by Eileen Roth
File pockets/wallets expand wider than jackets and serve well for stand-alone jobs such as a current project that may be toted to work at a meeting table or offsite. Wallets can also turn your open shelving units, where hanging files can’t be used, into first-rate filing real estate. Slip some file folders inside to keep loose papers from catching in the folds. Note: Wallets don’t fit well inside file cabinets, as their expandable sides can catch while you try to get them in or out. Buy plastic file wallets for longer use.
Classification or fastener folders have metal prongs at the top or side to hold papers in order. Available in several sections per folder, classification folders are great when page order is important or you want to separate different types of information within a single file. For instance, my client in the mortgage department of a bank uses them to section off client information, correspondence, legal documents, and payment information for each loan.
File folder labels are the finishing touch, and they’re not optional. Labels generated by a computer or typewriter are much easier to read than your scrawl on a folder tab, especially for another staff member. Whether you’re a doctor or just write like one, take pity on your colleagues and use professionally produced file labels.
Figure 16-2: Not all file folders are alike.
Checking out: Out guides
Anyone who shares files with others knows how they tend to disappear, usually when you need a piece of crucial information while someone waits on the phone or your boss has firing on her mind. That’s why every office should have an out guide, a sort of checkout system for files.
An old-fashioned out guide is like an interoffice envelope on a paper divider with a big red tab. You write the date, your name, and the name of the file you’re absconding with on the next empty line and file it where the folder once was. There’s a newer, sturdier version in red plastic that holds an index card in a pocket instead of a paper list. You can count on plastic to last longer.
Classification and color-coding
Remember that statistic about losing 4.3 hours a week looking for papers? You trimmed it down by getting your papers out of piles and into files, but here’s the really critical step. When you classify and color-code your files, your fingers don’t even have to do the walking — your eyes do the looking to find the file you need fast, and you’re on your way to earning yourself an extra vacation. Tell your boss I said so!
Classifying by category
How to file your files? That is the question. Classification is the answer.
There are three steps to classifying your files: Choose the main categories, select a system for classifying the files within each category, and make a file index.
1. Categorize: Group your files by subject and give each category a noun for a name. If you have more than ten files in a category, repeat the process to create subcategories. For instance, Insurance files could break down into Disability, Health, Liability, and Workers Compensation. An author may divide Writing files into Books and Articles and group Public Relations and Competition into Marketing.
The file categories and subcategories that support peak performance can vary by who you are and what you do. Here are a few examples:
•CEO or small business owner: Administrative, Clients, Financial, Insurance, Legal, Marketing, Organizations, Sales, Vendors
•Government affairs manager at an insurance company: Administrative, Government Affairs, Human Resources, Training
•Financial analysis manager at a bank: Asset-Based Lending, Bankwide, Commercial, Retail Banking, Treasury
•Meeting planner for an association: Category (one of several): Annual Meeting. Subcategories: Advertising, Awards/Pins, Brochures, Entertainment, Financial, Gifts, Golf, Hotel, Registration, Signs, Speakers, Sponsors, Trade Shows, Travel
•Personal: Category (one of several): Financial. Subcategories: Bank, Budget, Credit Cards, Investments, Loans, Subscriptions, Taxes
You heard about establishing boundaries? Make some in your filing system by keeping all business and personal files separate. Storing personal information at work, where the wrong eyes may run across private matter, is asking for trouble. If you work at home, a clear distinction between the two types can help you with everything from doing tax returns to pulling the right file when you have a client on the phone.
2. Classify: Files may be classified alphabetically, chronologically, geographically, numerically, or by subject. Choose from these five main classifications according to the contents of the files. The classifying system you choose also helps you create subcategories and name each individual file. Table 16-2 shows you how to match file types to the right classifying systems and establish order in any filing cabinet.
Table 16-2Order in the Cabinet! Five File Classification Systems Classification System Order Best Used For
Alphabetical A, B, C, Aa-Ad, Files with proper names,
and so on clients, employees, vendors
Chronological Years, months, days Board minutes, annual
reports, committee meetings
Geographical Country, state, city, Territory files for sales,
region, and so on marketing
Numerical 0-100, 101-200, Numbered items: invoices,
and so on checks, legal filings
Subject Follow the access Everything not covered
rule to put the by the above methods
subjects you use
most in the most
convenient drawers
Choose a noun for a file name and ask not “What should I call it?” but “Under what name would I find it?” There’s just one rule: No file may be called “Miscellaneous.”
