Archive for ‘Paper Organizing’ Category
Presto, Change-o! NAPO Expo 2013 Shape-shifting Organizing Products #2: Ampad SimpleSort Crossover
Each year at the National Association of Professional Organizers annual Conference and Expo, one of our favorite booths to visit is Esselte’s. The Esselte family, famous for Pendaflex and Oxford filing and office products, has added Ampad to the brood. Oh, but this is not your fourth grade teacher’s Ampad, with the same old boring notepads. Ampad has come a long way, Baby!
The Collating Conundrum
Longtime Paper Doll readers at the old site know that I’m a fan of legal pads. My preference is purple, because it’s easy to spot amid any cluttered client environment, but pink or blue pads work just as well.
Everyone else has yellow or white notepads, so by keeping to the rich pastels, I’m more likely to spot my pad quickly, and in twelve years haven’t (yet) left a client site without it safely tucked in my bag.
The key to making perforated-at-the-top legal pads work for you is to make sure you keep similar items together. You can try to select different pads for different tasks (home improvement, individual work projects, party planning), and label the front page so you don’t mix up the pads, but it’s easy to be thrown off the mark. For example, one day last week, I was taking notes on a live teleclass when I got interrupted by a telephone call from a prospective client. Weighing the value of finishing the teleclass vs. taking the prospect call and later listening to the recording of the teleclass, I opted for the latter. Quickly, I flipped to the next page to take notes on my conversation. Later that night, when the teleclass recording was available, I started with a fresh page, but that still meant my papers — on the pad — were jumbled.
Eventually, I will tear off the pages for the teleclass and stack them with my Continuing Education Unit documentation for my next BCPO recertification. And the prospect’s page will either go in his client folder, if I’m hired, or a mass prospect folder, if not. But until I know, it’ll stay on the pad, sandwiched between unrelated items, and not exactly easily located. (Yes, even professional organizers may grab the wrong notepad sometimes.)
There are suitable alternatives to perforated legal pads, like three-ring binders, such as the Staples Better Binder we discussed yesterday. With a binder, you use loose-leaf paper, and sorting is as simple as opening the rings and moving any given sheet behind an appropriate divider. Just sort all your papers by (sub)category and group similar items together.
But binders are bulky. They’re great for storage, but it’s hard to take notes in a binder when you are in a classroom or lecture setting and don’t have a desk on which to spread out your notetaking paraphernalia. Experience has taught me that my left-handed clients can’t take notes in ringed binders at all. Sure, you can take notes on loose-leaf papers and only insert them in binders when you’re done with the course or session, but then you need to carry a clipboard or other hard surface, since there’s no cardboard or other type of backing to create a writing surface.
You can use spiral notebooks, of course, but then you’re faced with the same problem as with perforated pads — no way to collate the papers until you remove them from the notebook. Worse, you’re left with raggedy pages and the detritus from edges torn away from the spiral wire…unless you get the spiral notebooks that also have perforations. A spiral in a spiral, this is.
Introducing The Ampad SimpleSort Crossover Writing Pad.
At the top, instead of holding the papers together with glue above a perforation, as you usually see with legal pads, there’s a hard plastic shell (Ampad calls it a “binder clip”) that flips upward to reveal little nubs. The shell snaps down over the nubs, holding the individual sheets in place. The two-hole-punched papers are perforated, so you can tear them off whenever you like, but for use on the pad, you can play musical chairs.
If, over the course of a day, you take notes on chemistry, math and literature (or are writing pages on your marketing plan, budget and To Do list), just flip-up the plastic shell, lift out the papers and enclosed section dividers, 
shuffle everything to your preference, and insert the individual paper pages wherever they belong. Simple. Sorted.
For you visual learners, here’s a video direct from Ampad to get a sense of how the SimpleSort Crossover works.
The Ampad SimpleSort Crossover comes with a reusable plastic “binder clip,” 80 individual, re-positionable sheets of 8 1/2″ x 11″ wide-ruled, perforated, two-hole-punched notebook paper, and three re-positionable tabbed dividers (in blue, red, and yellow).
The SimpleSort Crossover is sold in office supply stores and retails for about $7.99, with replacement pads (also 80 sheets) running $3.99 and replacement divider 3-packs selling for $2.99.
Paper Doll is a touch frugal, so this seems a tad pricey to me. I’d also be bored using white paper all the time, so I hope the line expands to colored replacement sheets. I think it’s definitely worth checking out, but if you’d prefer budget options, you can always clip loose-leaf paper to a clipboard and carry a few manila folders behind the loose paper for keeping related notes together. (Or use a three-hole punch once you get home to store your notes in a binder.)
The SimpleSort is just one of Ampad’s whole new line of innovative products. Keep watching this space, as in coming days, we’ll be looking at other high- and low-tech paper maintenance options that let the user shift from one mode to another in order to stay productive.
