This system is a mini tickler file system. But rather than tracking things through a year, this one is based on a weekly rhythm.

I use it to track my prayer schedule, and prayer requests. I’m a clergywoman, I get these requests pretty often, and I am breathtakingly forgetful. If someone asks me to pray for them I want to be able to honor my promise to them to do so. I write down prayer requests in the moment into my pocket notebook and then at the end of the day I write it on an index card and file it into this system.

And, you could certainly also use full-size folders and papers for this, as in an old-school office tickler file.

You could use this system to remind you of anything you want to repeat on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, such as:

• household chore routines
• workout routines
• a rotating household menu (index cards for shopping lists, and for recipes could work nicely for this)
• homework assignments
• flashcards, memorization
• keeping a prayer schedule - see “Notes” section below for more on how I personally do this

Any routines you’re using that can reasonably be written on an index card, can work with this little system.

Setting up a weeks-based index card tickler system

Ingredients:

• Index cards (I personally use 4x6 inch index cards because my handwriting is big, and I’m verbose)
• Index card tabs (see photos below; get the blank ones because the pre-labeled ones are set up for alphabetical or annual tickler systems, and we’re doing a weeks-based one here)
• paper clips - whatever kind you like
• a box or case to put your index card tickler in

Instructions:

Oh no, we have to start with a decision! So hard! Go get some coffee! We can do this! …ready?? Deep breaths. Now let’s do it:

Decide whether you want to clip your index cards before the tabs, or after the tabs; then write that decision down, so you don’t get your cards mixed up:

I use two cards for a daily category: I labeled one card “Today” for things that are urgent (see the picture above), and get changed frequently.

I labeled the other card “Daily” for things that I consistently want to attend to, each day.

Label seven tabs with the days of the week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. (I like a Monday start, myself, but some folks like to start with Sundays.)

Oh no, here comes another decision!

We have four cards for things we want to attend to, once a month.

For things you want to attend to on a monthly basis, do you label your tabs with “Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4?”

Or, do you go with numeric dates, and label your tabs with a date range covering roughly four weeks: “1-7,” “8-14,” “15-21,” “22-30/31?”

I prefer using numeric dates, because ambiguity needlessly costs me time. I don’t want to have to figure out whether we’re in Week 1 or Week 4 of a month when the first day of a month is on, say, a Wednesday; or we’re hitting the fifth Sunday of a month (fifth Sundays happen about four times a year).

This is why more formal filing systems use the convention of date ranges.

Here’s a mid-century office tickler file system which divides months into the first half of the month, and the second half of the month:

Here’s a schedule of readings from a lectionary cycle, note that the series of readings occurs on Sundays that fall between July 24 - 30:

And – ta da – here are the monthly frequency index card tabs I use:

Here are all the tabs, with all the cards clipped to them:

…which all fits nicely into my nifty Cat Lady pencil case card file box. >^..^<

Go forth, and be organized!

Notes

A little more on using this system for keeping a prayer schedule: I got the idea for this from Paul Miller’s book A Praying Life. Miller is a U.S. conservative evangelical and I am …not, but his prayer card system inspired me to create my own.

For each weekday, I pray for a certain category, and name some specific people or situations in each category. Broad prayer categories can include topics like: the workplace; home and family and friends; people in need or in crisis; the church; the natural world; the political world. The weeks of the month tabs are for things I want to pray for regularly (monthly!) but not necessarily each week. I set aside time for morning prayer and pull out the cards in the intercessory part of my prayer practice.

If it’s Tuesday and within the first seven days of the month, I would pull out the “Today,” “Daily,” “Tuesday,” and “1-7” tabs as I begin morning prayer. If I’ve already prayed for the concerns on the “1-7” tab, I can rotate that behind the others so that the “8-14” tab is next.

References

Progressive Indexing and Filing. Fifth (1950). New York, New York: Management Controls Division, Remington Rand Inc.

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (eds) (2006) Evangelical Lutheran worship. Pew ed. Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress.

Miller, P.E. and Morey, A. (2017) A praying life: connecting with God in a distracting world. United States: The Navigators. << Note: Theologically, this book has a conservative U.S. Protestant evangelical stance. Miller describes his card system at the end of the book.

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Hi Anna,

I recently discovered your site, via the Plain Text Project, and I am so glad I did!

I feel like I have a split personality, going back and forth between digital (scan everything! Minimalism is the goal!) and analog (if the cloud disappears, I’ll still be fine; more joy in paper; let’s go to the office supply store!).

And I come from a family of letter writers, where choosing the right stamp is part of the fun, and where we geek out on pens, pencils, notebooks. So I lean towards the analog.

My two questions are around permanence: 

For your handwritten plan for the week, how long will you keep that? Months, years? Other than helping you map out your two-week windows, does it also serve a long term purpose, like a place to revisit to see what you were doing in the past?

If you have checklists, or take notes, that are specific to a major project, how do you approach the analog vs. digital tradeoff? For example, we are moving soon and I have been taking notes on different insurance companies and their policies, and I also have a checklist of places I need to call about address changes. For these, I’ve been using digital (Apple Notes), since it seems easier to manage (i.e., portable across devices), and search. At a higher level, I find that I am more likely (and find it more enjoyable) to look back on notes I’ve taken by hand (example, a diary of what I was up to  years ago) rather than something hidden away in a digital file. But with something like Insurance policies, I don’t think I’ll be looking back at these notes nostalgically, which means digital is fine : )

Thank you again for your insightful, useful, and fun site. 

Thank you for writing in, and for your kind words! You ask a couple of great questions about when to choose between digital and analog, and about how long to keep various kinds of notes.

And you have great examples in your letter: a handwritten planner, and digital notes about choosing a new insurance company.

Let’s look at all this in light of two themes: purpose, and pleasure.

You want to be clear what your notes are for (their purpose), and you want to choose the most fun way – what gives you pleasure – to keep those notes. Because we can! We have a choice!

When do you choose between digital and analog notes?

Principle #1: Purpose Determines Mode (Digital, or Analog?)

What’s the purpose of your digital insurance company comparison notes? They’re helping you complete the project of choosing a new insurance company. You’re looking at websites, maybe making phone calls. Your digital notes program will record websites and phone numbers and maybe even open the sites or open the phone function.

What’s the purpose of a planner or daily diary? It’s to keep track of your time and activities. It also requires, well, planning. Reflection. Focus. Maybe even some daydreaming. You’re thinking not just about one narrow project with a finish line like choosing an insurance company, but about your life as a whole as you travel through time.

What’s the purpose of a letter? It’s to build and to sustain important relationships in your family.

Principle #2: Pleasure Determines Mode (Digital, or Analog?)

As fun as fountain pens and notebooks are, analog is useless (and therefore not pleasurable) for linking to insurance company websites, or creating checklists with phone numbers (I transpose numbers often enough that I prefer copy and paste), or syncing automatically with multiple devices. IMHO for insurance company comparison notes, digital wins, er, hands down here.

Planners or daily diaries: this depends on, well, what makes it more of a pleasure for you to track your time and tasks. For me, it is simply more fun – and allows me to focus better – when I use pens, pencils, and notebooks to manage my daily and weekly plans. However, it is NOT fun, not a pleasure for me personally, to keep an analog-only calendar. So I keep a digital calendar because it does indeed sync to multiple devices; and I don’t have to carry a dedicated separate notebook to the hair salon to put a new appointment on my calendar. I copy digital calendar information into the handwritten planning notes when I plan with my paper notebooks. Handwriting digital calendar information into notebooks also reinforces my memory of my commitments to others.

Letters: in your electronic letter to me, you write, “I come from a family of letter writers, where choosing the right stamp is part of the fun, and where we geek out on pens, pencils, notebooks.” Part of your sense of identity as a family is that you share delight in analog tools and materials. So, in your case, analog wins here.

Okay, so now we get to questions of permanence.

How long do you keep various kinds of notes?

Principle #3: Purpose Determines Permanence

Insurance company comparison notes: What would a later purpose for these be? Will these be interesting to you, or useful later? Ummmmmm. I can’t think of how, can you? As you mentioned, you won’t be looking back on these notes nostalgically. And if you were to evaluate insurance companies again five or ten years from now, those policies and costs would be outdated, and most of the contacts would have moved on. This is the kind of information that expires.

Planners or daily diaries: Let’s assume there’s no legal reason to keep these, and that it is purely a personal decision. What’s the purpose of old planning notes? As you bring up, it might be nostalgia, reconnecting with your past self. More on that below.

And handwritten letters, of course, can become treasured family heirlooms; connecting multiple selves with the past and may be kept for generations or even stored in formal archives.

Principle #4: Pleasure Determines Permanence

So, you asked what I do with my old handwritten planning notes. For the most part, I shred them. To be honest, I don’t find volumes of my old daily plans that interesting. (Who cares how many times I went to the drycleaner?)

However. Sometimes seeing your plans from Times Past is kinda cool. So I paste a few sample pages from those planning notebooks into one of my comp books.

My composition notebooks are snapshots of my life. I draw things in those, write things in those, paste my old business cards in there, paste in tickets and decorative paper cocktail napkins, all kinds of things that make me laugh and jar my memory.

There are so many ways to create interesting notes for Future You to look back on. For my comp books, I often use Lynda Barry’s review frame method (see #4, in the previous link). I don’t do that every day, but try to do it a few times a month.

I like looking back on a variety of things, not just my errand and task lists.

What do you enjoy looking back on?

