The nice thing about the Box/Fat File approach is that you seldom lose a document. It may take a while to find, but it will be found.
Michael
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