Comments on: How to Make an Insanely Simple Paperless Filing System

By: Mark Shead

Mark Shead — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 14:15:15 +0000

@Stephane – You could setup something similar with WebDAV folders or using something like http://www.getdropbox.com

By: Stephane

Stephane — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 10:40:09 +0000

Thanks for the great post and comments. Any ideas on how to apply this in a collaborative process, ie. a group of people working on the same project from different location. Thanks.
Stephane. France

By: Simon Sherbourne

Simon Sherbourne — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 05:27:46 +0000

I’d definitely recommend using Evernote instead of this system. It will automatically take care of syncing and OCR, and you can use tagging instead of folders.

By: Marina Martin

Marina Martin — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 03:39:15 +0000

Why would you create A-Z folders when your category folders are automatically sorted alphabetically? They add an unnecessary layer of complexity.

By: Jean G.

Jean G. — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 18:37:14 +0000

I use an app called Evernote, which has a free web version. I like it well enough that I quickly paid for the full desktop version, which is not expensive. There is an iPhone app, it has tagging and full text search, and there’s a bookmarklet for saving web pages or parts of them. For me, it is replacing stickies and a million bits of paper.

By: Daniel Vasilios Nielsen

Daniel Vasilios Nielsen — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 06:18:55 +0000

I should ad that Apple soon will have an app out for iPhone/iPod Touch that will let you access your iDisc from everywhere… That just makes it alot sweeter.

By: Daniel Vasilios Nielsen

Daniel Vasilios Nielsen — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 05:28:26 +0000

Pretty amazing.

I made an almost similar system after reading GTD. It currently resides on my mobileme iDisk thingy and is being synced locally to all the machines I’m at.

I only put in stuff that i “can print and take with me” PDF, TXT, Word, excel, etc. That way I can at anytime print out everything and put it in my real life folders if need for some reason arise.

Love your site!

By: Arif Vakil

Arif Vakil — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:49:38 +0000

Arjun,

Thanks once again, this is really a simple and brilliant system. I did try it out for a couple of days. But then hit one major snag, which seriously hampered my productivity.

My biggest stumbling block was that Quicksilver was not drilling down in applications anymore. What I mean is that now I just have to fire-up quicksilver. Press MM (for eg.), to bring up Mind Manager. Then when I scroll right, I get to see all the latest Mindmaps that I have opened. I just have to scroll down to the file I want and hit enter.

When I recategorise my files as per the above system, and hit the right key, I can’t see my latest files anymore. Is this a temperory setback? Will Quicksilver learn the new filing system. Or is that a feature of Quicksilver I’ll not be able to use with the above system.

Thanks Arjun. Looking forward to your reply.

Arif

ps. You mentioned earlier in the same post that you’ve got a hanging folder for each letter for your physical storage system. Would you have a pic of that uploaded anywhere? or a similar pic? Mine is quite different, although it’s Alpha-sorted, I have a hanging folder for every topic. It works for me, however, would love to see how your system is.

Pps. Which part of India are you from?

By: Arjun Muralidharan

Arjun Muralidharan — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:27:44 +0000

Claude, check out this post I wrote in reply to your question:

http://www.theproductivestudent.com/featured/creating-a-productive-folder-setup/

By: Claude

Claude — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 05:02:54 +0000

Hi Mark/Arjun

A few questions if I may: Where did you put your inbox? on the desktop? How did you change the “Downloads” folder to become “Inbox”? Where did you put your “active Projects” folder.

I love this way of doing things. I’ve been experimenting with this for a while and I have now created an A-Z structure. I hit a snag with the Downloads folder- I cannot change the name. I get stuff from the browser (Safari) Mail and the scanner.

Thanks a lot for reading me

Claude

By: Arif Vakil

Arif Vakil — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 10:08:50 +0000

Thanks for the reply Arjun. Much apprecited!

By: Arjun Muralidharan

Arjun Muralidharan — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:36:54 +0000

@Arif: Filing webpages is really something I’m still figruing out myself. I think personally I’m tending towards bookmarks, but if that isn’t an option, try just saving the whole page into your system, using Command-S or Ctrl-S.

If it’s something you’ll still read, don’t file it, take it to your “Inbox” or other folder for pending items and such.

Dennis Best goes a bit further:
http://dennisbest.org/bookmarkin

As for your snippets, I would recommend just using text files. They’re portable, stable and just an awesomely simple file format that doesn’t ask you for money or crash on you.
I personally invested in a good text editor like TextMate (because I practically live inside TextMate) but anything else will do. Then file it into the system, of course.

@Chanel: Glad you like the idea. Be sure to check out http://www.theproductivestudent.com/ !

@Mandar Vaze: For Windows tagging, a google search got me this:

http://lifehacker.com/software/featured-windows-download/tag-and-organize-your-files-quickly-with-tag2find-270662.php .

As for the folder system, you absolutely get the idea. But remember that looking manually is second practice if you have Windows Vista or OS X, I usually trust the internal search to find things quickly.

You could try Google Desktop for XP to get a similar search utiltiy, though I find it rather bloated software that takes over your desktop.

By: Mandar Vaze

Mandar Vaze — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 03:21:06 +0000

I guess it would have helped if I had told you I’m stuck on Windows
Know any tagging software for windows ? (XP to be specific)

Technically there are more than 25 other places to look, since each alphabet directory will have sub folders in them too. But I get your point. (If I’m looking for tax returns under “F”, I should not be looking at “fun”, I’ll only check under “finances”)

By: Chanel

Chanel — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 22:26:34 +0000

Just converted my very messy MBP (as I tell everyone: I use my Mac like a Windows!) into this system, and I *love* it. Thank you so much for the idea!

By: Arif Vakil

Arif Vakil — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:38:53 +0000

Thanks for this Great post Arjun. I would love to adapt my system to match more like the one you described, however, I’ve got a couple of questions though:

- What do you do with Websites or blog posts that you really like which you’d like to read later or use some information in there for reference some other day. If bookmarking were not an option how and where would you save these?

- Also what about snippets of thoughts and notes, where would that go? For eg. I’m in the real-estate business, so somebody called me and gives me the following info for a particular property, there’s no action on this item, but wouldn’t like to lose it:
property details:
Belgaum
40,000 sft
Fsi: 2:1
Retail
Rental income
Rs. 100 per sft
Levis, coffeeday, reebok

Would you make a file/folder for every snippet of info?

Thanks once again Arjun!

Cheers,
Arif

Bangalore, India