That’s what you should note down for Future You’s enjoyment, and keep.

References

Methods, A. (2017) ‘Preserving Old Letters in the Digital Age’, Archival Methods Blog, 4 January. Available at: https://blog.archivalmethods.com/preserving-old-letters/ (Accessed: 26 July 2024).

Hess, J. (2024) ‘Re-Noted: 6 Ways to Use a Diary’, Noted, 29 January. Available at: https://jillianhess.substack.com/p/re-noted-6-ways-to-use-a-diary (Accessed: 25 July 2024).

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I grew up in a rural area with frequent power outages. Because electricity wasn’t a given, especially in the winter, we always had kerosene lamps and flashlights on hand, and a woodstove with a range top and oven that we could cook with.

I had to learn the hard way that digital files aren’t always a given, either. Some of the things I wrote down about what my kids said and did when they were little, disappeared forever due to my using a 1990s word processing program with a now defunct file format. Thankfully at some point I switched to plain text and printouts; but those earlier files are lost for good.

The recent Crowdstrike outage briefly threw people back into the analog world with mom and pop businesses accepting only cash, and healthcare organizations resorting to keeping records on paper.

This is a good reminder that if you really, really want to depend on having something in the future, or allowing someone else to access it in the future (e.g. after a death in the family), it’s a good idea to keep a physical analog copy: paper books, printed photos, paper files and folders.

Digital documents and writings and images are subject to all kinds of hazards. Websites, articles, e-books, and apps disappear. Devices fail or are subject to planned obsolescence. File formats change. Links rot.

For digital documents you want to keep for a long time, I suggest the Three P’s:

• Plain text
• PDFs

And especially,

• Printouts

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Wondering how to manage your paper-based or hybrid paper-digital systems? Ask me a question.

Wondering how to find stuff in your paper notebooks, send reminders to Future You, and check out other solutions from the analog age? Visit the Analog Office “How To” Directory.

“Hello! I don’t remember how I found Analog Office but I love it. It’s so comforting to read about processes and techniques that speak so loudly to me.  My question is this:

“I take a lot of notes - to dos, things I’d like to remember or reference for later, etc. Some are in a small pocket sized notebook as they come to me (easy to carry, easy to write in, hard to organize, hard to review). Sometimes I put a post it note on the outside of the notebook for daily tasks but really it’s just an even quicker place to write notes down. I have more post it notes all over my desk. So many that I’m running out of room. The post it notes contain all kinds of things like a quote I’m trying to internalize in my work (drawing and art), questions for people, process notes regarding my art that I want to be reminded of daily as I work, goals for my art, things to try in my art, even a random financial note, and more. I love the quick access to them just being out but this is untenable. How do I organize this cacophony while still having constant visual reminders for the things that I’m practicing daily?”

What a great question! Post-it notes are so useful, and WOW can they multiply!

I love post-it notes! Here are some for special occasions:

I even noodled around with keeping a post-it note Kanban board for myself*, but it just didn’t stick.

You mentioned that you were recording the following kinds of information on post-it notes:

• quotes for inspiration
• goals
• questions for people
• things to try out
• miscellaneous

You also said that at this point you have so many of them out that they are no longer easy to manage. What started out as a strategy to have quick, visual access turned into overwhelm.

This is not uncommon for those of us who make sense of our inner life through visual means, me very much included.

Keep Only the Fresh, the Live, the Relevant

So before you do anything else, really LOOK at those notes, every single one. Which ones have you become so habituated to, you no longer see them any more? Which ones have you already internalized and no longer need an external artifact for? Which ones are no longer relevant, or past the deadline, or no longer inspire you and feed your artwork?

Which still have a living spark for you, and which are just …old notes?

Your mind is a living system that needs to be fed. We might think of your notes like produce in the refrigerator, there to feed your imagination and help you with various workflows. But information, like produce, expires and gets stale. Information at some point is ready for the compost bin, er, I mean, the recycle bin. Last year’s reminders, right?

So your first step: Pick out the sticky notes that speak to you *today,* that are still fresh and relevant, that are still nourishing your mind, your imagination, and your spirit. Set those aside where you can easily find them again, because next you can organize them (see below for some suggestions).

The rest? The ones that no longer resonate for you? Stale. Faded. No spark in ‘em. Get rid of those.

If you can’t quite bear to get rid of all of them, put the ones that feel past their prime into a big envelope or a box, some kind of container, close it, put it somewhere out of your work space, and see what the space looks and feels like after you pull out the ones that are no longer fresh and relevant for you.

You only want fresh, relevant, currently inspiring notes in your work space.

Your work space is precious! It is where you spin things out of your mind in real things that can be shared with others!

Don’t dilute its power with stale notes.

And don’t organize before you declutter. Decluttering first, pruning down your stash before organizing, will save you a lot of time that you can then use for making art.

Next step: see how you feel with the ones that are left.

Is it too much, or just right?

Do you like having a mix of notes that kind of collide and bump off each other, or does it still feel like “too much”?

If it still feels like too much, then you might want to try organizing the notes that are left into categories.

Keep Like With Like

Why organize these notes? Because there is a balance between an inspiring mix of things that help you create, and an overwhelming mix that stalls your creative process. The balance is different for everyone, but if – after getting rid of the stale notes – your space still seems visually intrusive rather than visually inspiring, it’s time to play with some ways to bring in order.

Because organizing is so highly personal – we are, after all, considering how to arrange an extension of your own mind – I’ve got several suggestions below for keeping your post-it notes accessible and your workspace as clear as you want it to be.

Sort the notes into categories that make sense for you; the ones you will reach for when you want inspiration, or need to check reminders, or however you divide these various notes in your mind.

I’ve kept it simple in the illustrations below, with “goals,” “reminders,” and “quotes,” but use the words that come to mind for your context. Maybe you prefer categorizing words like “inspiration,” “deadlines,” “questions.” Or something else entirely.

In any case, you might try the following.

You could put notes into folders dedicated to a single category:

You could put notes into a folder with a couple of categories, marked by dividing lines:

If you have a lot of notes, or don’t want to mess with multiple folders, you could put notes on paper in a three ring binder, and use binder dividers or tabs for various categories:

And – if you really want to keep some visual and visible in your workspace, you could put notes in picture frames to contain them:

I hope this helps your creativity to flourish! Thank you for writing in.

References

Kanban Method (no date). Available at: https://www.post-it.com/3M/en_US/post-it/ideas/articles/kanban-method/ (Accessed: 11 April 2024).

Paul, A.M. (2021) The extended mind: the power of thinking outside the brain. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Notes

* So, about that 3M corporation link about doing a kanban board for teams with a post-it note? It’s a great visual example of what a post-it note kanban board can look like, but then they propose that you add an app, and – look, somebody is going to LOSE one of those important work project post-it notes. They just will! It’s that kind of world, that we live in! Any work-related collaborative projects I needed to do had so many files and attachments and meta-info, they were beyond the capacity of post-it notes. I happily used Trello for many years to manage those. But for personal tasks, I think a little kanban post-it board is do-able.

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The virtual world is a disembodied one, and promotes the lie that we do not need our bodies to think. I believe it is no coincidence that researchers keep discovering that use of the body preserves the mind; your risk of developing dementia is lowered with exercise, lowered with keeping and caring for a pet if you live alone, lowered with the richness of in-person social connection which relies on all kinds of bodily cues.

The virtual world can also promote mindlessness in dealing with information. To a large degree, we can collect and move digital information without having to think. I reflexively click a button and the “read-it-later” app that collects digital articles for me instantly copies and saves it. (I go on to read perhaps 10% of the articles I click, generously estimating.) Moving information around digitally can even be automated, making it literally a mindless task.

But analog forces you to THINK, because it forces you to use your body* and use physical materials.

The analog world pulls in the cooperation of the body, and thus, the mind. We think with our whole bodies. Walking is a time-honored aid to thinking; and so is handwriting.

The digital world offers such overwhelming amounts of information that handwriting acts as a curator. Handwriting is slower. Handwriting takes more effort than hitting the hot keys for copy-paste commands. The effort of handwriting creates an automatic editing function.

Is something important enough for you to handwrite it down? Then it is probably important enough to act on.

At the end of each week, I create a handwritten plan for the week – calendar appointments and tasks. (I’ve changed how I do this a little bit, but that link shows the basic practice.)

At the end of each day, I look at my digital work calendar and my digital personal calendar with all their Zoom and Teams invites, and handwrite my appointments for the next day. I also look at my handwritten task list for the weeks, and handwrite the ones I hope to finish the next day.

My task and project lists are handwritten, because it is just too easy for me to get lost in a to-do app which automatically – mindlessly! – populates and replicates and sorts and copies.

No.

I need to do that sorting and copying and revising by hand.

I need to activate my brain to make my real world, real life plans. And this means I need to activate my body, by handwriting my plans down, in physical paper books.

Notes

* I do think the virtual world has a lot to offer people whose bodies don’t allow them to move with ease. For example, being able to write with a dictation app if you cannot use your hands to write, or being able to communicate by using a mouth stick and a tablet.

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Nice article for all who love planners, A Short History of the Daily Planner, by Jillian Hess. Hess is an academic who researches notebooks and note-taking. If you love analog notes and notebooks, and reading notes by notable people, resolve to subscribe to her newsletter this year.

Ahhhhhhh…. the most wonderful time of the year at the Analog Office.

Opening up the new planner!