3. Index: Feel like you navigate your files without a clear path? A file index can point you to the information you need every time, fast. In a database, spreadsheet, or word processing table, make a list of all your files by category, subcategory, file name, and location. Put the index in your Take Action File (coming up) and update it as you add and purge files. Whether you’re looking for something or wondering where to put a new piece of paper, you have a one-stop, easy-scan map of your system. Table 16-3 shows how simple your file index can be.
Table 16-3File Index Category Subcategory File Name Location
_____________ _____________ ___________ ______________
_____________ _____________ ___________ ______________
_____________ _____________ ___________ ______________
Attention executives: Are you friendly with your files? Get to know how your system works and where your file index is so that someone else’s sick day, sudden promotion, or departure doesn’t leave you lost. If you can’t grasp it, it’s too hard; call me!
Color coding
People from ancient sages to contemporary clothing designers say that color can affect your mood, even how you act, and it can definitely influence the behavior of your filing system. When used systematically, colored tabs, labels, and folders can provide quick identification in the drawer or on the desktop, making your mood much better than it would be after a bunch of fruitless browsing.
Color-coding matches the colors of your files to their contents, and it works best when there’s a connection between the two. For instance, many people use green for Financial. Filing materials are most commonly available in red, blue, yellow, and green, so start your free association now.
Perfectionists or very visual types can order folders and labels in additional colors from office supply catalogs.
There are four places to use color in your filing system: hanging file tabs, file labels, and hanging and regular file folders. Here are the criteria for your color-coding choices:
Hanging file tabs are the most critical place for color. As signals for your main file categories, these tabs need to be easy to see, and when left white become nearly invisible against manila files.
File labels can also be colored for quick identification of the
file itself. If you use manila file folders, do use colored labels for quick spotting in a manila sea. Match the color of the label to the hanging file tab.
Colored file folders can be used together with or as an alternative to colored labels. Their advantage is that the big block of color is easier to pick out on your desk or in your briefcase than the thin strip of color on a manila file label.
Another benefit of colored folders is that you can use white labels on all your files, so you can run full sheets through the printer and don’t have to stock so many colors. The downside: Colored folders are more expensive.
Colored hanging folders are fine, but because they never come out of the drawer they’re really not necessary. Standard green will do.
Now that you know where color can go, use different hues to distinguish between categories. Whether you think of applying color as chromatic classification or a rainbow of responsibilities, color adds quick-look order to your files.
Though color is a powerful classifying tool, it can fragment your file system when overused. Choose a new color when a large group can be segmented from the rest of the files — say, more than half a drawer. Otherwise, unite on sight by sticking with a single shade.
Save yourself great grief by thinking all the way through your classification and color system before you start labeling. Having spent hours pulling off red labels and redoing them on blue when clients changed their minds mid-stream, I can assure you that you don’t want this aggravation. Write a list with every category, subcategory, and corresponding color before you make your first label. If you’re going to change your whole system, do one color, or even one category, at a time. Don’t try to do it all in one day. (See more about scheduling chunks in Chapter 18.)
Mastering Your Mail
Repeat this mantra: I am the master of my mail. Many people allow the unpredictable arrival of information from the outside world to run and sometimes ruin their day. To counter this effect, I recommend a course of mail empowerment.
First understand that mail time is not when the mail comes — mail time is when you choose. The best strategy is to set an off-peak time for opening mail every day and stick to it as much as possible. Whether e-mail or snail mail, remember that the mail doesn’t control you. You control the mail.
Smooth mail management calls for quickly sorting and whisking each item to the appropriate file or to the trash, and you can take your first pass without even opening an envelope. R-A-P-I-D is the road to a fast first response to the mail.
R-A-P-I-D response to incoming mail
First assemble your mail-processing tools: a letter opener (why risk paper cuts?), your calendar/organizer, a highlighter, and date stamp if you use one. Take your stack of unopened envelopes and sort your mail into the following five piles.
Read: Newsletters, catalogs, reports.
Attend: Notices for meetings, workshops, conferences, performances, events, store sales.
Pay: Bills (window envelopes are a clue).
Important: Memos, correspondence, and anything you can’t identify (presume important until proven otherwise).
Dump: Junk — ads, solicitations, political flyers, and so on. Don’t even open these. Just toss.
If one of the pieces of mail is another invitation for a charge card you don’t want, rip right through the unopened envelope before throwing it away. This prevents someone else from signing the form, saying you moved, and running up a tab on your dime.
When you complete your initial sort, open one pile at a time, highlighting important information and entering dates in your calendar as you go. Apply the five W-A-S-T-E questions to each piece and toss what doesn’t pass the test. Finally take the survivors and a) delegate them to your staff, b) place in your Take Action File, or c) file in your permanent system.
