I am writing this for a friend of mine who I hope will be very proud of me. This week I went through all the documents on my computer and I filed them in their proper folders. So, BIG DEAL - You ask why will she be proud of me?
I am notorious for throwing things out or deleting them. You all know that I am a clean, neat freak so I could not stand to see more than 100 or so messages in my mailbox – nor was I ever good at creating folders on my computer and placing the respective documents in that folder. Part of my reason for not doing this is that I always had individuals who worked for me who were fanatical about saving everything. I knew if I ever needed something I could go to them and they would provide it no matter how many years ago it had been created. Needless to say this friend took the brunt of my always asking if she had a particular document, presentation or email message. And she always did. Thank You, Thank You, THANK YOU.
Now, I am a lone individual in my department with many projects going on – I cannot depend upon someone else having the item and/or having the right version of what I need. I now have a filing system for my work computer.
Every vendor has a folder and in that folder there are additional folders to reference projects, programs, or documentation. I have a projects folder that lists every single facility, building or room that we are working on and the respective quotes and floor drawings are all in that file. I am able to immediately get my hands on either a quote or review a floor drawing with the vendor, the client or my boss if we need to creatively reduce the budget on any one of our projects.
I also have gone through and removed the multiple versions of a presentation or document that I had and just keep the “final” version, latest revision or the latest dated one. For example; last week I was working with the Visual Communications Industry Group (VCI-Group) on two different letters to send out – we ended up with six revisions of the letter – each of which had been saved to my computer in their folder. I went in and deleted all but the last version – there is no need to keep all the other copies. I did the same with a presentation I had done regarding the Managed Service program I will be implementing at North Shore – I had a version I did in June, another in July and another three in August – I saved the one that said “FINAL” and deleted the others.
Not only have I been good at putting together this electronic filing system; but, I am also NOT deleting messages. I have a tendency to read a message, respond to it; and, then delete it – all to try to keep that electronic mailbox clean. I have been burned in the past by doing this; and, again my saving grace has been individuals who I knew kept every email ever written.
As they say, ‘turnaround is fair play’ – NOW, I am the one who keeps messages and is always pulling them up for my boss and sending them to him for him to address with other individuals. Believe me in the last month those messages have come in handy when we have needed to reference a lack of response by certain individuals and/or departments.
Now that my office computer is all organized – I need to tackle my personal computer. It does have files for everything – you would be very proud that my Blogs are filed under the year and the month of their creation. The file that really needs to be organized is my Recipe file. When I see a recipe on line I just save it to a folder titled, “Recipes”. What my computer does is to save them in alphabetical order; however, I spent a good 30 minutes on Tuesday evening looking for something to bake for our Aqua Aerobics post holiday party. More than 150 recipes later – I just gave up; and instead decided that I would just make my cheese Danish – it is quick (I made it before class on Saturday morning ) and it was still warm by the time class was over and we could eat it.
But having learned my lesson I need to organize it by classifications: breakfast, desserts, meats, poultry, etc. – that will be a system which will be more useful when I am looking for something in particular.
So to my friend – thank you for saving me all those many times. I have learned my lesson and have embraced my computer and organizing my files on it.
You are never too old to learn a new trick.
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