Clearing out the paid bills and statements from the temporal filing system so my folders are empty and ready for the new year!

It’s the office version of sweeping out the old year, welcoming in the new.

May we all have an excellent 2024.

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References

Braithwaite, S.T. (2023) ‘Hogmanay – A Scottish New Year Tradition,’ 31 December. Available at: https://susantbraithwaite.com/2023/12/31/the-magic-of-hogmanay/ (Accessed: 31 December 2023).

What?

You don’t love filing?

You want to find your household papers but you don’t want to set up an elaborate system?

I find that a little odd, but okay. We all have different interests and abilities, which is what makes this an interesting world.

The simplest filing system would be based on the temporal filing system, and expanding it beyond paid bills.

This is how Annmarie Brogan, co-author of the excellent home organizing book Beyond Tidy, sets up her filing system, since she also does not love spending her time filing. (<< !! still so hard for me to imagine not loving filing!! But I digress.)

To recap the temporal filing system:

Take 12 folders. Label each folder with one month of the year: January, February, March, etc…

Stuff any papers in there, related to that month.

You can put paid bills in there, and also statements. You could even use it as a rudimentary tickler file – got a flyer for an events coming up in December with critical parking information? Stash it in the December folder.

When the year ends, sort through the month folders and pull out everything you want to keep. Write the year on a new folder (or, I just use a big manila envelope). Put everything that you still want to keep into the year folder, discard the rest, and start fresh with your month folders.

Instead of searching through giant random piles of paper, or several, this divides your papers up into twelve sections, organized by month.

Much easier to find things when, instead of one giant random pile (or several giant random piles), you have twelve files, and you can probably guess which month something occurred in, or at least which season of the year. This narrows down your search to three or four folders.

If I got struck by lightning and my brain changed and I no longer loved filing, this is the low-fuss system I would use.

I would combine this with a slow motion recycle bin for things I was undecided about.

I would put things like birth certificates and passports in a fire-safe box (but be sure to air out fire-safe boxes regularly; if it’s too humid in the box, your documents can mildew beyond recognition).

And then I would label a few file folders for more permanent categories like contracts, deeds, insurance policies, etc.

This system will allow you to spend less time filing and still be able to find your papers.

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References

Brogan, A. and Limpert, M. (2020) Beyond tidy: declutter your mind and discover the magic of organized living: 8 powerful principles for creating a life you love. New York, NY: Racehorse Publishing.

Here at Analog Office World Headquarters, we excitedly passed around CJ Chilvers’ essay on the all-around greatness that is the bankers box. Go read it, it is excellent.

And yes: “bankers box” is the correct spelling, no apostrophe; they were originally manufactured by the Bankers Box Company in the early 1900s.

At one time we had hundreds of bankers boxes in our house, when we had to store business records. Since they are so stackable, and in standardized sizes, this was not nearly as bad as it would have been with plastic bins.

Also, I could take a marker and write “DESTROY BY” dates on the outside of the boxes: then we knew exactly which year we could take each box to the commercial shredder. The boxes, being cardboard, could be shredded as well, no need to unload the papers inside. (Most of those boxes were gone after seven years.)

Photo below is a bankers box without a lid, fetchingly posed on the cat tree. (Yes, they are sold with matching lids.)

Check out all the useful information you can write on these to track the contents: box number, box location, destroy by date, from, to – what more would you want to know?

Chilvers covers many reasons why bankers boxes are great: they are sturdy, stackable, unobtrusive, and you can write on them easily.

But you need the right environment to store them.

If you want your bankers boxes to be happy, give them the same conditions as your favorite paper books.

Humidity is the great enemy of paper books and bankers boxes (which are, after all, made of cardboard).

Humidity + paper = mildew and insects. Gross. And smelly. Keep your boxes where they’ll stay dry.

Being paper, they can also be fire hazards. Don’t burn candles next to them, etc. etc.

Watch the sizing of your bankers boxes: letter vs legal.

Bankers boxes, originating in North America, are made for North American paper sizes.

Some bankers boxes are sized to store letter-size paper: 8.5 x 11 inches. And some store U.S. legal-size paper: 8.5 x 14 inches. (A4 paper is longer than U.S. letter-size paper, shorter than U.S. legal-size paper, and narrower than both.)

Look for – TA DA! – the letter / legal size bankers box to cover all your bases.

Also, it is just a nice size to handle and stack anyway.

These boxes’ dimensions are slightly over 11 inches on one side, and slightly over 14 inches on the other.

I leave you with this one weird trick: Stack the box with the narrower side in front to store your letter paper sized files, or turn it a quarter-turn to store your legal paper sized files.

You’re welcome.

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Tip o’ the Fountain Pen

• To CJ Chilvers, whose site and newsletter I enjoy.

References

The Wisdom of the Bankers Box (2023) CJ Chilvers. Available at: https://www.cjchilvers.com/blog/bankers-box/ (Accessed: 25 September 2023).

Gillett-Kaufman, J. (27 May 2016) Why do I always find these silver bugs crawling inside of cardboard boxes? Available at: https://blogs.ifas.ufl.edu/entnemdept/2016/05/27/silver-bugs-inside-cardboard-boxes/ (Accessed: 24 September 2023).

US Paper Sizes - Letter & Legal Paper Format Dimensions (no date). Available at: https://www.papersizes.org/us-paper-sizes.htm (Accessed: 24 September 2023).

Record your processes into lists.

Do this for Future You, when Future You is tired or distracted. It makes a huge difference for your peace of mind.

I used to keep checklists on apps, but realized I didn’t want to turn on a Distraction Machine, I mean, an internet-connected device, every time I wanted to consult a list.

Especially when the point of the list is to keep me focused.

Enter the checklist paper notebook.

This is a notebook I picked up because I liked the feel of the paper, and figured that I would find a use for it.

Also, the cover of this one is screaming yellow. Very easy to spot.

What better for a checklist notebook?

I numbered the pages and set aside some pages for a table of contents and wrote down what I need to do, to keep myself on track.

Remember That Checklists Are Always WIP – Works in Progress

Checklists are records of your processes, and processes change. Recently I changed my job and am updating several checklists for my personal processes.

Keep Checklists Where You Are Actually Using Them

Because I start and end my days at home, I keep these lists in a paper notebook. I have other checklists for work processes, and some are digital.

Set Up Your Checklists to Help Future You, on a Forgetful Day

Your checklists are that friend who says, before you go out the door for a hike, “Hey, you wanna grab the binoculars? We might see a cool bird.”

Your Checklists Are Your Path to Being Peaceful and Unhurried

Let’s make a distinction between being hurried, and being fast.

Checklists make you faster at getting things done, because they help you not to have to re-do something, because you forget a key item.

My natural pace is quite slow, but my checklists ensure that I get things done efficiently and effectively: my checklists are what allow me to live at my own rhythm, my own pace.

But a state of hurry is inevitably a state of mindlessness.

In order to live in an unhurried way, I have to plan ahead, and set physical things up ahead of time, before I do them.

Here is the checklist I follow at the end of the day:

Checklists can bring you a lot of peace.

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Wondering how to manage your paper-based or hybrid paper-digital systems? Ask me a question.

“Hey, Anna,

I’m sold on the Wonderland books. Thinking of getting the all in one so I can have a page for each day. 

Could you share how you use the various spreads? I’m a BUJO noob and every time I search for stuff about planners, I just get Pinterest stuff about pastel art pieces pretending to be time management.”

Ryder Carroll, who started the bullet journal thing, did not use artwork in his. So you can always check out bulletjournal.com for his methods. I also like his book.

I agree that it is difficult to look into planners online, and get nuts and bolts information about planning.

Then I remember that internet search is primarily about delivering advertising, and colorful artwork gets more clicks than unadorned checklists.

Maybe this is why the Wonderland222, the most elegantly functional paper planner I know of, has such a splashy, glitzy, blinky website.

It’s as if you dressed Steve Jobs like Dolly Parton. But underneath, the black turtleneck soul is still under all the sequins, right?

I guess it sells their planners? But then are people surprised when they get a planner with this uber-clean engineer-ish design? ¯\ (ツ)/¯

Let’s talk about bare-bones paper notebook planning. No artwork. No quotes. No stickers or washi tape. No gradient color tabs.

Just you and your task lists and your timelines, squinting down steely-eyed at a pricey paper notebook with grids on it.

Lots of grids!

Yeah!

And numbered pages! And quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily layouts! And timelines and trackers! (Did I mention it has grids? ) That’s what I’m talkin’ bout!

Personally, because I’m so distractible, I’m a bare-bones planner: no artwork, no quotes.

I love journaling and sketching and painting, but I can’t do it in my planners or I WILL get sidetracked. (“Did Harriet Tubman really say that? That sentence sounds like it was lifted from a 21st century therapy session. Lemme just look that up…“)

Bare-bones planning for me means two things:

• I can record what I want to do, and by when, in a given time period (the quarter, the month, the week, the day).

• I can glance at the spread and instantly know the status - I know what has been done, what has been delegated, what has been deferred, and what has been ditched.

This leaves us with lists, calendars and timelines, and a code for statuses.

Lists:

• I keep a separate notebook for those long, long task and project lists, and for thinking through projects or packing lists or upcoming events or what have you. My planner is just for tasks and events for which I can assign to a definite time range, or deadline. Not the someday/maybe stuff.

• I review my task and project lists from the other notebook when I make my plans, and move them into the planner as time permits.