Presto, Change-o! NAPO Expo 2013 Shape-shifting Organizing Product #1: Staples Better Binder
In science fiction, some of the scariest bad guys are the ones who can change shape or appearance with the wave of a hand. It’s been a while since the good guys embraced that skill — Samantha Stephens’ little tinka-tinka-tink could change her from suburban housewife to femme fatale with one little nose twitch. (Man, I wish I could do that!) However, at the 2013 National Association of Professional Organizers’ Conference and Expo (about which I wrote last week), a few new organizing-related products used their shapeshifting superpowers for good and not evil.
Bound For Glory
Ringed binders hold a great deal of appeal in the world of organizing and productivity. Unlike hanging and manila tabbed file folders, binders are sturdy and stand upright of their own accord on desks and shelves. Binders are perfect for categorizing by chronological periods, as we see with brokerage and other financial statements, and are ideal for keeping large chunks of related information (such as one might use for attending lots and lots of committee and board meetings at a NAPO conference) easily accessible. If you drop a folder, the contents may fly everywhere; with binders, you’ll merely break a toe. (Painful, but certainly more organized, from a purely paper perspective.) 😎
However, binders have some downsides. A collection of binders can take up excessive desk and shelf space. That’s fine when you’re grabbing the materials on a regular or frequent basis, but once the contents of a binder have moved from active and essential use to reference status, you don’t really want to use your prime desktop real estate for bulky binders you won’t need to touch. And, though you wouldn’t value a binder above rubies and pearls, even standard, quotidian binders can be pricey, so using them for one or two projects over the course of a binder’s lifetime, and never switching out the contents, is a waste.
Sure, once a binder’s contents go from hot to lukewarm to ice-cold, you can take the papers out of the binder, create file folders, label them and pop them away into cold storage (i.e., reference file drawers or boxes). But file folders aren’t built to handle the bulk that’s usually stored in binders, so you’ll need to label multiple file folders and divide the contents into constituent sub-categories. It’s not a big deal, but sometimes you might hope for a more convenient solution.
Another problem with most binders is that they’re poorly made. Binders are generally manufactured with two pieces of thick cardboard for covers, a narrower piece of cardboard for the spine, all enclosed in latex and plastic-coated sheaths, while the metal interior spine and circular rings (which are often clunky and imperfectly aligned) are permanently attached. If the coating frays or peels away from the stiff boards, or if the cardboard bends, the ring housing becomes useless.
Staples Better Binder
Staples has come up with something surprisingly new and charmingly improved. The Staples Better Binder is made of latex-free solid plastic for the covers and spine, attached not with easily-torn plastic, but reinforced at solid, flexible rubber joints to make it heartier.
The D-rings are strong, easily-opened with a touch of a button, and fit back together neatly, not with jagged teeth, but a male/female paired closure.
The binder offers some nice labeling options. The front cover has a clear, heavy-duty transparent pocket for large-scale labeling — select a decorative page, a phone list, even “Diary! Keep Out! This Means You!” on a full-size piece of paper, and just slide it in. Instead of applying a label to the outside spine, the plastic spine has a clear label window into which you can insert a replaceable tab on the interior, allowing you to update the binder title and keep it protected, without dealing with peeling labels or sticky adhesives.
Through hundreds or thousands of openings and closings — to review homework assignments on the Industrial Revolution, company meeting briefings (that make modern staffers feel like they’re indentured servants, albeit with free WiFi), or employee handbooks covering everything from open-toed-shoe policies to records retention schedules — the binders stay snappy-looking and flexible. The interior front and rear covers also have curved, easily-accessed, clear plastic pockets, allowing you to keep track of handouts even when you don’t have a three-hole punch at the ready.
Yes, these advances make this a better binder, per se, but what makes the Staples Better Binder truly a BETTER BINDER, worthy of capital letters, is the shape-shifting capabilities. The metal spine and D-rings of the Staples Better Binder are removable! These Removable FileRings are held firm with a tongue-and-groove alignment, so a simple sliding mechanism keeps them in place or releases them, at your pleasure.
Simply grasp and pull the rubber ends of the ring housing to release the metal from the interior plastic spine of the binder.
Lift it up and away from the binder, flip it over, and the ring housing serves similar duties as a file folder, keeping all of the material together, while the rubber ends work like metal arms of a hanging folder. You can even label the back of the ring housing so you can read the contents from above and access the contents you want as easily, if not more so, than you might have from a series of file folders. Nifty, eh?
But what of the binders? Now what good are they, without rings? Additional FileRings are sold separately, so you can actually reuse the reinforced binder shells over and over, moving the rings to your filing cabinet to store whatever documents must be saved — without muss, fuss or waste. (Of course, you Paper Doll readers know to evaluate whether you actually need to maintain papers and don’t file things willy nilly, right?)
For the official word on how the Staples Better Binder fits into your paperwork organizing protocols, check out the official video:
My fabulous colleague Deb Lee also made a video with Staples rep Margaret right in the noisy NAPO 2013 Expo hall, illustrating exactly how the removable FileRings work. (Deb makes great organizing videos, so be sure to subscribe to her YouTube channel.)
