Link: The Noguchi Filing System is a way to organize the paper in your life without requiring that you categorize it. Basically, you use “pockets” to hold everything and place them vertically on a shelf. Whenever you need something from a pocket, you remove it from it’s place and place it back on the shelf as the leftmost pocket. This means that, over time, all of your frequently used pockets will be on the left and the least used pockets will be on the right.
This would never work for me. It assumes that you only really care about knowing where your most frequently used files are: the rest of the files are not filed, regardless of their presence on a shelf, they may as well be in a pile gathering dust. For me, the perfect filing system is one where I can locate any file in a matter of seconds, regardless of whether I used in last week or last year, without thinking about it too much. I can see the benefit of the Noguchi system is that you can instantly locate those files you last worked on, but what if what you need to work on next requires an older file?
@Geri – It obviously won’t work for all your files, but for specific types of information it can be useful.
What a clever idea. I have one file drawer in my desk where I keep current project/daily use files. Currently it’s loosely organized into 4 sections but not organized/alphabetized within those sections. I keep meaning to sort & organize but I just don’t seem to get around to it.
Instead, I’m switching immediately to a form of the Nagutchi system by simply putting each file back in the front of the drawer after it’s used. Eventually the less used files will all migrate to the back. Brillantly useful suggestion.
Thank you!
Doesn’t sound good and easy to use. It doesn’t address the problem of looking through hundreds of old documents when you need something more obscure.
@Mark — As you said, this might work with a small subset of files, but I cannot imagine searching for files, even paper documents, without using a simple computer database.
My former employer had over one thousand client folders (all paper-based) dating back nearly forty years. At any time, one of these former clients might call on us and we needed quick access to their data.
The client files had been organized in file cabinets by project number — a number that no one ever remembered. By converting the paper index (several books worth and 3 days of work) to a simple flat file database, we were able to nearly instantly locate the paper files using information we could remember, such as customer name, state, city, project type, date, etc. The database would point us to the correct (metal) file cabinet, file drawer, and drawer sub section.
Of course, ideally it would have been great if all paper documents had been scanned and indexed to a DMS, but that was a move the firm was not prepared to make. Nonetheless, we went from sometimes taking a couple of days to find a document down to just a few minutes.
I’d be interested to see how others have handled large volumes of paper documents, folders, and file cabinets when scanning/digitizing is not an option.