Calendars and timelines:

• Planners, in essence, are calendars in notebook form. Some add room to make task lists, and some add a lot more, like pages for contact information, or goals, or inspirational quotes – but basically, a planner is just a portable calendar in notebook form.

• This is why I pay for the Wonderland222 planner, which is similar to the popular Hobonichi planners, except there are no quotes (but more grids!!!). I don’t want to have to draw calendars and timelines. I also 💖 Hobonichi planners, but the W222 ones – for me – are less distracting.

Code for statuses - the real bujo mojo:

• What makes a bullet journal, a bullet journal, as opposed to a regular planner? The “bullets” in the classic bujo are codes for the status of an appointment or task, so you know at a glance whether something is done, delegated, deferred, or ditched.

• I use my amended version of Patrick Rhone’s Dash-Plus system to know at a glance what’s done, what’s delegated, what’s deferred, and what’s ditched.

What I love about the day pages: You get a whole page for a day, and a timeline running down the side.

For work, I use two pages, one I call the “inbox” for tasks and ideas that come up while I’m working, and the other for a time-blocked daily plan which gets revised through the day as Reality collides which what I thought I’d be doing that day.

I stole this pretty much unaltered from Cal Newport’s excellent time block planning method (watch his video on that page to see how he does it) but I like my fountain-pen friendly planner better than his book.

So there you have it:

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Wondering how to manage your paper-based or hybrid paper-digital systems? Ask me a question.

Notes

This isn’t a review site, and I don’t get any freebies from Wonderland222. I just really like their planners.

References

Carroll, R. (2018) The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future. Illustrated edition. New York, New York: Portfolio.

Cal Newport’s Time Block Planner. Available at: https://www.timeblockplanner.com/ (Accessed: 14 September 2023).

A reader asked me why I use the Johnny.Decimal filing system for my digital folders. He said he had tried it, but it seemed like “overkill” for him, and he wondered why I use it.

Good question, and here’s the short answer:

Instead of a long file path, it gives me a short number.

I can go straight to any document I want with a four-digit number.

But the kicker for me is that, by using a short little number to reference very specific files, I can cross-reference all over the place.

How Cross-Referencing Paper and Digital Files Works in Practice

I started a new job a few weeks ago. I had some materials on paper, given to me by the HR department, and some materials that were electronic.

The paper materials are in my old paper reference file system. The digital materials are in my Johnny.Decimal system (JD# 91.01).

On the front of the paper folder I also wrote down the Johnny.Decimal digital folder for these materials, which is 91.01.

Furthermore I made a folder in my email which I named: 91.01.

Anything related to onboarding with this new job is either: in the digital file on my laptop, 91.01; in the paper file (I don’t use Johnny Decimal numbers for paper; I just cross-reference my old paper systems), or in the 91.01 email folder.

All of this is cross-referenced in my filing index.

You can’t do that so easily with a filepath.

Linking Paper Printouts with Digital Original Files

Also, a Johnny.Decimal number is a great thing to put on the document itself, if you print it regularly. When you hit the last one, you can look at the bottom of the paper and go immediately to the right file to print more.

Every week my husband and I sit down and argue over who’s cooking when, and what we’re making. We use this menu sheet to record the results (and also to know what’s for dinner that night).

The binder tab has the Johnny.Decimal number on it (It’s number 52.01), so when I run out of menu sheets I know exactly where to go in my digital files to print off more.

Note that the footer of the menu also has a cross-reference to where I keep our grocery list (52.02), in case I need to print out more of those.

But, Anna, Isn’t This Actually Overkill? Don’t You Have Any, Ummm, Interests in Life?

I have lots of interests! …but I lurch very much toward interests that generate lots of documents. (My mother tried for years to get me to be “well-rounded,” and play basketball or something. Didn’t work.)

I’m a life-long writer with three blogs, a serial business starter, and the household administrator and family archivist.

For work, among other things, I write sermons and devotionals, use various liturgies, and develop and revise retreats and workshops.

My hobby is reading and writing.

This means I create and track a LOT of documents in my personal system: many more documents and files than is reasonable or desirable for most people.

Why not just use search functions for my files? Because they fail me regularly.

As often as not, I ended up having to hunt manually for the file, which – without your own system in place – can take an unknown amount of time (probably a long and frustrating amount of time; or you just give up.)

I also do not trust the internet to keep stuff * that is important to me.

Many of my documents are in both paper and digital formats. I’m okay with hybrid files; it’s like our hybrid car, that uses both gas and electric.

I use the Johnny Decimal system along with my older personal filing systems for paper materials, to keep track of decades-worth of written materials.

Does this take time?

You bet.

However, I would rather put in small, predictable amounts of time so that I know exactly where something is, versus randomly having to put in larger, unknown amounts of time trying to find something, or reproduce it, or re-obtain it.

Pay now, or pay later.

Confession Time

So… yeah…

Revamping my filing systems was one of my pandemic projects.

This will take time, if you’re planning to do it.

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Wondering how to manage your paper-based or hybrid paper-digital systems? Ask me a question.

Tip o’ the Fountain Pen

* To Robert Rackley, who may or may not keep his post below, permanently online at that particular link.

References

Rackley, R. Link Rot (2023). Available at: https://micro.canneddragons.net/2023/09/04/link-rot.html (Accessed: 7 September 2023).

Assateague Lighthouse Keeper’s Logbook, 1889. Museum of Chincoteague Island. Entries include condition of light, condition of fog signal, and “remarks on the weather”

Just came back from a trip to see my parents, who live about 300 miles away from me. My father has been diagnosed with a serious illness, and my mother asked me to help her get organized to deal with her new household and caregiving responsibilities.

Choosing a Medical Treatment Tracker Notebook

Medical treatment trackers, sometimes also called medical binders or personal medical records books, help patients and/or their caregivers manage the firehose of information that comes with any serious medical condition.

These are NOT classic task and appointment books. They often store information ABOUT appointments, but do not replace your calendar and to-do list.

Think of this kind of notebook as a personal medical chart, with helpful layouts, which allow you to organize all this information without jargon or medico-legal boilerplate.

Before you choose a medical tracker, a medical planner, be clear on what kinds of information you need to manage.

Some are designed for parents, to manage their children’s medical conditions and coordinate with schools.

Some are designed for adults with chronic illnesses, to track routines and treatment plans.

Some are designed for specific illnesses, like cancer, and track surgeries and procedures.

Some are filled with illustrations and personal journaling sections and inspirational quotes; some are more clinical and to the point.

My one recommendation here is to choose a medical tracker where people who actually are living with the same situation or condition you’re dealing with, influenced the design.

In other words: if you are a parent with a child with complex care needs, was this planner designed by parents in similar situations, or REVISED after feedback from parents?

I chose this planner for my father’s situation, because a lot of patients and caregivers coping with the same condition liked this planner. It was also revised at least once based on customer feedback, so this is something real people with this real problem, have used and liked.

I also liked that it was spiral-bound, so it would lay flat when she writes in it; that it had hard laminate covers, so it could bounce around in a tote bag from appointment to appointment; and that it had tabs inside to make the various sections easier to find.

We also added some post-it tabs for my mother to navigate to specific pages.

A well-designed medical care tracker can help you and/or a caregiver manage:

• information around appointments and procedures:
  • contact and address information for the procedure location
  • instructions before the procedure
  • notes about things like where to park and check in for your appointment
  • places for you to write down questions you have for the medical team
• a canonical address book section for all the doctors you are working with, including their specialties, contact information, addresses; pharmacies; durable medical equipment suppliers
• a list of medications, times, dosages
• notes about what worked, what didn’t (e.g. a bad reaction to a medication; good to write down which one it was)

Choosing a Calendar and To-Do List Planner

Right now, my mother also has to manage household tasks and routines that my father normally took care of, before he fell ill.

So we also needed a regular planner for her, with a calendar and to-do lists.

I chose another spiral bound planner that lays flat.

It is large and colorful, so it is easy to find, and has plenty of room to write All The Things.

It has lots of tabs so she can find her way around. (We also added some extra Post-it tabs to make it even easier to navigate.)

This one has monthly spreads and weekly spreads. She can glance at appointments over a whole month, and she also has plenty of room to write things for each day of a week.

I wanted one that she could use right away, that would take her through 2024.

Finally, it has stickers.

My mother loves stickers; and if there is ever a time for ice cream and stickers, it is when you are dealing with a loved one’s serious illness.

Putting It All Together

Why not apps for all this?

My father has everything on apps (he is a retired software engineer), but my mother can’t access them because she is uncomfortable using computers, and right now, his illness is making it difficult for him to focus on apps.

Also, my sister – who lives near them, thank goodness – will be helping them out. She snaps pictures on her phone of pages in the medical tracker or the planner, with any information she wants to have.

Paper planners make that easy to share.

Previously, my mother could keep many things in her head, or just jot down notes on various pieces of scrap paper.

However, major illness comes with major information overload, and after a couple of months of dealing with this, she had lots of scrap paper in lots of places around the house.

After we got the medical tracker and the planner, we went all through the house and gathered:

• medical discharge notes
• printouts from various clinics with appointment times and provider phone numbers
• scraps of paper and notebooks with bits of information on them (phone numbers, appointment times, dosage times, street addresses) - I cross-checked those against the printouts before entering them into the medical tracker
• prescription information
• information for household admin she is now taking over, like getting the cars inspected, and getting the plumber over to repair a leak
• her own appointments, like a dental visit coming up
• insurance and account related information she is now managing

Over about six hours, we managed to transfer all that information into his medical tracker and her planner.