The reusable reinforced binder shells, suitable for 8 1/2″ x 11″ paper, come in multiple sizes (1″, 1 1/2″, 2″ and 3″), accommodating paper capacities ranging from 275 to 600 sheets, and in 14 colors (black, white, red, orange, yellow, green, olive, blue, teal, dark teal, pink, fuchsia, plum and purple).
Prices range from $8.49 to $14.49, and the Staples Better Binders are, not surprisingly, available only at Staples. As they are a little pricier than standard binders, I’d advise saving these for when you’re schlepping your binders from home to work (or school) to committee meetings. You’ll want to use these when you’re mobile and your binders are more in danger of getting bumped around; use the traditional binders when they’re just sitting on your shelves, getting treated more tenderly.
All Staples Better Binders are guaranteed. For life.
[Note: The Better Binder Mini has the same exterior attributes — latex-free plastic covers with rubberized reinforced spine and edges — but no removable rings. The 1″ capacity Mini is designed for 5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″ paper.]
If you think you’d like to give the Staples Better Binder a try, now is the perfect time. Staples is offering a 50% off coupon at the web site. (Just scroll down to the second row and print for your in-store coupon.) Act soon, as the discount is only good through this Saturday, May 11, 2013.
The Staples Better Binder wasn’t the only organizing-related super shapeshifter at the NAPO Expo. Watch this space for other reviews of neato organizing products and services.
[Disclaimer: A Staples Better Binder was included in every NAPO 2013 attendee’s conference bag, including Paper Doll‘s, without any inducement to comment. All opinions are my own. Who else would claim them?]
Organize Your Travel Documents
Last month, I traveled to the MARCPO conference and then enjoyed a vacation up the Eastern seaboard, traveling from Washington, DC to Providence, Rhode Island to Boston and Salem, Massachusetts. During that time, I took four airplanes, two airport shuttle vans, one car and multiple subway trains. In ten days, I stayed in four hotels in three cities. It may seem like a shocking confession for the 21st century, but I navigated them all without benefit of a smart phone or tablet.
Keeping track of travel information these days seems made for digitization. Nifty apps can replace piles of paper printouts. But should they? On the morning of my return flight, a flustered man stood in front of me in the security line, unable to show his boarding pass because he couldn’t get his cell phone to boot up. Power outages, cell phone tower outages, lost chargers, dead gadgets, limited or intermittent web access — they can all wreak havoc with your travel plans if you don’t have a paper alternative.
I strongly recommend the following basic steps for organizing your travel documents and information to minimize any potential catastrophes.
1) Gather and isolate documents as they arrive. As you make your travel arrangements, print out the confirmations, the bar-coded and QR-coded passes, and any other items you need. Collate them and tuck them away in your tickler file for the day your trip is set to start.
2) Use the belt-and-suspenders approach. Yes, you should print your documents, but there’s no reason not to keep electronic copies, too. Convert each confirmation email or web page to PDF, then back it up in any of a variety of ways. Send it to your Kindle or other e-reader. Save it in a Dropbox or Evernote folder marked with the trip name. Email it to Gmail or another web-based account.
For a lower-tech option, snap photos of your documents with your phone or camera. If necessary, access data using the zoom function to get a close-up on whatever you need.
3) Arrange essential documents in the order in which you WILL need to access them.
- Airline tickets and boarding passes — Printing your boarding pass in advance of your flight allows you to bypass lines at check-in and ticketing kiosks. At larger airports, just give your checked luggage (if you have any) to the Skycap, and you’ll be on your way. Even at airports where you need to check your luggage inside the airport, having your tickets and boarding pass available in advance will expedite the process.
- Special air travel documents — If you are recently married and your honeymoon arrangements were made in your new name, but your photo ID lists your maiden name, having a copy of your marriage certificate with you will help things along, especially if you’re traveling internationally. If you’re divorced (or married, traveling without your spouse) and are traveling with your child, or if you are traveling with a child who is not your own (such as a grandchild or your child’s playmate), you will need a notarized Minor Consent Form from a custodial parent.
- Redress number — This is a code granted to certain passengers whose names have been added to the No-Fly list in error. Providing your accurate redress number should eliminate travel difficulties.
- Train reservation tickets/confirmations
- Cruise tickets/confirmation
- Auto rental reservations/confirmations
- Ground transportation (shuttle/car service) reservations/confirmations
- Printed directions or maps if you’re driving yourself
- Subway/commuter train maps and directions
- Hotel reservations/confirmations
- Writing pad for itinerary changes, directions, messages, etc.
Some travel items should be kept separate from your basic travel documents:
- Airport parking ticket — When you arrive at the airport and take your ticket, tuck it into a safe place in your wallet, away from your cash and other items you’ll be rifling through during your trip. (Snap a photo of your parking level/area to find your car easily upon your return.)
