Basics of Filing

Do you look upon filing as drudgery? If so, you are not alone. You don't see people shooting movies, writing Broadway plays, or producing hard rock albums on the subject. It's rather mundane, pedestrian, and even a tad boring. Yet, it is an unheralded key to winning back your time.

When you're in control of your desk, office, files, and the resources you've assembled, you are a more focused, efficient, effective career professional.

Filing As A Concept

First, it's important to ask the big question: Why file? You file items because:

They have value,

you believe they have value (though traditionally most items filed don't have value, which is why filing is seen as unproductive), and

there are consequences for not filing them.

You save receipts from business expenses so you can be reimbursed by your organization and comply with I.R.S. regulations. Filing tax receipts makes sense--it keeps you out of jail. If you're in sales, you file information that will enable you to make greater sales in the future. This includes notes on customers, perhaps their catalogs, brochures, and reports.

Consider everything you have ever filed. Each item presumably had or has potential future value, if only as a back-up to cover potential errors. People who eschew the mere thought of a filing system are not seeing the connection between filing and the future impact on their careers and lives.

A Few Simple Tools

Filing only requires a few simple tools and the proper mind-set. The tools are: * A chair--You can file while standing if you have a four-drawer filing cabinet and you're dealing with the top drawer. Generally, however, your filing activity is facilitated by being in a chair, particularly a swivel chair, so you can move this way and that. Since you're probably weeks, if not months behind in your filing, you won't want to be on your feet.

* A desk or a flat surface--This comes in handy when you staple or unstaple, paperclip or unpaperclip. Often, you'll have to mark on the file folders you insert in your file cabinet, making notes on the things you're filing, folding, ripping, or taping together. A desk or flat surface facilitates these actions. After all, you don't want to be working in mid-air.

* File folders--File folders are essential. Rather than the two-cut or three-cut manilla folders that have been around since Moses crossed the Red Sea, you can use blue, green, brown, red, pink, black--any color file folder that you want. They can be letter-size, legal-size, or have a protruding label area.

If you haven't ordered file folders before, you're in for a revelation. Open up any office supply catalog and let your creative juices flow. If someone else in your organization does the ordering, let them know it's time for you to break out (when it comes to filing, of course).

Colored file folders enable you to stay organized with less work because you can use green file folders for anything that relates to money, red for government, blue for (true blue) customers, etc., making them easily retrievable.

* File folder labels--These can be color-coded as well. You don't have to order the same old white ones. You can easily have subsections within your green file folders by using different colored labels.

The next time you visit your dentist, ask to see how the patient files are stored. Dentists often use a modular stacking shelf system that enables them to go immediately to the record needed.

* Color-coded dots enable you to find files quickly even if you're already using color-coded files and color-coded labels. A small red dot could be placed on those files you anticipate using in the next week or two. The real value of the dots, however, is to be able to leave the files in the file drawer instead of on your shelf or desk.

* Staplers, paper clips, and other fasteners--You want to have these on hand because you never know when you'll need to fasten two or three items together before filing. Perhaps you'll need to unfasten items. Unlike the Ten Commandments, what you file is not etched in stone. You can move things around. You can chuck them. You can add new files. You can delete files. Your goal is to get things into their best apparent home.


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Jeff Davidson, MBA, CMC, is a popular conference speaker and author of 28 books, including Breathing Space (Feb 2000). For books, videos, cassettes, or presentations, visit http://www.BreathingSpace.com, FAX (919) 932-9982, or call (919) 932-1996.