Because she was unsure about getting rid of some of the papers, we also set up two boxes, which we are using as slow motion recycle bins.

One of our slow motion recycle bin boxes is dedicated to medical information related to my father, most of which would go into the medical tracker.

The other is for anything my mother might want to refer to later, that goes into her planner.

That way, she knows she can double-check the papers and – more importantly – has a dedicated place to put new papers as they come in.

She set a time of the day to enter new information into his medical tracker and her planner daily; but the slow motion recycle bins also give her a single, dedicated place to stash papers if she is unable to get around to them right away.

Hopefully this will give my parents a little more peace of mind in a tumultuous time.

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I actually should be paying bills right now, but instead I’m preferring the procrastiductivity of writing about organizing your bills.

But then again, this is a post I’ve been meaning to write for months; so if I’m writing it now, is it still procrastination?

????

!!!!

As we ponder the philosophical knots binding the temporal yet distinct ontological states of producing versus procrastinating, we might seize gratefully upon a fact: Bills and financial statements have expiration dates!

And this means you don’t have to keep them forever.

Whew! That was my Alexander the Great moment, wielding a sharply honed fact to cut through the mental tangles of being and becoming, production and procrastination!

You don’t have to keep bills and financial statements forever.

This means you can file them temporally.

File Paid Bills Under the Month You Pay Them

I have happily been using my paid bills filing system since Alexander the Great sliced the Gordian knot.

Behold the ancient wonder that is my temporal filing system, dating to the last millennium:

(And in the foreground you can see the tax document file jackets for odd and even years.)

These month files are for paid bills, in the current year. Whatever the current year may be.

I have a separate place where I store unpaid bills.

When it’s time to pay the bills, I get my unpaid bills folder.

I pay them online, I print out the confirmation numbers, I staple that to the bill statements. In the rare occasion that I have to write a check, I stamp the date it was paid and write the check number and the amount on the bill statement.

Then – the moment of triumph! – I stuff it all into the month folder.

But, alas, here comes another temporal philosophical conundrum! The bills could be filed by the month that you PAID them, or the month they are DUE.

What’s fastest and easiest for the bill payer? Filing them in the month you PAY them.

When I sit down to pay bills again later this August, some of them will have September due dates.

But if I paid a bill – any bill – in August, I stash it in the August folder. Even if it’s due in another calendar month.

Past due, future due, whatever – that’s the bill issuer’s temporal conundrum, not mine. It’s in the imaginal realm! Like time, itself!

As the bill payer, I don’t care when it’s due; I care about when I paid it.

I can look up when I last paid something in my budgeting program. The budgeting program doesn’t record the due dates. It records when I paid stuff. It’s easier for me to find the statement that way, on the rare occasions I need to check something.

So I file all my paid bill statements by the month I paid them, not by the month they are due.

Put a ‘Destroy By’ Date on Any Statements You Keep After the Current Year Ends

What happens at the end of the year?

At the end of the year they go into the Analog Office archives.

But not the permanent archives! Those are different file cabinets!

They go into the temporal archives file cabinet. This is the one I throw stuff in, that I will eventually take to the shredding company.

Check this out:

See the “Destroy by” date? I keep financial records that are connected with our taxes for seven years. In Year 8, I take them to the shredders.

I also don’t want to look at an envelope and wonder, more than once, when we can get rid of it. So I count the years out on my dainty little fingers one time, and then I write the date we can shred it on the envelope.

You might not want, or need, to keep stuff that long. But writing down a “destroy by” date tells you when you plan to get rid of it.

This “file-by-month (or year) and figure out a ‘destroy by’ date” system is also useful for recurring and regularly outdated things like bank statements and medical insurance payment statements.

You don’t need to keep those forever, either, but you might want to hang onto them for a time.

This system ensures that you won’t hang onto them forever.

… so, then what do you do with financial or legal papers you DO want to hold onto indefinitely, like a contract?

That goes into your reference files. I haven’t written about reference files yet, apart from the life-changing magic of keeping a file index.

I’m planning to, though!

Maybe I’ll get after it the next time I’m supposed to pay the bills….

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Wondering how to manage your paper-based or hybrid paper-digital systems? Ask me a question.

Reference

“Time, Real and Imaginary,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Available at: https://englishverse.com/poems/time_real_and_imaginary (Accessed: 12 August 2023).

Also see: Analog Office - The Simplest Paper File System for using this system if you hate filing, but want a minimal system to help you find papers beyond bills.

“Over the course of this year I have somehow accumulated five notebooks I’m writing in daily. How did this happen? And how do I pare down?”

The idea that we need One Notebook (or at least Fewer Notebooks) to Rule It All is a tempting one.

This reader went on to elaborate that she’s got notebooks for:

• a daily log of things she has done
• a work planner
• a pocket notebook she carries with her at all times – what I would call a capture notebook
• a morning pages journaling notebook
• a shorter format journaling notebook as a gratitude journal

This reader is organizing her thoughts around many different kinds of things!

There are reasons why people end up using multiple notebooks to organize themselves, and reflect on their lives.

These are the same reasons people end up using multiple apps to organize themselves and reflect on their lives.

Let’s say you’ve gone all digital, no paper.

Let’s use our imaginations ✨🌈✨and pretend this was a question about apps. How might somebody pare down the number of apps they were using?

Let’s say you still want to record, remind, reflect, and track the following kinds of information for yourself:

• you want to log the work you’ve done during the day
• you want to track your habits
• you want to keep a calendar
• you want to record and track your projects and tasks
• you want to keep a journal that allows you to write a lot
• you also want to keep a journal that is formatted for you to write brief entries on a focused theme

How many apps would you need to do all that?

And if you’re saying, “Just one,” and you’re talking about Notion or Obsidian, I want to push back a little.

Notion and Obsidian and their counterparts are not simple apps. They offer multiple layouts, multiple ways to organize information for yourself.

They combine the functionality of several apps bundled into one: tables, checklists, text editors, calendars, kanban boards, habit trackers… etc. etc.

It comes down to layouts, to different needs for organizing information.

This is why most people don’t do everything in plain text files.

I suppose you could keep a calendar or budget of some kind with plain text files; but for most of us it’s much simpler to keep a separate digital calendar, and use a spreadsheet or a budgeting app for the money stuff.

Here’s something else about apps: most people, certainly me and maybe you, want them to appeal to you aesthetically, and to be easy to use, and quick to access (is it on your phone, or a laptop? Does it sync between your devices?).

It’s the same thing with notebooks. All of these considerations are true for paper notebooks, as well as digital apps.

If you use paper to organize yourself, you might have several different notebooks.

People choose notebooks for their layouts, for their appealing aesthetic qualities that make them fun to write in, for portability, and for all kinds of other considerations. Just like choosing apps.

And notice how a classic bullet journal relies on the user creating multiple layouts. If you don’t want to handwrite or draw a calendar every month, you might end up with a separate paper planner notebook. Also, I don’t know anyone who keeps a bullet journal who also uses that same notebook for longform daily writing like morning pages.

You are sorting different kinds of thoughts out for yourself from all of these notebooks. You are making plans. You are making records of your activities. You are making sense of your life through writing down your reflections.

So you might be able to pare down; but you might also want to consider, if you were to convert all of this important and valuable thinking you’re currently doing for yourself on paper, to a digital environment, how many apps would you need?

How many apps would you need, to continue capturing your thoughts on the go, to continue keeping multiple (and very different) journals, to continue keeping a calendar and tracking your tasks and projects, to continue keeping a log of your work?

Probably more than one app to do all that, right?

I just now counted up the notebooks I write in daily: right now, it’s eight. EIGHT!!

And there is nothing wrong with that.

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Wondering how to manage your paper-based or hybrid paper-digital systems? Ask me a question.

“How about a post on functioning when (stuff) hits the fan, an unexpected crisis that fills your mind and makes it hard to shift gears? Do you drop balls and give yourself grace, or delegate, or still try to function or something else??”

Oh, you give yourself grace. Always.

You are allowed to be human, you are allowed to have crises, and you are allowed to drop balls and function poorly, or not at all.

In fact, that combination is unavoidable. We are human all the time, and we go through times of crisis on a regular basis.

One of the things crises do is to blow up your normal routines. In the acute phase of a crisis, everything else must be shoved aside to deal with it. Crises disorganize us in part because we don’t have time for regular routines.

We are also disorganized in a time of crisis because often we are dealing with a flood of new information, new decisions, new uncertainties, new tasks.

Crises disorganize us mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually.

So what does that mean when it comes to organizational questions like delegating, functioning, meeting priorities or dropping them?

We all have different ways of dealing with things, so I will simply speak from my own experience here. I hope some of it will be useful in sparking your own thinking about dealing with crises.

When I’m going through a time of crisis, it helps me to remind myself of these things:

1) I remind myself that I AM allowed to be human, and to have a crisis, and to function poorly or not at all sometimes. This is reality. It happens to all of us. Sometimes it’s my turn to have everything fall apart, you know? (Yes, it stinks; and no, we can’t change that, it’s in the Being Human contract.)

2) I remind myself that crises have life cycles. It won’t be this way forever.

3) I remind myself that I have the skills to re-organize myself when I have more energy and time again.

4) And I remind myself of this: Organization is orientation.