- Passport and Visas — These legal documents need to be kept even more securely than the itemized information above. Rather than keeping your passport and visas with your travel information, maintain them on your person with an RFID-blocking, wearable passport wallet.
4) Arrange non-essential documents in the order in which you MAY need to access them.
- Itinerary
- Airline and frequent traveler loyalty contact numbers
- Travel aggregator (e.g., Travelocity, Orbitz) or travel agency numbers
- Credit card company concierge numbers
- Printout of alternative flight options
- Emergency contact numbers at home and at your destination
- Groupons, Living Social, Restaurant.com and other discounts/coupons for dining at your destination(s)
- Envelope for collecting receipts, especially for items that will need to be expensed/reimbursed, checked against a bank or credit card statement, or needed for tax purposes.
5) Contain documents in a translucent document organizer.
Certainly, you could maintain your travel documents in traditional file folders or kraft envelopes. They aren’t optimal, however, because you have to open them to see anything, even the very next item you’ll need, and each opening of the file or envelope risks loss and items fluttering to the ground.
The trick with a see-through travel document organizer is to have the items you know you’ll need in “front,” with the items you may need, located at the “back.” Place the stacks of the two types of items back-to-back. Then, just flip over the whole document organizer, and your itinerary will be easy to read without removing it from the organizer, while items behind the itinerary can be easily accessed should they become necessary.
In the twelve minutes between when I confirmed that my flight to DC was on time and the moment I’d entered the airport, soaking wet, after parking in the last available airport parking spot, my flight had been canceled due to mechanical difficulties. The rumor among the equally-soaked passengers was that we’d be boarded onto a bus to take us to a nearby city’s airport. That option would certainly have caused me to miss my connection.
Flipping my translucent document organizer over, I perused the items in the back. Behind my itinerary, the next two sheets provided what I wanted — Delta Skymiles’ direct number and Travelocity’s schedule of other flights to my destination. In what almost seems miraculous in this age of grumpy traveling, well before I’d reached the head of the line, I’d been rebooked for a flight that got me to my connecting airport only 40 minutes later than originally planned, tidily making my connection. Meanwhile, people who had been ahead of me in line, frantically shuffling and dropping papers, were delayed up to eight hours.
So, Paper Doll is a big proponent of using translucent poly envelopes or pockets to corral travel documents. Some excellent options include:
Smead Poly Wallets are highly durable, four-sided, reinforced wallets which repel moisture, resist tears and hold up to 200 letter-sized sheets.
They come in blue, green and purple, are highly visible and are unlikely to blend in with your surroundings and be left behind. The poly wallets can expand up to 2 1/4″, and feature sewn fabric trim, heavy-duty black cloth gussets, a protective cover flap and an elastic cord for securing the corners. In addition, the wallets have two clear pockets on the front for positioning business cards or keeping emergency information easily accessible. You can clearly read the documents within.
Pendaflex’s Oxford Storage Envelope Plastic Tab Dividers offer a simple but elegant alternative. Coming in packs of three colored envelopes (red, blue and yellow), each with one of three tab positions, these pockets have a fold-over flap with a Velcro dot closure, securing the contents on all four sides. The plastic flap can be closed or tucked inside the envelope to keep it out of the way when you’re flipping through your travel documents.
On the left side (if one holds the envelope vertically), the Storage Envelope Tab Dividers have a three-hole-punched poly extension. Each pocket holds about 50 sheets of letter-sized paper. Use just one pocket for a shorter trip; for a longer one, label the tabs and use individual pockets for each day or leg of your travels. Again, you can read the “top” contents (on either side) right through the Storage Envelope Tab Dividers.
Smead Travel Organizers are made of a clear, acid-free archival polypropylene and have three clear plastic tabbed sheets.
There’s a stiff plastic backing and a Velcro-closure plastic envelope (about the size of a standard #10 envelope) attached to the front divider. The pocket is designed to hold boarding passes and receipts, while itineraries, notes, flat maps and confirmation numbers can be easily slotted in the tabbed pages. To see how it might be customized for your travel needs, take a peek at how Janine Adams of Peace of Mind Organizing personalized her Smead Travel Organizer.
6) Upgrade for extended travels. If you’re going to be traveling for weeks at a time and headed to multiple venues, you might want to consider a three-ring binder and upgrade from standard plastic sheet protectors by using the above-mentioned Oxford Storage Envelope Plastic Tab Dividers.
Or, for creating more categories, look at the Oxford Full-Pocket Plastic Tab Dividers.
These come in packs of five colored pockets (red, orange, yellow, green and blue), each with one of five tabbed positions. The front is clear, while the back of the pocket is translucent colored poly. The pockets are closed along the bottom and left (hole-punched) sides, while the top and right (tabbed) sides are open. A poly corner lock positioned at the juncture of the two open edges keeps documents in place (provided you remember to tuck the corners of your documents underneath it).
Unlike the Storage Envelope Plastic Tab Dividers, the Full-Pocket Plastic Tab Dividers hold only about 20 sheets of letter-sized paper. However, they do feel a bit sturdier than the Storage Envelopes.
