 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
Should I file all similar files together in the Paper Tiger? Dear Kathy, I have an engineering company that has many individual projects. These projects can last up to ten years. I have always kept a single file for each project. As a project file grew bigger, I subdivided it, but I always kept these files together and seperated from other project files. I am now hesitant to start the numerical system and intermix files from various projects. Am I worried for nothing? Any advice? --Engineering a System Dear Engineering, I completely understand your concern about keeping files together. It requires a real paradigm shift to get past the old way of thinking that we must file all similar files together. It took me about a month to get used to this, and now I will never revert back to the way I used to file, because this way is so much easier AND more effective. With the Paper Tiger, you can create a Location called Projects if you want
them all together. In that location I'd recommend the file be named by project name, and
for some projects there might
be several files created as the project grows. This can either be subdivided within one file
(with manila folders), or you can create several hanging files. For example, a numerical
sort might look
like this for the Project location in your database: The alphabetical sort of the same files would look like this: If you always start the file name with the name of the project, followed by the name of the sub-category, it will be easy to find it all together on the alpha printout. You can find the appropriate sub-file immediately by either doing a more detailed keyword search (with the binoculars) by project name (Project D in the example above) AND Blueprints, or by looking on the alpabetical File Index you can print out for that location. Even though the files are not all physically next to each other in the file cabinet, they are all together on the alpha printout. Another option would be to create a new location for ONE project (if it is a large project, this could make sense), and then they would all be physically filed together. The benefit of the Paper Tiger is that, no matter how you do it (filing them physically together or separate), you will be able to find it immediately and you will be able to find files through many cross-reference words. As you can see, there are many ways you can set up your filing system with the Paper Tiger. The less locations you create, the easier it is to decide where to file something. I suggest that you create as few locations as possible and as many as necessary. Hope this helps! Happy paper taming,
|
|
||||||||||||||
 |