That last? The knowledge that organization is orientation? That helps me in crises, too. If something orients me, it is organizing me.

So it’s not about doing everything you did before the crisis hit. It’s about finding your compass and figuring out your new bearings.

Again, I will draw from my own experience in hopes that it might be helpful for others.

I ask myself these questions in a crisis:

“What do I need, right now?”

I learned to ask myself this one when my child had to be hospitalized several times. Usually, I needed a bodily thing that I had forgotten to attend to, in the whirl of events. Question: “What do I need, right now?” The usual answers: “You need a nap, you need to pee, you need to vent or cry with someone, you need something to eat.” We often neglect our basic bodily and social needs in times of crisis. I discovered that I was not better dealing with chaos when I was also hangry.

So you can ask yourself what you need, right now.

“What needs to happen, right now?”

In a crisis our minds are filled with uncertainties and questions and all kinds of new needs. How will we do this, how will I take care of that, what if… and then….? Often the panicky answer is, “A THOUSAND THINGS, a thousand things need to happen right now.” No, they don’t; because they can’t.

But for sure, something out of those thousand things needs to happen next. You need to call back the insurance company; or you need to ask someone else to do it. You need to figure out a place to stay that night. You need to text somebody.

That question, “What needs to happen, right now?” is the one I ask myself to cut through the static.

When I ask myself those questions, I know my priorities at that moment in the crisis. I know what I can drop and what I can delegate.

I am oriented, and therefore I am a tiny bit organized.

After the storm passes, I know how to RE-ORIENT myself to my old routine, or to a new normal.

But, bottom line: in a crisis, first, last, and always, you give yourself grace.

You are allowed to be human, you are allowed to have crises, and you are allowed to drop balls and function poorly, or not at all.

People do it all the time, and the world is still turning.

And it does not mean things will be this way, forever.

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Excellent post on bullet journals from @nofars at which is part of a series on planners. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole series. Writing at Large is a cool site to peruse, analog friends! Includes some great sketches as well.

Some random thoughts in response: like @nofars, I prefer bullet journaling in its earlier, simpler, non-artistic mode, and still use some of that today. That’s what made it do-able for me. I get overwhelmed quickly by too many choices.

re planners with Tomoe River paper, I did a search for that a few years ago, wanting to see if there were alternatives to the Hobonichi planners which I like, but again have a lot of elements that are more than I need.

I’ve found, for me, Wonderland222 planners to be just what I was looking for: fountain pen friendly Tomoe River paper, and a clean-lined, minimalist looking planner that had extremely useful layouts: nicely laid out calendars with time lines, planning pages that allowed for habit and routine tracking, quarterly planning, monthly review and overview pages – just incredibly clean and thoughtful and useful layouts.

Here’s the weird thing: their website is the opposite of their planners.

If I had just looked at the website, which is busy, splashy, colorful, and (to me) confusing, I would have said, “NOPE too much whiz-bang for me.”

I bought my first Wonderland222 through a third party site. It wasn’t until I went to their home site to re-up for the next year that the aesthetic dissonance hit.

Such a visually BUSY website! Behold it here. They have actually toned it down, a LOT. It’s much cleaner and easier to navigate than it used to be.

And such a clean, elegant, useful Tomoe River planner. They have dated, and undated versions, in several useful sizes (A5, A6, B6).

Behold the clean layouts here.

Anyway, I just pre-ordered my 2024 planner and notebook (they have awesome Tomoe River notebooks, undated pages with timelines along the sides) for next year. I get the A5 size, for my big, scrawly handwriting, but you can get smaller sizes as well.

P.S. No conflicts of interest here; this is a personal site, not a review site. These are the planners I buy full-price, as a regular customer, for myself; just sharing what I’ve enjoyed using for the last few years. YMMV, FWIW, all the acronym disclaimers.

Hey Anna,

In the post about weekly planning, you showed your weekly task list, but not a daily list. Do you typically work from the weekly list? Is this akin to Oliver Burkeman’s Open List, or is there a larger Open List somewhere else and this weekly task list is like his Closed List?

What a great question!

Think of an open list as your brainstorming session: What might you do?

Think of a closed list as your reality-based action plan, tied to your calendar and your schedule. What are you going to do, in the time you’ve made available?

This week? Today? For reals? Working from your calendar, and working with a schedule?

You’ve got 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week, and perhaps 4,000 weeks over a lifetime, if you’re lucky.

Just like physical objects occupy your shelf space, tasks occupy your time. Both shelf space and hours in the day are limited.

A closed list just means you have decided what’s on your list of tasks, and that you will not keep adding to it as new things come up during the day.*

You make your list for the day the night before, or first thing in the morning, and anything else that comes up has to wait until another day, or another week.

Mark McGuinness won’t put anything more on a daily list than he can fit on a Post-it note:

“The solution turned out to be counterintuitive: I got more done by making my to-do list shorter. Now, one of my most valuable productivity tools is a stack of Post-it notes. Not the smallest size, but the 3″ x 3″ squares. The top Post-it contains my to-do list for today and today only. Because my day is a limited size, I figure it makes sense to limit the size of my to-do list. If I can’t fit the day’s tasks on the Post-it, I’m not likely to fit them into the day.

“And once I’ve finished the to-do list, I’ve finished work for the day. As a self-employed creative workaholic, after years of feeling there was always something else to do at the end of the day, I can assure you this is a magical feeling. But what about all the rest? All the phone calls, emails, and requests that come in during the day? Not to mention all the new ideas that pop into my head as I work? Good question. There’s a place for all of these things, and that place is the second Post-it on the stack, a.k.a. my to-do list for tomorrow. Unless something is seriously urgent AND important (such as an emergency request from a client), then I never add anything to today’s list once I’ve finalized it first thing in the morning.” ((McGuinness 2016, Kindle location 989-996)

You can make a closed list by:

• limiting the number of items you will add to your list
• limiting the amount of physical space for your list
• limiting the amount of time you will use to complete your list – in other words, setting a quitting time

I use both closed lists and open lists.

Use closed lists and quitting times to tell yourself when you are done with work, and make time for what matters most to you.

I keep open lists, what I call “running lists,” of things I would like to get done.

When I commit to actually doing something, that is where time-based planning comes in. I make quarterly plans, weekly plans, and daily plans.

I look at my running lists (open lists), I look at my calendar and I look at my schedule, and once an item on a list is tied to time – my calendar or my schedule – it becomes a closed list. So my quarterly plans, weekly plans, and daily plans are closed lists.

I think of a closed list like a packing list for a suitcase. There are only so many items I can fit into a suitcase.

And there are only so many items I can fit into a day, a week, or a quarter.

Making closed lists is how I get real about what I can actually do in a day, a week, a quarter.

I don’t think anybody really plans to create a lifestyle of working until they can’t anymore, and then collapsing amidst the robo-babble of screens, while scrolling a phone and half-watching a show.

But keeping open and closed lists, knowing when you are DONE with work for the day, knowing when it is time to stop working, is key to being intentional about your time, to living well.

The two main strategies that help you live the kind of life you want to live, an intentional life, as opposed to a reactive life, are these:

• Be intentional about how much work is enough for the day.
• Invest your time in non-work-related pursuits that are important to you.

The latter point, investing your time in important pursuits outside of work, is well beyond the scope of this post; but this is what I am getting at, when I talk about creating a rule of life for yourself (or a personal framework).

This is what Cal Newport is getting at when he talks about creating a deep life.

This is what Laura Vanderkam means when she emphasizes spending time on the things that matter.

This is what Oliver Burkeman talks about when he points out that we have about 4,000 weeks.

When we’re talking about task lists – weekly planning, daily planning – we want to focus on this idea of enough.

When are you done for the day?

When are you done for the week?

Closed lists and quitting times tell you that.

Then you have time for activities that matter, activities that you don’t get paid for in money; because they are priceless.

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Wondering how to manage your paper-based or hybrid paper-digital systems? Ask me a question.

Notes

* But what if something is urgent? Sure, if something is urgent, you may need to move some stuff on your closed list. It’s not set in stone. But define “urgent.” My definition of “urgent” means it is life or death (which in my job literally happens), or there is blood or fire involved. Otherwise…. it can almost always go on tomorrow’s list.

Some of the material above was adapted from my longer article on setting boundaries around your time and tasks, on annahavron.com. You can find that here: Setting Boundaries for Your Time: You are a Person, Not a Machine (28 May 2021) Anna Havron. Available at: https://www.annahavron.com/blog/you-are-a-person-not-a-machine (Accessed: 5 July 2023).

References

McGuiness, M. (2016) Productivity for Creative People: How to Get Creative Work Done in an ‘Always on’ World. Lateral Action.

Prioritize Your Time By Pretending It Is Money (17 March 2023) Anna Havron. Available at: https://www.annahavron.com/blog/prioritize-by-thinking-of-your-time-as-if-it-were-money (Accessed: 4 July 2023).

Why Have a Values Plan? (26 May 2023) Anna Havron. Available at: https://www.annahavron.com/blog/why-have-a-values-plan (Accessed: 4 July 2023).

Additional Reading on Open and Closed Lists

Burkeman, O. (2021) Four thousand weeks: time management for mortals. First. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. In the appendix, Burkeman writes about open and closed lists, under the heading, “Adopt a ‘fixed volume’ approach to productivity.”

Forster, M. (2008) Do It Tomorrow and Other Secrets of Time Management. London: Hodder & Stoughton.

I hesitate to even post this.