Since both styles are already three-hole punched and tabbed, drop them in your binder and color-code for cities/states/countries or use multiple packs, coding red as airlines or blue as hotels at each destination.
Another alternative is the Oxford Pocket Storage Folder with 4 Sliding Pockets. When closed, it appears similar to the Storage Envelopes above, albeit with a larger flap and made of stiffer, more durable poly.
The Oxford Storage Pocket Folder’s divided pockets are clear, while the backing and flap are opaque blue poly. When opened, the four connecting pockets slide apart, vertically as well as in terms of depth, to enable you to view bits of each section simultaneously.
7) Have a human backup. Make sure an always-reachable assistant, BFF or spouse has paper or digital copies of your essential travel information. I always send copies of my trip info to Paper Mommy and to a tech-savvy hero/friend (who blushes if named publicly). So far, so good.
Happy travels!
An Organized Hybrid: The Evernote Smart Notebook By Moleskine
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups – “Two great tastes that taste great together.”
Toyota Prius – combines an internal combustion engine with an electric motor
Zedonk – a cross between a zebra and any other equine
A hybrid takes two things that exist perfectly well independently and combines them to make something altogether more fabulous. Today, we’ll look at how two great product brands have united to create something fascinating: The Evernote Smart Notebook By Moleskine.
THE CLASSIC
It was the original little black book, made of moleskin (a thick, cotton fabric with a shaved pile surface). In the 19th and 20th centuries, artists like Matisse, van Gogh and Picasso sketched and painted in them, and authors who couldn’t have been more disparate in writing style or personality, from Oscar Wilde to Ernest Hemingway, scribbled their stories in them. Back then, the notebooks were black, handmade by French bookbinders, and, while utilitarian, represented a kind of artistic chic. The notebooks were for creative geniuses on-the-go.
In the 1980s, it was reported that, “Le vrai Moleskine n’est plus” (“The real Moleskine is no more”) and bookbinders had ceased fashioning them, but in 1997 the product was reborn via a Milanese parent company under the Moleskine brand. A strong marketing campaign and a passion for the ever-expanding line of notebooks made, and makes, Moleskine cool for hipsters and soccer moms, alike.
The features are basic, but beloved: luxurious covers, high-quality acid-free paper, narrow grosgrain ribbon bookmarks and color-matching elastics to keep everything together. Moleskine has followers every bit as passionate and devoted as Apple’s fanboys (and fangirls). Bloggers show off their notebooks and creative doodlings, as at SkineArt, and share their secrets, such as Freelance Switch’s noted The Monster Collection of Moleskine Tips, Tricks and Hacks post.
The collections include the original notebooks — ruled and unruled, with interior pockets and without, with squared or rounded edges — diary-like journals, tabbed “Passion” journals (to log one’s favorite books, films, restaurants, recipes, wines, travel locales, etc.), memo books and address books.
For creative types whose muses delight with other than words, there are sketchbooks, watercolor notebooks, music notebooks, and storyboard books.
There are even limited-edition collections, with design themes including Peanuts, The Little Prince, LEGO and Star Wars.
Moleskine feeds the addiction for a sensory experience only paper can provide.
THE MODERNIST
Evernote: It’s a service. It’s an app. (It’s two mints in one!) It’s almost an independent nation of global citizens, given that it has ambassadors (including friend of Paper Doll, Brandie Kajino). You probably either use it, or you wonder, “What’s the big deal?”
For the uninitiated, at its most basic, Evernote allows you to take digital things, collect them, and organize them. Anything you save, like a Paper Doll blog post, can be a note. Notes combine into notebooks (like how you have Excel worksheets within workbooks), and all are kept safely within your account, synced across all of your computers and digital devices.
You may wonder why you need Evernote — can’t you just use a bookmark in your browser? Ah, but have you ever clicked on an old bookmark or favorite to find the link you’d preserved yields a disappointing 404 Error message, meaning the page you wanted no longer exists? Evernote doesn’t just preserve the link — it preserves the entire page or document, along with comments, tags and anything else you wish to keep.
The Basics
Install Evernote, create your account and put a little “clipper” in your browser bar — it works much like Pinterest’s “Pin” bookmarklet to speedily grab what you want and tuck it away. Any time you want to save something digital, you can just click on the clipper bookmarklet and up pops a window to walk you through your options.
For example, at some point in the not-too-distant past, I went to Evernote’s page for getting started, and clicked on the clipper, bringing up a little window, as you see below.
Evernote selects a default title for your note; adjust it as you see fit. Add your tags, select in which notebook (for any of your various themes or projects) you wish the note saved, and add comments or stray thoughts. You can save an entire page, or highlight just one section for faster and more accurate “clipping” of web material (to skip ads and extraneous text or photos). And, of course, you can opt to save the original URL.
Beyond Baby Steps
Evernote saves much more than web sites and text. Instead of using your clipper, log in to your Evernote account and click “New Note” from the main page or within any of your already-created notebooks.
