I don’t know about you, but I am inundated with data. It’s wild. every day there are hundreds of e-mails, texts and hard copy letters that come my way which all display themselves as the most important information ever. Funnily enough I actually struggle with this. Not just the mountain of mail that perpetually seems to be on the counter in my kitchen, but figuring out what is actually worth keeping and what I can just toss aside. I had to develop some seriously intense rules to make sure that I wasn’t stressing over every envelope that passed my way.
1) Legal Stuff
This is top of the list of stuff that I keep. Legal Agreements, wills, loan agreements, Tax stuff etc. is all things that I not only keep hard copy (because that’s how most of it get sent to me) but in soft copy as well. I have a hard copy file folder for most of my legal stuff that I have to keep because if I were to just keep it in a pile on my desk it would be as bad as if I were to just scan it and not file it anywhere specific. It’s important that you keep what hard copy files you have as organized as you do your digital files. doing so will mean that both will be equally as searchable, and you are less likely to loose documentation.
2) Sentimental Stuff
This one is tricky. There are lots of things that I keep in my digital filing system that are sentimental for me which I don’t need to keep in hard copy. Equally, there are some things that can’t be easily scanned (like my kids Maccaroni art when they were little) which is totally awesome and I will never get rid of it. For the hard copy only stuff it’s important to find a safe location to keep that. I have a box of stuff in my office at home where a lot of that happens to live.
3) Player’s choice
When I first started scanning everything into my system I was a mad man on a mission. I wanted to scan everything. I was scanning every scrap of paper that I could get my hands on, which included every day receipts. after a while I found that the paper was piling up faster than I could go through it, so I had to make some changes. I stopped being so relentless with what I kept in my system and I have found that my pile of papers have shrunk dramatically on a regular basis, and I have also found that my stress levels are a lot lower too. It’s really up to you for what you want to be able to keep and what to toss.
4) DO NOT keep multiple copies of the same info
If you want to have an efficient system that doesn’t get cluttered, it’s very important that you don’t keep multiple copies of the same files. Having 4 copies of the exact same phone bill (as an example) will do nothing to help your system because you won’t know which file is the “correct one.” If you’re doing things correctly, you should only need one copy of a file. That being said you could have different versions based on edits, but let’s save versioning for another post shall we?
The Trick with what to keep in your filing system is very simple. It’s all about what you want to keep. Like with everything else in your filing system, the only rules you have to follow are your own. You could go from as far as I used to, and keep absolutely everything (Which is stressful, so I wouldn’t advise it) to keeping nothing at all! Personally I like more of a middle road and keeping everything legally neccessary, some things that could be relevent, and a few things that “I just want to keep.”
What would you keep in your system?
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