Feelings are strong. Emotions run high. I’m a peaceable woman. I hate courting controversy.

But we must address this.

Okay, Anna: Deeeeeeeeeeep breath.

Do you go with One Notebook to Rule Them All? Everything goes in there? Or do you have lots of different notebooks, each dedicated to very specific purposes?

When it comes to paper notebooks, are you a Lumper, or a Splitter?

That’s such a Splitter question!

Can’t we all just be one in this? All one people, who all love our paper notebooks?

That’s such a Lumper reply.

Lumpers and Splitters

Lumping and splitting is about people’s tendencies toward categorization.

The terms originally come from the field of biology, and these tendencies been commented on ever since.

Here’s how an esteemed conchologist opens his article about lumpers and splitters, before he gets into thoughtful nuances which we don’t care about, while we’re stirring up online controversy:

“Authors are often characterized as lumpers or splitters. From one perspective, splitters recognize more species than really exist, and lumpers go around fixing the resulting damage. From another perspective, lumpers are indiscriminating bunglers incapable of appreciating the subtleties of nature.” (Rosenberg 1996)

Lumpers like to gather things into larger, fuzzier categories. They focus on the commonalities.

Splitters like to separate things into smaller, more fine-grained categories. They focus on the differences.

Lumping and splitting tendencies show up anywhere that categorization shows up.

Lumping and splitting absolutely shows up with information management.

How many notebooks do you need?

How many journals?

How many planners?

Are you a lumper, or a splitter?

xkcd 2518

“One Paper Notebook to Rule Them All”: Some People are Lumpers

“Lumpers” like to throw everything into as few notebooks as possible: preferably, one.

The bullet journal as described in Ryder Carroll’s book, The Bullet Journal Method, is a classic Lumper notebook.

Everything goes into that one notebook: long-term plans, short-term plans, observations, dates, tasks, habit trackers, lists of books you’ve read or movies you’ve seen, lists of books you haven’t read, but want to read, drawings of lemons… in the classic bullet journal system, anything and everything goes into a single notebook.

You keep track of what’s where in a bullet journal, by using a notebook with numbered pages and keeping an index.

When that ONE notebook is filled, you carry over currently relevant information to a new – single – notebook.

One notebook. For all of it.

If this is making you dab the sweat off your forehead, you – like me – might be a Splitter.

“Whoa, Don’t Write THIS in THAT Notebook – THAT Goes in a DIFFERENT Notebook”: Some People Are Splitters

Some people need to keep a work planner separate from their personal planner, for legal reasons. (Many bullet journal discussions online comb over whether or not one should keep a bullet journal for work, and keep a separate one for home.)

But let’s say you are not legally required to keep work notes separate.

Let’s say you can set up your planning system any way you want.

If you use paper planners, and you have a choice, do you have one for work, and a separate one for your personal life?

Splitter.

What about journaling? How many separate dedicated journaling notebooks do you have?

If you’re stopping right now to count: Splitter. (I have six separate journals, in six separate notebooks, with two “pinch hitter” notebooks.)

Here are my notebooks for planning, and ONLY for planning. (Journals not included, drawing books not included, writing notes not included, errands and shopping lists notebooks not included.)

My notebooks:

• capture notebook - the “inbox” notebook
• time and task notebook, organized around quarterly and weekly plans, as well as individual projects
• classic planner notebook for when I need visuals (it has weeks and months laid out)
• day plan notebooks, one for work, one for personal
• checklists
• index cards - when I leave the house I might take an index card with key notes (appts, phone numbers, errand lists)
• pocket notebooks - for notes on the go, which then (if worthy) get entered into the notebooks above

I. Am a SPLITTER!!

There! I said it! Where the WHOLE INTERNET can hear me! Excuse me for a moment while I dab some more sweat off my forehead… splash a little cool water on my face… Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.

It feels so much better to just own who we are, and how we do things, doesn’t it? Liberating.

I am no more able to keep everything in one notebook, than to throw all my forks and knives and spoons higgledy-piggledy into a drawer. For me, the forks go in one slot, the knives in another, and the spoons in still another.

And my daily plans either go into a work notebook, or a personal one. My weekly plans live in a separate notebook, and sometimes I have to think them out with a classic calendar.

Is having one notebook for everything minimalist, or better somehow? I always envied people who could keep their minds straight with just one notebook. But it’s not better if it overwhelms you.

I personally cannot think with one notebook. It all gets jumbled together in my mind. Notebooks to me are like utensil slots: one for this, one for that.

And notebooks are here to help you think. That is what they live for.

If you can think with one notebook at a time, that’s great!

If you think better with multiple notebooks with defined missions, that’s great, too!

The point is to be able to think.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to set up my day plan. In the dedicated Work Day Plan notebook.

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Wondering how to manage your paper-based or hybrid paper-digital systems? Ask me a question.

REFERENCES

Whence Lumpers and Splitters? | National Center for Science Education (2 December 2014). Available at: https://ncse.ngo/whence-lumpers-and-splitters (Accessed: 19 June 2023).

Rosenberg, G. ‘Lumping and splitting’ (1996) coa. Available at: https://conchologistsofamerica.org/lumping-and-splitting/ (Accessed: 19 June 2023).

Carroll, R. (2018) The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future. Illustrated edition. New York, New York: Portfolio.

Lumpers and Splitters (no date) xkcd. Available at: https://xkcd.com/2518/ (Accessed: 19 June 2023).

Most excellent: a reader question today!

“Hello Anna.

I love your blog. I am a computer engineer all into minimalist plain-text productivity methods and applications and I found your tips and tricks fascinating; the perfect couple for my digital organization.

The question: Do you have a method or any kind of resource ready-to-print in order to plan one or two weeks in advance?

Me and my wife want to sit down on Sunday afternoons and plan the coming week and take a peek at the following one (just in case something important is due on Monday and realizing the previous Sunday is not enough). I want to gather all the information contained in my calendar, my TODO list and the recurring tasks (grocery, etc.) and write the week on paper. Do you do something like that?”

This question came just as I was finishing my plans for my own week ahead. Perfect timing!

And yes! I do exactly this.

Although my calendar and some of my lists are digital, I use paper to plan out my week; and I look at two weeks at a time. This way, I’m prepared if something important is happening in the following week.

You make these excellent points about weekly planning:

• You and your wife want to sit down each week, at the end of the week, and work together to look ahead. This is a great practice for any couple, to sit down and touch base with each other before you dive into the next week’s adventures.
• You plan to do this at the end of the current week, BEFORE the next week starts. If we think of this in terms of Monday - Friday workweeks, this is the principle of planning out your week on Friday afternoons; so that when Monday morning comes, you know what you are doing, when, and why. (Mondays are much less stressful that way.) You’ve made the important decisions about the week already, and you can start your week strong by acting on them. Sundays work too, especially for planning with your family.
• You’re pulling information from your calendar, your task list, and recurring tasks to organize your thoughts about the week ahead. It takes all three: time, tasks, and routines.

You want to see the whole week mapped out, time and tasks, and you want to be prepared for something important coming up in the week after.

One week at a time; and yet prepared for the week that follows.

So how might we get all that on paper?

The Big Picture (TL;DR)

When you sit down to plan your week, look out at the next two weeks.

As you write down your plan for the first week, make a space to write down some thoughts about the week after that.

Then, if you see something that you want to be reminded of, make a note to yourself about it in your current weekly plan (e.g. “Conference starts next Monday”)

All the Deets…

Week 1, Week 2: Map Out Your Time and Tasks for This Coming Week, Make Notes for the Week After That

I use a two-page spread that’s a dashboard for the week (Week 1), with a datebook section on the left page of my notebook, and a task list on the right page of my notebook.

In order to get to that dashboard, I give myself places to write down thoughts during the week, for the week to come (Week 2) by making an inbox, and a section for planning notes (any thoughts I have about the puzzle pieces of the upcoming week).

So, it’s four sections: an inbox section, a planning notes section, a datebook section, and a task list section.

Here’s the key: my datebook and task list are for THIS week (or, Week 1). My inbox and planning notes section are for the NEXT week after that (Week 2). I use all of these sections when I plan, but the inbox especially is like a running list for Week 2, the week after the one I’m making the datebook and task list for.

As I write this, it’s the week of June 5.

Below are two pages from my notebook where I’m already doing some pre-planning for the week of June 12. Nothing complicated; just writing down some thoughts as they occur to me.

You might also notice some symbols, triangles and lines; you can read about that system here.

Inbox on the left, planning notes on the right:

To illustrate this post, since I’ve got top secret private stuff in my current week, I wrote up a dashboard for the week of June 12. (But as I write this, I’m actually using my dashboard (datebook + task list) for the week of June 5.)

Datebook on the left; task list on the right. (Note: I haven’t really planned this week out fully yet; I just jotted down a few things so you can see what the datebook and task list looks like.)

Oh, hey! Do you see that little box at the end of the Datebook page, circled in orange? The one that says “Looking Ahead”?

That’s where I write notes about the NEXT week (Week 2). This way, if I have an important Monday meeting, or something else we need to be aware of in the coming week, it is written down in the current week. (For the week of June 19, we might have visitors. Cool! …and I guess we need to tidy the house. Oh well. Maybe we can do some of that during the week of June 12.)

