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Anne Gennett
Filing: Now or Never?
Just some thoughts on what I’m seeing a lot of these days…unconscious filing. If your filing cabinets outnumber your friends, this is for you.
While working with a client the other day, the conversation turned to filing, which it always does. He had a lot of paper he had kept over the years, and all his drawer space was taken, along with all the other available filing space in his outer office, as well as the filing space allotted to his assistant and the space on the adjacent floors. He had spread.
We talked for awhile about how much one should keep. Most clients think my plan is to come in and demand they purge and part with most of their paper. Not true. My feeling is you should keep as much as you want, as long as you have space for it. And once you run out of space, we’ll have another conversation….can you get and/or do you want more space? Or do you want to get rid of some of the stuff? It’s your choice, and quite frankly, either one works for me. But I must point out that sooner or later, you’re going to have to go through all your saved paper and purge it anyway. There really are no other options, unless your plan is to die and leave that job to your colleagues or family. So, my question to you is, how much are you filing unconsciously? Do you think about what you’re keeping? Or do you just file it away without really thinking about why you’re keeping it?
There are lots of different reasons for keeping stuff. Maybe you keep it for legal reasons or perhaps your company has a set record retention policy. Great, that stuff you don’t need to think about, it’s already done for you. But I see a lot of people keep stuff because it’s easier to file it away without thinking than to spend the extra 15 seconds to ask some basic questions. First, do you really need it? Or, do you really want it? Is it something you can get easily from another source? Do you need more than one copy? And how long do you need to hang onto it? If you start asking yourself these basic questions whenever you’re filing, you’ll find yourself becoming more conscious about what you’re doing.
Which brings us around to the other important part of filing:the yearly purge. Unless you’ve opted for plan B outlined above (that death thing), sooner or later you’re going to have to purge what you’ve got. I think doing it yearly keeps it manageable. So you really just need to invest whatever time it takes to go through the drawers and weed out what is no longer pertinent or what you just no longer want. A great job for that week between Christmas and New Years when no one’s around (unless you’re one of those people who’s not around). But really, it shouldn’t take too long if you’ve been consciously filing all year.
Now I admit I’ll make a folder for a single sticky note of information if I think I need it, because I believe if it’s worth keeping, it’s worth finding. But I also purge my files on an annual basis, so if the sticky note is now just out-of-date information or something I no longer care about, I can chuck it and reuse the folder. No big deal.
It’s the unconscious filing/no purging combo that dooms most filing systems. So if you can’t find what you need, can’t put any more filing cabinets in your designated space (including the space you spread out into, which technically belongs to your assistant!) and you’re still faced with piles of paper, you might want to schedule some time for a review and purge. Your filing cabinets will thank you for it.
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