Above, the left column represents my various notebooks and tags; the center column shows previews of various clippings (i.e., notes) and the right column provides a place to create a more complex note, with formatting. Let’s say you have a brilliant idea for a blog post, or a wedding toast, or your packing list for an upcoming trip. Instead of scribbling it down on a random floozy, lock it up on Evernote.
Once in your account, you can drag-and-drop images from your desktop, files, and web pages. For convenience, you can also drag images directly onto any specific notebook (without having created a detailed note) or, for Mac users, directly onto the Evernote icon in your Dock. And it’s not just text and pictures. Record audio and move the .MP3 file to a notebook. Save videos, too. And tweets! Then combine them all in the way that works best for you.
Bing, bang, boom. Your “stuff” is saved to the cloud and synced across all of your devices. Better yet, it’s searchable, so between the native text of what you’ve saved and the keywords you create, you have your own private search engine to find what you want, when you want it, no matter how long ago you clipped or created it, accessible from anywhere in the world.
Now What?
Evernote has myriad uses. I save product reviews, news stories and articles that may be useful for Paper Doll posts and my Best Results for Busy People newsletter, as well as for current and future articles and books I’m writing. A recent discussion on the NAPO email chat found that my colleagues are using Evernote for various professional and personal solutions, including:
- Notes, statistics and ideas for presentations and workshops
- Titles of books, movies and other entertainment to check out later
- Household data, like battery sizes, light bulb wattages and air filter dimensions
- Organizing solutions for particular clients or situations
- Grocery lists (shared across devices with family members who can access them while shopping)
- Collated travel information and directions to use while on vacation or attending conferences
- Party planning and menu ideas, including recipes, organized by meal or ethnicity of cuisine
This is just a smattering of options — Evernote has a video library of tutorials and suggestions for ways to maximize its use. Evernote continues to expand its interactivity with other apps. Draw or hand-write with a stylus on your iPad or tablet in Skitch and Evernote saves it (and even translates handwriting to text). Save news and articles to read later via Pocket (formerly Read It Later) or InstaPaper. Study for exams (or your Jeopardy audition) by creating study notebooks with Peek, and record (with permission) phone calls with CallTrunk.
Evernote is free at the basic level. For $5/month or $45/year, the Premium level grants the ability to upload up to 1 GB each month (handy for photos and lots of files) and have individual files of up to 50 MB. You can also view historical versions of files, take notebooks offline for when you lack web access, collaborate across accounts, hide promotional language, and more.
THE HYBRID: PAPER + DIGITAL = EVERNOTE SMART NOTEBOOK BY MOLESKINE
The Evernote Smart Notebook By Moleskine combines the advanced technology of Evernote with the sensory delight of a Moleskine notebook.
Paper notebooks are tangible and concrete. Digitizing provides accessibility, navigation, searchability and a different kind of permanence. What if you could combine the two? What if you could scribble down your thoughts on paper in your own quirky handwriting, then record, modify, and preserve them forever? Now, you can.
The Evernote Smart Notebook by Moleskine lets you create naturally, then use Evernote’s handwriting recognition and search capability to turn your scribbles and scratches into symbols of your brilliance. (Haven’t you always wanted a way to digitally search through piles of handwritten notes to find the paragraph or phrase you needed?)
Affix Smart Stickers to automatically add digital tags to your notes — kind of like built-in QR codes, to take information from paper to the cloud.
Just write in your notebook, and when you’re done, the Page Camera feature inside Evernote on iOS (on your iPhone or iPad — Android access is still-to-come) recognizes the tiny, square stickers, adds tags to the digital note, optimizes it and files it into a selected folder in your Evernote Digital memory.
Getting Started
Pick one of two sizes: the 240-page Large (5″ x 8 1/4″) notebook for $24.95 or the 195-page Pocket (3 1/2″ x 5 1/2″) notebook for $29.95. Both come with black hardcovers, green elastic bands and four sheets of Smart Stickers (tucked in the back pocket).
Then select your paper preference: a gridded pattern (like graph paper) or (dotted) ruled paper. You can use pencil or pen, though dark pens will yield the clearest digital results.
Each Evernote Smart Notebook purchase includes a complimentary subscription to Evernote Premium for three months, so your next step is to sign up for your Premium Digital account…and start creating.
This isn’t the first nifty blending of paper and technology. There’s the LiveScribe Echo and Pulse smart pens, which digitally record text written on special notepads and contemporaneous audio. But the Evernote Smart Notebook by Moleskine combines two products you either already use (or would enjoy using) in a stylish, magical and far more affordable manner. It’s prettier than a Zedonk and less expensive than a Prius.
Of course, it’s no Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup…but then, what is?
How To Avoid Paper Management Mistakes–Part 3: Libel of Labels
“Don’t rely too much on labels, for too often they are fables.”
~Charles H. Spurgeon
“Once you label me, you negate me.”
~Sren Kierkegaard
“Labels are devices for saving talkative persons the trouble of thinking.”
