Member-only story
Personal Management System: Files
A simple process for streamlining your file management and going completely paperless.
For years, I kept most of my important paper documents, which is to say that I kept almost everything. I owned a beige, full-size metal file cabinet, replete with beer, concert, and any number of other stickers, that would move from home to home all through my college and early career years. When I moved overseas, it stayed in a storage unit with my furniture and collection of beer bottle caps and lava lamps.
A little over a decade ago, I decided that I had had enough and was going completely paperless. I purged all of the documents (after digitally scanning the most important documents, of course) and that large, metal monstrosity, stickers and all.
Going paperless was one of the most liberating things I have ever done. As an obsessive-compulsive personality, however, I could not simply stop keeping and organizing documents. So, I created a system that allowed me to quickly and efficiently decide, keep and quickly organize all of the documents I needed … completely digitally.
