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Speed, Simplicity And The Story Of My Filing System November 26th 2008
 Productivity
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If repetitive day-to-day tasks are even remotely complicated or time consuming you’ll end up not doing them. Whether it’s updating your to-do list, emptying your inbox, trying to get the lid of your expensive pen or just generally trying to be productive, you will find yourself at some point falling off the wagon. Imagine that an old fashioned manager wants to start using some calendar program on the shiny new laptop his daughter got him. Unfortunately the closest he ever got to technology was when he found a lost mobile phone and thought it was a calculator. It takes him five minutes to input his meeting with that boring bloke from finances. It would have taken him five seconds in a paper calendar. I don’t think I need to spell out where I’m going with this.
It might not happen straightaway but it will come, the big thump as you fall off the wagon. Take my filing system as an example. It used to be split alphabetically with different subcatagories for filing (A-C would have a bills and car sections, for instance). It looked neat, it made me look super organized and yes, it really did work for a while. That was until I had several big projects to do that made filing a low priority (just under eating and sleeping). When everything had settled down I had a big pile of paperwork and zero motivation to do anything with it. It all just seemed too tedious and time consuming to shift through all those sections and subfolders. Your workflow is only ever as strong as its weakest area and because I use a quick and easy weekly planner nowadays, my filing system has been left behind. It’s like a Ferrari next to a bike… with flat tyres. The next time you complain about how you latest setup didn’t work or your attempts at [insert random productivity system here] fell flat on their face, just see how long it took you to access your list of projects or tick something off as done. How many sheets or menus did you have to dig through to get to what you wanted? A couple of seconds will make all the difference between something that is easy and something that is tedious.
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