The filing system
proposed and used by Noguchi
Yukio is worth a look. To employ
the system, you'll need to
discard many conventional
notions about how to store paper
documents. Here's how it works:
You need a set of A4
(letter)-sized envelopes and
some way to mark the outside of
the envelopes. If you want, you
can color-code them with
markers.
Take every
document and store it in an
A4-sized envelope with the flaps
cut off, as shown here.
Mark the title and date of the
document on the side of the
envelope, as shown, and the
envelopes are stored vertically
on a bookshelf.
Don't
attempt to classify documents.
The color coding is optional,
and only there to help you find
documents more quickly.
Add any new document to the left
end of the "envelope buffer."
Whenever a document is used
(i.e., the envelope removed from
the shelf), return it to the
left end of the bookshelf. The
result of this system is that
the most recent and frequently
used documents move to the left,
while documents that are rarely
or never used migrate to the
right.
Over time, some of
the files on the right side of
the shelf will be classified as
"holy files" which you will
retain indefinitely. Remove
these from the shelf and store
them in boxes. If a "holy file"
is in use, it is part of the
working file group at the left.
Thus, holy files are really dead
files which you cannot part
with. Get them out of sight into
a box.
When you need more
space, throw away any documents
that you consider "unnecessary."
Read more on Noguchi's
system
in this article by William
Lise, or on Noguchi's
website.