Physical Filing System

danrneal

Registered
Most of my life is digital and I like having things in the cloud. So far, I've gotten away without having a physical filing cabinet. However I do have a "file box" from my pre-gtd days. This file box is in disarray and I want to improve the situation and make it more functional. I thought about buying an HON filing cabinet and going full David Allen with manila folders. However, there are advantages to having a file box instead of a file cabinet. I really like that it is portable, if there is a disaster and we need to evac (we've lived in places with hurricanes, floods, and fires.... currently it's only fires that are a threat :)), it is really nice to have a box that holds all of our important physical docs. And given that I don't have a ton of physical things to fill a cabinet with, I'm leaning toward getting a bigger box with better folders. Most boxes have hanging folders which I would just use the trick of putting a single manila folder in each hanging folder.

I guess my question would be, do you think this is sufficient? Or as I progress with GTD am I going to outgrow my box too quick and need a cabinet? Do any other digital-natives else use a similar setup and how do you like it?
 

mcogilvie

Registered
I don’t think you can count me as digital-native: at the time I was born, the pony express was considered instant messaging. I still have two filing cabinets of paper, but they get added to very slowly, and accessed infrequently. When I was handling my father’s estate, I bought a plastic filing box for the relevant docs, which was sufficient and usefully portable. Good quality filing cabinets are expensive and heavy. If you separate your filing into, say, money and everything else, two plastic filing boxes might be enough for a long time. They are much cheaper than quality filing cabinets; if you need 3 or more boxes, then consider a full-size filing cabinet.
 

John Forrister

GTD Connect
Staff member
I guess my question would be, do you think this is sufficient? Or as I progress with GTD am I going to outgrow my box too quick and need a cabinet? Do any other digital-natives else use a similar setup and how do you like it?
If I were in your place I'd probably get a bigger box, and be prepared to get a file cabinet only if the box gets too cramped. I relate to the portability, especially if you have to evacuate. My wife and I went through enough of those that we put flags on the 3–4 files that we would take so we could grab them from the top of the two-drawer cabinet in seconds. We also had an evacuation checklist, including a copy taped to the door of the garage where we could do a final check before backing the car out.

We still have a two-drawer file cabinet, but we're only using half of one drawer for files. The rest is for storage of other items. Now you've got me rethinking whether a file box and a separate storage cabinet would be more useful.
 

TesTeq

Registered
We still have a two-drawer file cabinet, but we're only using half of one drawer for files. The rest is for storage of other items. Now you've got me rethinking whether a file box and a separate storage cabinet would be more useful.
@John Forrister I've got four-drawer file cabinet and I think it discourages me from yearly pruning. I think I will reorganize it to have one drawer for active files and the rest for an archive.
 

mcogilvie

Registered
@John Forrister I've got four-drawer file cabinet and I think it discourages me from yearly pruning. I think I will reorganize it to have one drawer for active files and the rest for an archive.
Like a computer storage facility, where you move towards tape storage as data ages. In my case, the slowest retrieval is from our basement. I’m trying to be better about not putting stuff there in the first place.
 

John Forrister

GTD Connect
Staff member
@John Forrister I've got four-drawer file cabinet and I think it discourages me from yearly pruning. I think I will reorganize it to have one drawer for active files and the rest for an archive.
Yes indeed, that's the downside to having extra filing space. And it shows up for me even more with digital files. External drives that hold many terabytes are my equivalent of the @mcogilvie basement.
 

Murray

Registered
I was just reading last night about the Wayback Machine internet archive which is now in the tens of petabytes of storage.

Edit: "A single copy of the Internet Archive library collection occupies 99+ Petabytes of server space (and we store at least 2 copies of everything)"
 
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Murray

Registered
For perspective, and to make a link to the topic of the original post:

"one Petabyte is equal to 1,000 Terabytes. Some estimates hold that a Petabyte is the equivalent of 20 million tall filing cabinets or 500 billion pages of standard printed text."
 

mcogilvie

Registered
For perspective, and to make a link to the topic of the original post:

"one Petabyte is equal to 1,000 Terabytes. Some estimates hold that a Petabyte is the equivalent of 20 million tall filing cabinets or 500 billion pages of standard printed text."
Or it’s 1024 terabytes. A page of text is abut 2K, so 500 giga-pages times 2K bytes per page is 1 terabyte. In all these sorts of calculations, one treats 1024 as essentially the same as 1000. A 1 terabyte drive can hold around a million books, but only hundreds of movies.
 

schmeggahead

Registered
Most boxes have hanging folders which I would just use the trick of putting a single manila folder in each hanging folder.
With 2 4-drawer large filing cabinets, a 3 drawer credenza and a desk drawer, I would hardly call myself an online native ;).

The thing about it is, much of it was created before I really understood how to organize a reference system. It carried over into my on-line storage. So I have had to create a "Clean" folder to migrate electronic files that have been properly filed for retrieval in my reference system.

We have already moved important documents into a fireproof 2-drawer filing cabinet/safe (another filing cabinet o_O). it also contains a disconnected drive with a monthly backup of our online files.

My goal: Get rid of the 2 4-drawer filing cabinets (freeing up two closet spots).

Incidentally, I have a 12" deep file box that I use to pull items for sorting and relabeling (mostly tossing). It works well to not put hanging folders inside. Two other larger ones also work fine without hanging folders because they have ridges on the bottom that keep the files from sliding forward.

If I were in your pristine shoes, when that file box started to get a little tight, I would scan that box for item relevance or need to keep on paper before expanding to 2.

Cheers!
Clayton.

You don't own possessions, they own you - Anonymous.
 

John Forrister

GTD Connect
Staff member
I have just thought of another feature of our two-drawer file that is important to us. The file cabinet locks. We use this when we go on a trip and have a housesitter. I just did a search starting with "file box" and one of the first options was "file box with lock." So a file box is still an option for us.
 

Oogiem

Registered
I just did a search starting with "file box" and one of the first options was "file box with lock." So a file box is still an option for us.
Just keep in mind that even someone with little to no skills in lockpicking can easily defeat the lock on a portable filebox. They are laughably simple to open.
 

gtdstudente

Registered
Simply, Two two-drawer File-Cabinets [two . . . and . . . two under both ends of work 'desk' surface] for self-evident productivity:
Each draw serves each of the Four Areas of Focus: Divine, Health, Utility/Tools, and Fiscal
Four colored Support Folders [Divine, Health, Utility/Tools, and Fiscal] in an Open-Wire File-Folder Holder to serve Projects and Next-Actions. Ps. Thinking an evacuation Handled File-Case would be prudent
 
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