Simple Productivity Blog has an interesting article on a One Box Filing System.
They had this to say about their belief that not everyone can maintain a filing system.
Many people, otherwise competent and some even brilliant, cannot maintain a filing system. It has nothing to do with intelligence or organization or even self-discipline. I’m convinced it’s just the way they are wired.
I found the idea of a one-box, catch-all, dump box interesting, as I have a somewhat similar though slightly more organized approach. I have a simple Jan-Dec accordian folder and I dump all my receipts, paperwork, etc in each month accordingly. At the end of the year I go through the file month by month, file anything that I need to keep permanently, scan as much as possible and keep digital copies, throw away anything I don’t need, and dump the rest back in the folder, place a rubberband around it, label it for the corresonding year and put it away.
Simple, efficient, and super satisfying in that I feel like I am really organized without being locked into some super filing system that I can’t ever seem to remember how it works.
