FILING: How To Find What You Need When You Need It

Written by Monica Ricci


Filing: How To Find What You Need When You Need It

Nobody enjoys filing, at least nobody I?ve ever met. But like it or not, keeping track of paper information is crucial to living an organized life or running a successful business. The biggest problem most people have with filing isn?t how to store it, but how to retrieve it. So how do you create a filing system that works? Here are three basic steps to get you started.

1. Sort your material into BROAD TOPICS. (common categories are money, house, health, auto, hobbies/interests, family history/identification, insurance, etc.) Try to keep it to about ten broad categories. The plastic tabs on your hanging files should be atrepparttar FAR LEFT side onrepparttar 105165 FRONT flap ofrepparttar 105166 folder, notrepparttar 105167 rear one. This makesrepparttar 105168 folder easier to open, you simply grabrepparttar 105169 tab that you want and pull it toward you to open it. The FAR LEFT tab position is a visual cue for you that this folder begins a broad category.

Also, as you are sorting, this isrepparttar 105170 perfect opportunity to PURGE your files of old, outdated, and irrelevant information that has been taking up space.

2. Then, sort each broad category into smaller subcategories. For example, MONEY might be subdivided into Banking, Retirement, and Investments while INSURANCE may containrepparttar 105171 subcategories Car, Health, Homeowners and Life. For each hanging folder you have in this section, place your plastic tab inrepparttar 105172 CENTER position onrepparttar 105173 front ofrepparttar 105174 folder. The center position is a visual cue for you thatrepparttar 105175 folder is a SUBcategory of something larger.

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION FILES! Organizing Your Office By Task

Written by Monica Ricci


Lights, Camera, ACTION FILES! Organizing Your Office By Task

Your desk isrepparttar most important part of your office. It is a work space, however many people makerepparttar 105164 mistake of usingrepparttar 105165 desk as a storage space! In order for you to be focused onrepparttar 105166 task at hand,repparttar 105167 desk should be clear and free of distractions, such as piles of paper, books, notes, bills, etc. How can you manage these items without losing them, findrepparttar 105168 information you need to work on, and still have a clear work space?

Action files! Action files are merely temporary homes where papers live until they either end up filed away permanently or thrown away. Your action files may sit onrepparttar 105169 far corner of your desktop, they might be in your file drawer, or in baskets onrepparttar 105170 credenza. Whichever method works for you is fine. Label them according to what actions fit best with your industry. (ex: CALL BACK, TO FILE, TO READ, TO MAIL, TO PAY, etc) Clearly label your files so you will always know what is in them, and just as importantly,repparttar 105171 labels will remind you what not to put in them.

An important add-on to your action files is a HOLDING file. This will be a key player inrepparttar 105172 organization of your office space, as it will hold allrepparttar 105173 information that requires an action some time inrepparttar 105174 future, rather than immediately. For example, if you get an invitation and map to a seminar you?d like to attend in a few months, how do you keep that information without losing it or forgetting aboutrepparttar 105175 event entirely? This is precisely whererepparttar 105176 ?Holding file? comes into play.

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