See Chapter 17 for tips on handling e-mail — the same concept with a few cyber twists.
Reduce incoming mail by inviting less into your life: Pare down your subscriptions to the bare essentials. Tell companies not to sell your name. Delete yourself from existing lists by sending a request including your full name, in all its variations and spellings, and your address to: Mail Preference Service, Direct Marketing Association, P.O. Box 9008, Farmingdale, NY 11735-9008.
Outgoing mail
Thankfully, controlling the mail you send is easier than what you receive. Here are principles for dispatching the outgoing post:
Signed, sealed, delivered. If you have a mailroom, the staff there can probably seal your envelopes by machine. Others will want a bottle or tube sponge moistener to seal envelopes without wearing out your tongue. Don’t press too hard, or you can wash away the glue. If that happens, let the envelope dry, then seal it up with a glue stick.
Address for success. Print a full page of address labels for each frequent mail recipient on your list.
Express for success. Order airbills from your overnight carrier pre-printed with your account information. Make an entry in your address card file or contact program with pick-up phone numbers, drop-off locations, and deadlines for express service.
Wrap it up. Stock all the envelope sizes and types you need for normal mail traffic, including bubble wraps for breakables.
One of the best delivery bargains going is the postal service’s Priority Mail envelope, which invites you to stuff as much paper as you can fit into it and pay a flat rate for up to two pounds.
Pay postage without pain. Why stand in line at the post office when you can buy stamps by mail and get a free USPS chart that breaks postal charges down by the ounce? A postal scale will give you a precise assessment if you stamp by hand; any business with much mail volume can buy a postal meter or use the electronic stamps available over the Internet.
The Take Action File‰: The Tickler Turns Proactive
So far I discussed files that sit around waiting to be used but there’s another, more active kind. Tickler files are so named because they remind you, or tickle your memory, that you have to do something. Like being tickled, it’s sort of fun for a minute — “oh yeah, glad I remembered that!” but you’re also motivated to make it stop by completing the called-for task.
Traditional tickler files generally take the form of 7- or 31- day systems, both of them flawed. In the weekly setup, you have a file for each day of the week. The usual result is that you spend too much time moving Monday’s unattended papers to Tuesday’s file, Tuesday’s to Wednesday, and so on until Saturday holds the whole week’s worth. You’ve wasted valuable time transferring things and haven’t gotten much done.
The monthly system contains 31 folders for the days of the month, plus another twelve for each month of the year. You file papers by the day for the current month and by the month for upcoming items. Here’s the problem: On the fourth of the month, you file a memo in the 25th. On the tenth, somebody calls about a point on the memo, and you have to remember what day you filed it under. Chances are you’ll end up searching all the way from the tenth to the 25th — 15 folders’ worth — before you find the memo, wasting your time and your caller’s.
The inefficiencies of popular tickler systems inspired me to create the Take Action File. A category-driven system that eliminates all that date-related shuffling and searching, the Take Action File groups tasks by like type and keeps everything you need to do within logical fingertip reach. Whether at work or at home, the system is designed to turn information flow into targeted actions.
The Take Action File system consists of twelve different categories, ten of which hold the current month’s action items, with the eleventh for upcoming months and the twelfth for your File Index. Note that the category titles are verbs, not the nouns you use for other files, to keep action foremost in your mind. Take a look at Table 16-4 to get familiar with the Take Action File.
Table 16-4The Take Action File System Category Contents How To
To Attend Meeting notices, Enter dates in calendar (no details).
workshops
, invitations File first in To Call or To Pay to make
reservations, buy tickets, then in To
Attend in chronological order.
To Call Running list of calls/ See Chapter 19 about time
phone messages management for the phone.
To Copy Originals to copy Save copier trips by doing it in
batches.
To Discuss Memos and/or running Create separate files for each
list of discussion topics person who directly reports to you
for meetings and phone and your boss
calls (what and with whom)
To Do Running list and/or hard The catchall for anything not
copies or papers covered in other categories.
To Enter Meeting notes, receipts, Whatever needs to be entered on
business cards, and so on the computer.
To Pay Bills (and envelopes), bank Set up a schedule and pay as
statements to balance many as possible at a time.
To Buy Shopping lists, catalog Tear out page or make a
pages, and so on running list.
To Read Newsletters, memos, Group similar topics together.
articles, and so on Carry file to meetings, appointments,
(pull out and toss the rest) anywhere you have to wait. For entire
magazines, journals, and catalogs
you haven’t scanned yet, mark the
month and year clearly in the upper
right-hand corner and place them in a
separate To Read magazine holder.