~John Morley, Viscount of Blackburn
Outside of the organizing field, the view of labels is twofold. We’re warned against labeling, for fear of reducing that which is labeled to something without nuance. You remember the final soliloquy of The Breakfast Club, don’t you?
Conversely, the advertising industry (remember “Libby’s Libby’s Libby’s on the Label, Label, Label“?), would have us believe that without labeling, we’d be lost in a sea of confusion.
As a fan of John Hughes, it pains me to say this, but when it comes to paper management, I must side with Don Draper. Labeling is essential.
Over the last two weeks, we reviewed some of the major mistakes of paper management in Paper Doll Explains How To Avoid Paper Management Mistakes — Part 1 and How To Avoid Paper Management Mistakes–Part 2: Fat Vs. Skinny Jeans:
Mistake #1: You Have No Physical System At All
Mistake #2: You Have No Behavioral System In Place
Mistake #3: You Toss Just About Every Piece of Paper in the Trash
Mistake #4: You Save Everything Until the Paper Crowds You Out
Today, we look at the final set of paper management mistakes that can keep you from having a productive, useful system.
Mistake #5: You Don’t Know How to Label Your Files
In organizing, good function tends to come from good form. In order to organize, you must first purge that which is unnecessary and then take the rest and sort it so that like is grouped with like. We reviewed this with Mistake #1 about having no physical system whatsoever. If you just toss everything together, you have a salad and not a system. Without labels, you don’t know if you have a Side or a Caesar.
Mini-Mistake #5A: You Don’t Label Anything
Nomenclature is important. In your closet, if you mix together all colors and sizes and styles of shirts, it will make it hard to dress in the morning. If, however, all of the long-sleeved dress shirts are grouped together, then all of the short-sleeved dressy casual shirts, and the printed T-shirts, you’ll find it easier to locate what you need. You don’t necessarily need to label parts of your closet with the names of the shirt types.
Individual papers, however, live inside opaque file folders, so the folder can’t show you what’s within. Every manila folder looks alike, with the contents obscured just the same as if you stored each article of clothing in an identical garment bag. Thus, labeling tells you what you have, specifically.
Mini-Mistake #5B: You Have a Labeling System That Is Too Broad
If your categories are too broad, and a file folder is labeled as “financial papers”, you will soon find the folder overflowing and it will be impossible to find the exact paper, for the exact date, that you need. Narrowing the categories down only slightly will yield, not surprisingly, only a slight improvement.
“Bank Statements” or “Brokerage Statements” might be fine categories if you have only one of each type of account and never augment or change. If, however, you have a personal checking account with Wells-Fargo, a business checking account with Bank of America and a savings account with ING, you might save a few seconds when filing a particular bank statement in a catch-all banking file, but you’ll waste precious time if trying to retrieve it.
Mini-Mistake #5C: You Have a Labeling System That Is Too Narrow
Another common mistake I see is that, having neglected to visualize any kind of hierarchy in advance, people will create a file folder and label it such that it reflects the one piece of paper it holds. Thus, I’ll find file folders labeled:
IRA Statement 3rd Quarter 2008
Car Insurance Bill 6/2009
Karen’s Report Card — Spring 3rd Grade
There’s so little in each folder, and each folder is labeled so narrowly as to allow such a tiny subset of all of the papers owned, that the user is wasting folders, space, time, effort and efficiency.
A folder can actually neatly contain a year or more of IRA statements. (If end-of-year statements duplicate the information on the monthly or quarterly statements, shred the interim papers.) Even if one has a penchant for saving old (and not necessarily needed) insurance policy documentation, a folder can probably hold one car’s (or one household’s cars’) policies for multiple years. And, in most cases, all of Karen’s report cards from Kindergarten through graduation can likely fit tidily in one folder.
Sidebar on Specificity
I’m an unapologetic fan of specificity. Unless a client has a particular reason to contravene my usual approach, I’m more likely to make a file with the name of each individual account. For example, I’ll use the actual bank name, account type and maybe even the last four digits of the account number if the client has complex financial holdings. Similarly, I’m far more likely to create file folders that state the company name: Comcast, Verizon, Bank of America, Terminex. However, if you tend to move frequently enough that your label names might change every few years, it’s certainly fine to create general categorical labels: Cable, Phone, Mortgage, Exterminator.
Not every professional organizer agrees with this technique. Many of my colleagues find my method a bit fussy; they’re fans of the Freedom Filer approach, which files away monthly non-deductible bills (like utilities, for example) in a dated folder for the appropriate month, with the expectation that most pieces of paper filed away will not need to be accessed again. This approach also allows for quick and easy destruction for collected months that have aged out of the records retention schedule’s “current” category.
When it comes to filing, there are few absolutes. Experts differ, but I think you’ll find that we’d all agree that you should pick a system that works for you, and stick with it. Commitment to a system, rather than the system itself, is usually the final arbiter of success.
