GettingThings Done. The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

everything by topic, project, person, or company, so it can be in only three or four places if you forget exactly where you put it. You can usually put at least one subset of topics on each label, like 'Gardening— pots' and 'Gardening— ideas.' These would be filed under G.

Currently I have four file drawers for my general-reference files, and each is clearly marked on the outside —'A-E,' 'F-L,' and so on—so I don't have to think about where something goes once it's labeled.

Every once in a while someone has such a huge amount of reference material on one topic or project that it should be put in its own discrete drawer or cabinet. But if it is less than a half a file drawer's worth, I recommended including it in the single general alphabetical system.

Have Lots of Fresh Folders I keep a giant stack of fresh, new file folders instantly at hand and reachable from where I sit to process my in-basket. Nothing is worse than having something to file and not having an abundance of folders to grab from to make the process easy. At any given time I want to have an inventory of almost half a file drawer full of unused or reusable folders. Rule of thumb: reorder when the number drops below a hundred.

Keep the Drawer Less Than Three-Quarters Full Always try to keep your file drawers less than three-quarters full. If they're stuffed, you'll unconsciously resist putting things in there, and reference materials will tend to stack up instead. If a drawer is starting to get tight, I may purge it while I'm on hold on the phone.

I know almost no one who doesn't have overstuffed file drawers. If you value your cuticles, and if you want to get rid of your unconscious resistance to filing, then you must keep the drawers loose enough that you can insert and retrieve files without effort.

Some people's reaction to this is 'I'd have to buy more file cabinets!' as if that were something horrible. Help me out here. If the stuff is worth keeping, it's worth keeping so that it's easily accessible, right? And if it's not, then why are you keeping it? It's said that we're in the Information Age; if there's any validity to that, and if you're doing anything that hinders your usage of it... not smart. 

You may need to create another tier of reference storage to give yourself sufficient working room with your general-reference files at hand. Material such as finished project notes and 'dead' client files may still need to be kept, but can be stored off-site or at least out of your work space.

Label Your File Folders with an Auto Labeler Typeset labels change the nature of your files and your relationship to them. Labeled files feel comfortable on a boardroom table; everyone can identify them; you can easily see what they are from a distance and in your brief-case; and when you open your file drawers, you get to see what looks almost like a printed index of your files in alphabetical order. It makes it fun to open the drawer to find or insert things.

Perhaps later in this new millennium the brain scientists will give us some esoteric and complex neurological explanation for why labeled files work so effectively. Until then, trust me. Get a labeler. And get your own. To make the whole system work without a hitch, you'll need to have it at hand all the time, so you can file something whenever you want. And don't share! If you have something to file and your labeler's not there, you'll just stack the material instead of filing it. The labeler should be as basic a tool as your stapler.

Get High-Quality Mechanics File cabinets are not the place to skimp on quality. Nothing is worse than trying to open a heavy file drawer and hearing that awful screech! that happens when you wrestle with the roller bearings on one of those $29.95 'special sale' cabinets. You really need a file cabinet whose drawer, even when it's three-quarters full, will glide open and click shut with the smoothness and solidity of a door on a German car. I'm not kidding.

Get Rid of Hanging Files If You Can At the risk of seriously offending a lot of people who are already using hanging files, I recommend that you totally do away with the hanging-file hard-ware and use just plain folders standing up by themselves in the file drawer, held up by the movable metal plate in the back. Hanging folders are much less efficient because of the effort it takes to make a new file ad hoc and the formality that imposes on the filing system.

Here's an e-mail I received recently from a senior manager who actually took my advice after avoiding it for a couple of years because of his investment in the hanging hardware:

Your system is FANTASTIC!! I've completely redone my files at home and at work—it only took a combined four days to do it, but I've done away with Pendaflex and have gone to the manila folder system, with A-Z and nothing else. WOW! It's so much easier. My desk for some reason is a lot neater, too, without those stacks of 'to be filed' stuff hanging around!

But If You Can't . . . Many people are stuck with the hanging-file system, at least at work, because side-opening hanging-folder filing cabinets have become standard corporate issue. If you have to work with hanging files, then I recommend that you:

• Label the files, not the hangers. That lets you carry the file folders for meetings and when traveling, without taking the hanger.

In the fire zone of real work, if it takes longer than sixty seconds to file something, you won't file, you'll stack.

• Use only one file folder per hanger.This will keep the drawer visually neat and prevent the weirdness that results when multiple files make a hanger uneven. Having to recalibrate files in an alpha system every time a folder gets full is too much trouble.

• Keep a big supply of plain hangers and new file folders in the front of your first file drawer so you can make new files and store them in a flash. 

Purge Your Files at Least Once a Year Cleaning house in your files regularly keeps them from going stale and seeming like a black hole, and it also gives you the freedom to keep anything on a whim 'in case you might need it.' You know everything will be reassessed within a few months anyway, and you can redecide then what's worth keeping and what isn't. As I say, I purge my files while I'm on hold on the phone (or marking time on a conference call that's dragging on and on!).

I recommend that all organizations (if they don't have one already) establish a Dumpster Day, when all employees get to come to work in sneakers and jeans, put their phones on do-not-disturb, and get current with all their stored stuff.[5] Dumpsters are brought in, and everyone has permission to spend the whole day in purge mode. A personal Dumpster Day is an ideal thing to put into your tickler file, either during the holidays, at year's end, or around early-spring tax-preparation time, when you might want to tie it in with archiving the previous year's financial files.

One Final Thing to Prepare . . .

You've blocked off some time, you've gotten a work area set up, and you've got the basic tools to start implementing the methodology. Now what?

If you've decided to commit a certain amount of time to set ting up your workflow system, there's one more thing that you'll need to do to make it maximally effective: you must clear the decks of any other commitments for the duration of the session.

If there's someone you absolutely need to call, or something your secretary has to handle for you or you have to check with your spouse about, do it now. Or make an agreement with your self about when you will do it, and then put some reminder of that where you won't miss it. It's critical that your full psychic attention be available for the work at hand.

Almost without exception, when I sit down to begin coaching people, even though they've blocked out time and committed significant money to utilize me as a resource for that time, they still have things they're going to have to do before we quit for the day, and they haven't arranged for them yet in their own systems. 'Oh, yeah, I've got to call this client back sometime today,' they'll say, or 'I have to check in with my spouse to see if he's gotten the tickets for tonight.' It bespeaks a certain lack of awareness and maturity in our culture, I think, that so many sophisticated people are ignoring those levels of responsibility to their own psyche, on an ongoing operational basis.

So have you handled all that? Good. Now it's time to gather representatives of all of your open loops into one