File...Don't Pile: A Proven Filing System for Personal and Professional Use

This book has been a god send in a VERY cluttered Inport/Export business. The previous filing method for the business was so horrible that it was an absolute mess to find anything!! The reason comman file methods could not and would not work for this business is every file or subject could be named a tons of different ways, depending on your language. As well as many subjects were as long as sentences and as well could be thought of in many different terms. The brilliant methods taught in this manual proved to fix a file nightmare since it teaches how to file those tough blind categories, those tomatos/tomotos language and make it easy enough for a grade school child to find any subject you'd need to locate or past file. HIGHLY RECOMMEND FOR SOME ONE WITH FILING NEEDS THAT PLAIN ALPHABETICAL ORDER CANNOT SOLVE!! (and please avoid any negative feedback that suggest this is too hard to understand....there is countless elementary examples with every lesson that make me wonder if that person who left a neg. review even read the book??!)

Hi, my name is Jeanne, and I'm a Piler. I've lived with this disease for 40 years. It has disrupted my personal life, my professional aspirations, and my living space. Or it *did*, until the day I borrowed this book from my local library (then renewed it ten times before succumbing to purchasing my own copy). Oh, I was skeptical... I'd already collected many books on the subject of Organization and Feng Shui, and either lost interest halfway through, became too confused to move ahead, or tried and failed at the plan. Then I found "File... Don't Pile" and my life was forever changed. Once I'd tried the process outlined in the book, I found myself becoming more organized. My Piles were diminishing. Old billing statements, coupons, and special offers dated as far back as 1997 were relieved of their life in Pile Purgatory and relegated to the Round File. The stack of "I want to keep this but have no idea where to put it so I can find it when I need it" items have finally found a home. And because of the Index, I no longer need to wrack my brain to remember where it went. The first Pile I tried with this method was my Pile of design jobs (I freelance from home). I spent a long evening applying the method to the items, and voila--they were neatly filed. Easy to locate when I needed to refer to a job from last year for an elusive logo. Bonus not mentioned in the book: I discovered a better way to name my jobs for archiving. I'd been using a clunky version of a job archiving system learned at a previous job, but since I lacked their production manager software that automatically assigns each job a number, it wasn't very effective. Keeping a written sheet with the numbers with no sense of order was also ineffective. The old numbering system was something like "20021101-03" (year, month, day, third job). Having to sort through CDs to find a job was tedious and time-wasting. Renaming current jobs to match their corresponding physical folder was a breakthrough!!! If I need Company A's logo changes from last year, I just grab their Index, scan down for "COA139 New Logo", and find the CD whose label bears that job number. This system is one of those things where it might not make sense UNTIL you try it. Once you get into it, the lightbulb flips on. Now if I could just figure out how to catalog all that yarn...

If you are a major paper person (and I am), this is the format for you. When you read the book, it does sound complicated and like a lot of work. When you actually do it, however, it is the simplist thing ever. I kept saying to my husband, "I can't believe how little time it takes to get this stuff filed!". It actually encourages me to file because it's so simple. And it doesn't require upkeep everyday. In fact, I probably only truly file every 3-4 weeks. In addition, the book only takes a few hours to read, so if you decide you like what you're doing better (if you do, tell me about it) you haven't really wasted much time. It's a very easy read, and a very simple system for filing and retrieving a variety of papers on a variety of topics.

I bought this book when I was buried in papers and had a chaotic filing system. I was attracted to the subtitle, "A Proven Filing System for Personal and Professional Use," and not wanting to reinvent the wheel, decided I would faithfully follow this system step-by-step for a month. If I didn't like it, I didn't have to stick with it. That was more than 10 years ago. I followed her easy 5-step plan and it works beautifully. It only looks complicated when you skip around the book. Recently, I had some furniture delivered to a consignment shop and the store owner called and asked if I could possibly find my original receipts. I told her to hold a moment, and within seconds, pulled the receipts from my files and told her how much I paid. She said, "You must be a very organized person to have found those so quickly!" I said, "No, I just have a very good filing system!"I liked that once I planned the major file categories, I had quick visible results by sorting the papers into the appropriate boxes. So my mess was cleaned up right away as I was implementing the system. The system's easy to maintain as well. I also like the fact Pat Dorff's a librarian who understands the filing needs of folks like me who save paper in our many areas of interest.One reviewer recommends Julia Morgenstern's "Organizing from the Inside Out" instead of this book for filing. I've read Julia's book twice and am in the process of implementing Julia's system for overall household organization. However, when it comes to paperwork, I much prefer Pat Dorff's system. I find Pat's system strategizes the paper problems better, is easier to implement and maintain, and is more flexible when new categories come up. Also, Pat has an extensive discussion of all sorts of filing problems, such as presorting, you can't decide how to label an item, an item is too big to fit in a file folder, etc. Finally, Pat's numerical system nicely deals with the lining up the tabs problem, while Julie's straight-line system (all tabs lined up in the same position) looks nice, but is harder to on the eye to use, and wastes the folders with center tabs.Summary of my experience with this system: Great for filing, retrieving papers, & keeping the place neat for over a decade!

I'm FINALLY getting my paper organized, thanks to "File...Don't Pile!" However it wasn't easy. I thought that I was a special case and skipped some of the planning and consolidating steps that she lays out. As a result, 3 years later, I'm finally in the home stretch in the race against paperwork.Make it easy on yourself and FOLLOW THE EASY STEPS IN ORDER!!!! Pat lays out a simple five step plan to prepare to file your paperwork. She also outlines two simple, but adaptable filing systems, indexes, ways to prevent feeling overwelmed by the filing task and how to maintain and live like a person who has control of their paper. I haven't done it all...yet, but I'm much closer to having my paper organized.If you're feeling buried by paper, get this book now! I did a lot of looking around at other books on paperwork organization, but this one impressed me with its thoroughness. Pat Dorff is a professional librarian and she deftly adapts the tools of her profession to home use. This woman knows how to manage paper with information on it. If you read and follow the simple step by step instructions you will too.My only improvement on her system is putting a copy of the indexes that I've created on my 3Com PalmPilot and on my husband's as well. The thought of being able to search by keyword for a category, subject or cross-reference and have it come up with the exact file location is the ideal enhancement to this book and the only way that I can think of to improve upon it.