Sidebar on Fat vs. Fit Files
When we talked about Mistake #4 last week, we noted, in general, the importance of purging as necessary. Well, don’t just slim down your system — keep individual files lean, too, and label accordingly.
So, instead of a file for all business expenses, you may choose to have one to correspond with each business expense category on the Schedule C (if you’re a sole proprietor or LLC). If your personal medical history file is so thick that it’s causing the hanging folder to bow and bend, break the file down chronologically (Medical History 1996-1999, 2000-2004, 2005-2009, 2010+) so that no file is thicker than about 1/2″-3/4″, and aim for your hanging folders to have no more than three interior files, each.
Keeping your files neither too fat and all-encompassing to be handy nor so specific as to be inefficiently and useless, will help you find the papers you need whenever you need them.
Sidebar on Uniformity
No matter how much specificity you choose when labeling files, seek uniformity in your naming system. If one folder says ’96 Hyundai Repairs, while another says Maintenance For Mary’s Car, even if the two are placed together in your filing system, the lack of uniformity will make your brain stop, for just the slightest moment, when you’re searching for what you need. Opt for parallel structure in labeling.
Mini-Mistake #5D: You Have Messy, Unreadable Labels
Paper Doll has two types of handwriting: the relatively neat, painstaking cursive I use for Thank You notes, condolence letters, and the rare check, and the scribble I use for grocery lists and phone numbers transcribed from voice mail. A lifetime of using computers has eroded whatever handwriting skills Ms. Minklein, my beloved second and third grade teacher, imparted to me.
If you have exquisite penmanship, I encourage you to save time and resources and to label your files on your own, with a sharp Sharpie or other pen. However, if your handwriting resembles nothing so much as a two-year-old’s attempts at map-making, I encourage you to invest a small amount of money in a label maker. Brother no longer makes my adored PT-65 but both Brother and Dymo, the leaders in labeling, have excellent hand-held label maker lines.
In the coming months, this space will present a comparative analysis of brands and models and the keys to selecting a label maker, but for most household and small office purposes, any affordable label maker with a QWERTY keyboard should suffice.
Sidebar on Authority:
Although I have yet to find any academic research on the subject, it’s my professional belief and experience that users are more likely to file away their papers when their paper management system bears the “official” imprint of typewritten labels. I suppose those who are iconoclasts might rebel against “the Man”, but I’ve found that neat, uniform, typed labels tend to incline people towards loyally maintaining their filing systems more so than handwritten, scribbled labels.
Mini-Mistake #5E: You Have a Labeling PLACEMENT System That is Too Complicated
Labeling isn’t just about what it says on the label. Some systems rise or fall on the complexity of how and where they are labeled. To that end, I suggest two rules:
Skip 1/5 cut label tabs. You’ve seen those manila file folders with tiny one-inch tabs positioned at left, left of center, center, right of center and right. These tabs are simply too small to create meaningful labels unless you choose the absolute smallest font-size on your label maker or hand-print in teeny, tiny letters, thereby making the labels fit, but less easy to read from a distance. Just say no. Stick with 1/3 cut label tabs.
Don’t fuss over placement. I know people who have strict rules regarding placement of file folders and hanging folders tabs. For example, they’ll require that all major categories run behind one another, such that all financial accounts should be kept in left-tab files and that sub-categories must be center-tabbed and sub-sub-categories right-tabbed. Conversely, others will require that each successive folder in a system, from to back, should change tab position, from left, to center, to right, and over to left again.
There are two major problems with such approaches.
First, in both cases, if you run out of folders of the “correct” type — if, for example, you want to add a new financial folder but are out of left-tab folders, or if you need to add a new type of insurance policy, but the next folder should be a right-tab and you are out of right-tab folders, you’re stuck. Would you rather rush out and buy a new box of folders ASAP, or risk putting off completing your filing system until the next time you might feel inspired?
The second problem only involves the left-center-right (lather, rinse, repeat) label method. If you had a new sub-category to add, but the folders behind that category have already “restarted” the left-center-right pattern, your new folder will be the odd man out. A rigid system just sets you up for failure because it violates Mini-Mistake #4e, the one about leaving no room for the future.
For those of you who just don’t worry that much about file placement, I applaud you.
However, for you readers who are perfectionist procrastinators who can’t get started for fear of eventually encountering a “failure”, I have one secret. Did you know that you could flip folders inside-out? It can be a little more obvious that you’ve done so with colored folders than standard manila, but if you flip a left-tab folder inside-out, you now have a right-tab folder, and vice versa. It’s no miracle, but it helps keep the paper management process moving forward when things get bogged down.
Again, the simpler you can make your system, the better. As Albert Einstein said:
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
Most people think Einstein was probably thinking about quantum mechanics or the mysteries of the universe when he said that. But before he was a world-famous physicist, Einstein worked in a patent office. And throughout his career, he was surrounded by paper clutter. Albert Einstein knew about paper management mistakes. Just imagine what magnificent things he might have discovered if he’d just been a little more organized.
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