The Joys of Filing
Practically everyone must deal with the thrilling joys of filing. Whether it be your personal filing cabinet at home or the gargantuan one at the office, the tabs, manila folders, labels and the paper cuts always make for an extremely enjoyable experience.
With all the documents, bills, and contracts that we keep, our files grow thicker, and storage space becomes scarce. Yet we still have this burning need to hold on to every piece of paper that crosses our path – it might turn out to be important! Audits are always possible and it’s important to go back to your contracts – even with the water supplier for the office water cooler – to make sure you aren’t being slapped with extra fees. What is perhaps the worst problem is locating the file you have been saving for JUST that occasion, yet you can’t find it in your jam-packed file drawers.
Store Your Files Electronically
As always, technology to the rescue! Scanning technology has significantly improved to the point that is possible to make perfect copies. Scanning your files gives you so many advantages that it would be silly not to. But scanning is simply not enough. Who wants to sit down after they have scanned all the office files and organize them into folders and subfolders for easy retrieval? While its true, with windows search and Google desktop, that sort of electronic organization might be really great, but there has to be, and there is, a much better way.
Technology to the rescue! (Did I use that line already?) Evernote is a really cool piece of software that can search images and recognize text. It’s primary usage is sort of a pictorial list, helping your remember things you would have otherwise forgotten. If you take a picture with your digital camera, you can set it up to be sent to your evernote account, ready and able to be searched. For instance, if you are at a friend’s house and watched a great movie or saw a book you were interested in, simply snap a photo of the dvd and Evernote will keep it for you. That way, if you search for “Hitchcock” the dvd picture will come, and you can now see the title.
In our case though, after you scan your files, Evernote has the ability to search through your scans and find the exact one that you are looking for. Maybe as an added measure, simply tag your files and use some basic electronic organization, but Evernote should be able to help you retrieve your files quickly and painlessly. It’s so useful and easy that it would be silly not to use this software.
A Quick and Painless Solution
When you need the document in physical form, simply reproduce it by clicking the print button. Additionally, if you are shy about tossing out your files, toss them in boxes and put them in storage so that you always have the original documents.
Make sure to start this process now, so that you do not accumulate files as you go along. And if you are interested in converting all of you old files electronically, the task can be outsourced accordingly. If all you have is a few filing cabinets, college students are always available.
It is not difficult to make sure your electronic files are secure – your computer should already be using software for protection. Perhaps more on that in another post…
A little movie about Evernote:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_ncr1Ee9e8&eurl=http://evernote.com/]
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