Achieving Fingertip Management, by Eileen Roth

When it comes to your papers, you want to achieve fingertip management of your papers. Determine what you really need "at your fingertips". Fingertip management means being able to actually put your fingertips on any paper you need in seconds. It doesn't mean spending endless minutes digging through piles of papers knowing it 's halfway down or "near the bottom" of a stack. Unlike the yellow pages commercial, we don't want to let "the fingers do the walking". We want the eyes to do the "looking". When there are piles of papers, it takes longer to dig through them to find what you are looking for. When the papers are standing vertically in files, the eyes can quickly search for the hanging file tab and file folder label to find what you need.

The first step to achieve fingertip management is to determine what your "active" papers are. What are the papers that you really need by you all the time? If you only need to use a paper quarterly, semi-annually, or even yearly; you don't need it at your fingertips. For those papers you can get up from your desk and go to another room. Those are "inactive" papers. Your active papers are the ones that are used on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. When someone calls, you want your active papers "at your fingertips".

The next step is to decide what should be kept where. In your desk file drawer you should have your tickler file and any current projects. Current projects means just the section of the project that you are working on, not necessarily all of the files on the project. The bulk of the project may be in your file cabinet while the one file you are currently using may be in your desk drawer.

The third step is to decide which of the basic tools best suits the papers you are keeping. Do you prefer to work out of binders (or notebooks, whichever word you prefer) or are you more of a file person? Do you like to flip pages like a book so that you prefer binders? Or do you like to keep things divided into smaller groupings and prefer to use folders? Your answers here may affect the layout of your office to achieve fingertip management.

If you are a binder person, you want to be sure you have easy access to a bookcase to store the binders. You may want this bookcase immediately behind your desk chair so that you don't have to get up from your desk to reach the binders. If you are a file person, you may want a file cabinet to the side of your desk, or possibly behind you, so that you can easily reach the files. If you put file cabinets behind you, you need to remember that there must be enough space for the file drawer to open completely.

You may find it more convenient to put vertical file cabinets adjacent to the desk. Another possibility is to place a vertical file cabinet on a wall at a 90 degree angle so the drawer opens toward you when you turn sideways from your desk. Lateral file cabinets may sit directly behind you (again watching for enough space to open the drawer completely) or be on a right angle at the side of the desk.

If you tend to use both binders and files, but have very few binders, you could put some bookshelves on a wall to hold the binders over your head. In fact you may find it more convenient to have the binders on a wall at the side of the desk (90 degrees) so you can reach the bookshelf without even turning your desk chair.

The fourth step needs a little thought: Keep only what you need. Discard the rest.

The fifth step is easier: File it, don't pile it.

When you organize your office, you will find that you can find "a place for everything and put Everything in its Place".

Copyright 1997. Eileen Roth