So I plan my weeks using four different sections, which can be separate pages, or separate sections on the same page. Our four sections are:

• an inbox - like a grocery list, a running list; just throw stuff in there, you’ll sort it out later
• planning notes - record your more focused, deliberate, strategic thinking here about managing the coming week (on mine in the photo above, I noted that on Wednesday, June 14, I have meetings all day, so I want to focus on desk work earlier in the week)
• a datebook - list out all your appointments and hard deadlines for that week (not wishful thinking, though: your real deadlines, with real-world consequences if you miss them)
• a task list - things you want to do that week that are not as time-sensitive

Map Out Your Current Week to a Dashboard: Datebook and Task List (Week 1)

Let’s say you and your wife are sitting down on Sunday, June 11, to plan the week of June 12.

If it’s Sunday, June 11, and you start your weekly plans with Mondays, then Monday, June 12 now becomes Week 1.

This is where you and your spouse check: your calendars, task lists, routines, and the Inbox and any Planning Notes you made, labeled with the dates for the week you are planning now. You’re using your Inbox and Planning notes dated for the week of June 12 (and other calendar and to-do list items relevant to the week of June 12) to map out your datebook and task list for June 12 - 18.

Plan Ahead, for the Week Ahead: Inbox and Planning Notes (Week 2)

Make an inbox this week dated for NEXT week (Week 2), to consult during your planning session for the week after this (Week 2). Throw anything in there: dates, tasks, notes to self.

You can also make a planning notes section for next week (Week 2), OR you can wait to write out your planning notes when you both actually sit down to think about the week.

This is your strategy section for the week.

For example, since you’re planning together as a couple, does one of you have evening meetings that week, and what does that mean for dinner? Are there travel dates anyone has to work around? Does somebody’s car have to go into the shop, and what does that mean for transportation routines? Can you make time this week for tackling a longer term project? Etcetera. Use this Planning Notes section to think through this stuff.

The Inbox section is for collecting your thoughts on the fly (“Ooooh, I need to mail that package next week”).

The Planning Notes section is for organizing your thoughts (“Car’s in the shop on Monday, so I’ll have to take the package on Tuesday.”)

While you’re sitting down to plan the week of June 12 (which now becomes Week 1), start an Inbox and a Planning Notes section for the week of June 19 (which now becomes Week 2). Now you have a place to put those thoughts, which will be ready for you to consider on Sunday, June 18 as you plan the week of the 19th.

Other Notes About Datebook Sections, Task Lists, Routines

The datebook is for appointments and hard deadlines. (Like my taxes being due on the 15th.)

I don’t put wishful thinking in my date book section. (That goes in the task list and planning notes sections! 😂)

It would be lovely if I could get my desk work done on Monday and Tuesday, but that’s not a hard deadline.

However, the cat going to the vet on Wednesday? My quarterly taxes due on Thursday? That goes on the date book side, because there are real world consequences if I forget that stuff.

The task list is of course, the to-do list for that week.

What about routines?

You could, if you like, write them down in the datebook; but I keep my weekly routines as a separate checklist. (I like my datebook to be uncluttered and only to have stuff that must be done, on those dates.)

Sometimes I print routine checklists out and store them in page protectors in a 3-ring binder, and use a dry-erase marker to check things off.

…and, Here Is a Printable to Help You Plan Your Week

Is it beautiful?

No.

Is it functional? Maybe! Try it out!

This PDF printable includes sections for:

• Inbox
• Planning Notes
• Datebook
• Tasks
• and, bonus, a Weekly Routines Checklist

Download it here, and enjoy!

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Wondering how to manage your paper-based or hybrid paper-digital systems? Ask me a question.

For a few years I used Ryder Carroll’s bullet journal system, and the bullets — the symbols — were especially helpful.

Since then, however, I switched to a set of symbols that works better for me.

Here’s my adaptation of Patrick Rhone’s elegant Dash Plus system:

I sacrificed some of Patrick’s elegance in using dashes as the baseline for everything.

I wanted to keep using my old symbol for meetings, which looks like a caret ^ when I haven’t yet attended them, and looks like a triangle when I have.

These symbols make it easy for me to see at a glance what’s going on.

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Wondering how to manage your paper-based or hybrid paper-digital systems? Ask me a question.

Notes

This post was adapted and updated from a longer post, “To Do Lists for Visual Thinkers,” on annahavron.com

…and seeing as I keep using and writing about Patrick’s system, I bought him a coffee. Thanks, Patrick! Your system is awesome. I can even see it without my glasses.

References

‘The Dash/Plus System’ (2014) Patrick Rhone, 13 September. Available at: https://patrickrhone.com/dashplus/ (Accessed: 7 June 2023).

Filing systems for personal, household files don’t get much love from people who write about household organizing. Most books dealing with household organization brush it off in a page or two, and it often comes down to something like this:

“Throw out all your papers! Go electronic! With the six papers that are left over, file them alphabetically!”

Marie Kondo, in her first book, advised people to dump most of their papers. (GASP!)

Certainly, if you don’t keep papers, you won’t need an excellent filing system.

But what if you do want to keep a lot of papers, AND find them quickly?

Some people collect Lego sets, or porcelain tea cups. I create and collect documents, both paper and electronic. And I know I am not alone in this.

I like being able to pull out papers like my handout for folding and cutting a six-pointed paper snowflake (I forget how to do this every year); or the brochure that came with my split mechanical gaming keyboard* that tells me how to reset the programming, after I mistype and inadvertently create a macro; or the gift passes to a cool local museum when friends visit.

And I like being able to do that QUICKLY: go to my file cabinet, pull out the gift passes, done. No rummaging through piles or having to pay entrance fees for our guests because I couldn’t find the passes.

This is where decent filing systems come in.

I’ll be writing more about some ways to file paper reference materials (this IS after all, the Analog Office) but today I want to focus on:

• the need
• the genius
• the beauty, and
• the brilliance of a digital document that most people at home don’t keep: a file index.

A file index is your Where Is It? document for your files.

It’s like a table of contents for your filing system.

Choose: Invest Predictable, Regular, Short Periods of Time?

Or, Lose: Long, Stressful, Unpredictable Periods of Time (And Money)?

When you can’t find a paper, you lose an unpredictable amount of time running around and looking through piles, and you also lose sometimes significant amounts of money, because some papers are stand-ins for money (guest passes at the museum); or cost you time and money to replace (deeds, titles).

A file index will take a little time to set up, and small amounts of predictable time to maintain. So it is a trade-off.

But I would rather spend a little time to have zero anxiety about finding my papers when I want and need them.

So I spend small, predictable amounts of time entering information into my filing index.

Why Filing Indexes Work So Well

Say you have a paper policy from Zenith Auto Insurance, and say you want to file this alphabetically.

Where does it go? What comes to mind for you, if you were looking for it? Where would you put it?

File it under “Z” for Zenith? Or, “A” for Auto? Or maybe, “I” for Insurance?

But maybe you think of it as car insurance.

How about “C” for Car insurance?

If you file it under “I” for insurance, do you keep your health insurance information in there too? Renter’s or homeowners insurance, does that go there too?

You could; you could have a folder for, “Insurance, Car” and another folder for “Insurance, Health,” and another for, “Insurance, Renters.” Or, you could put health insurance under “H” or even “M” (medical!)… and so on, and so on… aaaargh….!

Enter the file index.

File indexes can be – and indeed of course used to be – analog, but I recommend using a digital format because:

✨ You want it to be searchable. ✨🎉

It’s also a good idea to figure out how you will make your file index accessible to others.

Because I want my husband to be able to find important household files, I print the file index out whenever I update it, so he can have a way to find things in case he can’t get into my computer. You could also share the document and keep it all online, or print out instructions for how to access it in case someone else needs to.

Make Your Own File Index

For your file index, you can use a spreadsheet, a notes program, a single document – as long as it is searchable, and you have a way to share access if these are household files that someone else may need.

It doesn’t matter where the insurance paper goes. It could be under any letter you want.

It matters that you record your decision on a document that maps out where you put your files.

Let’s say you decide that your Zenith Auto Insurance Policy goes under “C” for “Car Insurance.”

So you record on the file index:

Location; Topic or General Description; Keywords

• “Location” = the section of the physical file system you need to look in. What is it filed under? That’s your location. For an alphabetical file system, it will be a letter.

• “Topic or General Description” = what you call the document; the first phrase that comes to mind when you are looking for the document: if you think of it as your car insurance policy, write “car insurance policy” here

• Keywords = MAGIC!! when combined with ✨ search functions 🎉

Filing can be frustrating because often we think of multiple terms for our files. (This happens a lot in homes, less for businesses with structured file naming conventions.)

I might think of it as the “car insurance policy,” my husband might look for “Zenith.”

So with keywords, you list any words that you might think of when looking for the document, that are not already named in your topic section, above. For this one, you might list: “Zenith, auto, policy, policies, automobile, registration, proof of insurance.”

Next level: after keywords, if you have a digital file that corresponds to the paper one, put in the location for the digital file.

Find it all, with file indexes.

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Wondering how to manage your paper-based or hybrid paper-digital systems? Ask me a question.

NOTES

* I’m not a gamer, but my son recommended this split keyboard to me, and it is AWESOME. Shifting rainbow color backlighting, Cherry MX mechanical key switches (whatever that means, I’m reading from the brochure that I quickly and easily pulled from my files), but the best thing is that I no longer have wrist pain. Plus, the cat can hang out in the middle.

Why Have a Values Plan? annahavron.com

Sharing the talk I gave at Micro Camp last week.

Bonus: Find out the real reason behind the Chartreuse shortage.