3 Steps to Perfectly Organized Files
A listener writes in:
Dear Get It Done Guy,
My sweetheart has just moved in and all is wonderful…expect that his boxes and file drawers full of paper have also moved in. When he tries to sort through them his eyes glaze over. The papers go from boxes into piles. I get angry at the mess. How can we quickly reduce the paper in his life, while increasing the chance he might actually find some important financial document when he needed it? — Agonized in Arlington
Dear Agonized in Arlington,
I’m so sorry! The instant I hear the phrase “sorting through boxes,” my own eyes glaze over. Smoke begins to wisp up from my ears. And my quiet inner voice starts shrieking “No! For the love of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, no!”
And spaghetti it is. Because when you’re sorting through boxes, you’re staring at a huge mess of unrelated, unknown stuff. Financial papers, technical manuals, cookbooks, old bills, important project notes scribbled on napkins, and meat sauce. Flying Spaghetti Monster meat sauce, specifically.
A big part of what makes “sorting boxes” a sordid affair is that your brain has to totally switch modes every time you pick up a new piece of paper. What makes this agonizing isn’t the mess. It’s the need for your brain to switch gears with every single object you touch. Your brain goes crazy! And as you’ve seen, it then helpfully drives everyone around you crazy, too. So they’ll empathize with you, of course.
Fortunately, your nervous system comes with a built-in solution. It’s called your reticular activating system. It’s the part of you that searches for things that match your expectations. When you buy a new peacock feather duster, for example, you suddenly notice that everyone seems to be carrying around a peacock feather duster. There actually aren’t more around, it’s just that for the first time, you’re noticing them. Your reticular activating system has become tuned to notice peacock feather dusters.
And this, you can use.
Triage is too much work
Most people sort out a box of papers by taking each paper in turn, examining it, thinking about what it is, mentally projecting dozens of alternate futures to calculate the exact probability that they’ll need that piece of paper in the future. Then they go watch Netflix to recuperate, because handling that one piece of paper took so much mental energy.
Instead of switching mental gears for every piece of paper, just program your reticular activating system to recognize one category.
This is “triaging” every piece of paper. A lot of pieces of paper fit in a box, and it sounds like your shmoopie has a lot of boxes. That’s a whole, whole lot of triage.
It’s even worse because it sounds like Shmoopie may not even know if the paper will be needed in the future. So, caught like a deer in the headlights of ambiguity, Shmoopie just freezes. Paper in hand. A single, solitary tear traveling slowly down their cheek. Annie Lebowitz would shoot a Pulitzer-winning portrait right about now. We’re not Annie Lebowitz, so all we can do, with a firm upper lip, is hand Shmoopie the next piece of paper.
Filtering works better!
We may not be Annie Lebowitz, but we are masters of our reticular activating system! Instead of triaging, let’s filter. Choose a category of paper to filter for, and have Shmoopie zip through the box, pulling out every piece of paper that fits that category.
But first … you say your shmoopie gets stalled trying to figure out whether any piece of paper must be kept. Make this decision once, before you begin.
Listen to Get-It-Done Guy episode 25, a joint episode with Legal Lad where we explore which important papers must be kept, and for how long. Then round it out with episode 167 of Money Girl, where she goes into more detail about financial records.
Choose categories of what to keep
Decide what categories of things should be kept. For example, bank statements. Tell Shmoopie to pull out all the bank statements into a big pile next to the boxes. This will go much, much faster. Instead of switching mental gears for every piece of paper, Shmoopie just programs their reticular activating system to recognize bank statements. Then, pull ‘em out.
Next, think of titles and deeds and stock certificates. Pull all those into a pile. Don’t worry about whether anything will be needed in the future. Just sort.
By using filtering instead of triage, you can zip through things far faster, more easily, and with less effort than ever before.
The exact set of categories that will work for Shmoopie depends on what’s in the boxes. One person may have “unpaid parking tickets” as an entire category (don’t ask how I know this). Someone else may have “half-knitted pairs of exciting underwear” as an entire category (also don’t ask how I know this).
Have whatever other big, obvious categories make sense for your particular shmoopie. And then do a scan for “things I don’t know what to do with” so all those get their own pile, too. That way, instead of being paralyzed by individual items, Deer Shmoopie can be paralyzed by just one pile.
Now dispose of the piles
Now you have piles of stuff that has been in boxes. Your shmoopie didn’t miss the piles when they were piles-in-boxes. Shmoopie won’t miss the piles that you throw away forever (bwah hah hah hah hah!!)
Seriously. Throw away all the piles except the ones that have unbearable sentimental value, the ones that make your heart sing with joy, and the ones you pre-decided you might need again someday.
Then when Shmoopie isn’t looking, consider throwing away the “things I don’t know what to do with” pile. Shmoopie didn’t miss that stuff when it was in boxes, so just send it to the big box in the sky.
It can be maddening when your home is full of someone else’s papers. Agonized in Arlington, I feel your pain (or it could just be a paper cut). Don’t let Shmoopie get caught by trying to triage every paper! Instead, scan. Choose in advance what needs to be kept. Scan the piles to pull out just those things. Then, throw everything else away. By using filtering instead of triage, you can zip through things far faster, more easily, and with less effort than ever before.
I’m Stever Robbins. Follow GetItDoneGuy on Twitter and Facebook. If you’re an entrepreneur, self-employed or otherwise need to control your own time, Get-it-Done groups help you start finishing what’s important, and develop the habits you need to achieve your goals. Learn more at Stever Robbins.
Work Less, Do More, and Have a Great Life!
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About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the podcast Get-it-Done Guy from 2007 to 2019. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Sciences from MIT.
