Set up a filing system for easy retrieval
Thursday’s Management Tip for Graphic Designers
One thing that’s been a big help (in terms of my not losing my mind looking for stuff) is to devise a filing system for the gazillion papers I have.
There’s no bigger time waster than riffling through stacks of papers looking for that particular, elusive document.
There are 2 schools of thought (one that makes sense to me and another not so much)
- Organize my category
- Organize using a numbered system for indexing files
You need to identify what categories you’ll need.
I usually divide these into 2 categories: personal and business/work. You need to keep them separate.
Here are a few categories to get you started:
- Automobile (insurance, repairs, …)
- Computer & maintenance
- Credit Cards (MC, Visa, American Express, …)
- Clients / Freelance work
- Education
- Employer (if you are a part-time designer)
- Finance (loans)
- Important documents
- Information (articles should also classified by categories for easy retrieval)
- Insurance (life, home, business, medical, dental, disability, Long Term Care)
- Mortgage
- Personal folders (birth certificates, fitness, hobbies, holidays)
- Repairs (home, technology)
- Registration information (domain, auto-responder system)
- Services (Accounting, legal, finances)
- Subscriptions (magazines, websites)
- Taxes
- Travel
- Utilities (phone, cable, electricity, internet, heat)
- Warranties (computer, electronics, …)
T A K E A W A Y :
Get a label maker, grab some files, and get started.
I like to color code my files. So for instance, all my client files are one color so that I immediately know where they are. I color code files by: personal, client/work, information (like articles), finance / important papers, and miscellaneous
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