Sysadmin Field Notes

October 9, 2006

So i should preface this by saying I've always known I have a filing problem. Whatever my "inbox" is always overflows. Whether that be a to-file-pile, a folder in the files...I always put it off until it's totally overwhelming.

So this process is about figuring out why. As I think about it, and look at the kind of papers that are out and the folders I have, I suspect it has to do with my brain that tries to normalize everything. I've always tried to reduce the number of categories in my files...thinking that broad categories would be easier to maintain.

The problem with that scheme for me is that it causes me stress (which turns into avoidance of the task) when there's no place to put things. With broad categories, I find myself conflicted about the locations of things..."Okay, car insurance; does that go into the 'insurance' folder or the 'car' folder? So I have to decide, and I tend to make the decision differently between filings.

So my files are a mess and hard to find anything, which makes me not want to file the stuff that's out. Plus, the practical matter is that my 'credit card' folder gets overrun with statements and is huge, so it's a pain to deal with.

This is my best guess about why I have trouble filing. Before I had dismissed those sorts of feelings as just being excuses, etc... Maybe they are, but according to the first book they are very common reasons people fail to organize. So rather than fight them or be made to feel worse about those little 'quirks', I decided to try and adapt to them.

So with tips from the book I attacked the existing files. I decided to make very specific folders for just about everything, with nice computer printed labels (to make myself feel better about the categories). This required my first purchases, sheets of Office Depot brand Avery Labels (printed to with a free Mac Avery label program), green hanging folders, and colored insert folders. I picked colors for overall category, made hanging files for broad categories, and then put very specific folders within them. If something doesn't have a folder, it can be placed in the hanging file for the right category until I can make a folder for it.

I think this will help quite a bit, because there will be less file-time ambiguity about where something goes, which was a chief cause of procrastination I think. I also picked up bankers boxes that accept hanging files for my old files. So pre 2005 is organized and in the garage now.

So now I got to sort through that box of fear and test out the system. It worked very well. I'm left with a very small pile of pending stuff (which is my next task to figure out how I want to organize that stuff), and everything went pretty easily into the files. It was a big box; probably took about and hour and a half to go through it. Hopefully I won't have to again.