Organising school paper documents

Following on from my ideas about going paperless, here is how I organise all the many sheets of paper I receive daily at school in preparation for scanning or somehow making it electronic, a solution which I personally find it highly effective.

In brief

The system uses a single lever-arch file and a set (or two) of dividers. The folder is effectively split into two parts: the main section at the front which deals with preps, blank paper and paper miscellany; and the subject section, split into the different subjects that I’m doing.

1. The Main Section

‘Paper’ is fairly obviously where blank sheets of paper are stored – lined, graph and blank paper. The next bit is prep. The first tab, ‘Set’, is where I dump all the homework sheets that need doing. Once the preps are completed the question sheet and my answers get stapled together and moved into the ‘Done’ section. When a prep gets marked it goes into the ‘Returned’ section which is scanned upon arrival home. The paper then gets shredded, leaving me with a bunch of scanned files on my HDD rather than a huge folder full of paper. The ‘Unis’ section is anything I pick up about university choices / preparation / general future education.

2. The Subjects Section

This bit is devoted entirely to subjects. Each subject has its own divider, and this section is used as a temporary cache for everything that isn’t prep (classwork, handwritten notes etc.) pending scanning and shredding upon arrival home.

Extra bits

There are always some special documents which don’t fit into any category in the system. The front of the folder contains my timetable (as can be seen in the first photo) and the back a load of transparent A4 paper wallets for anything that can’t for any reason be hole-punched.

The entire one-folder solution is incredibly simple but I’ve found it immensely effective as a system for getting everything from paper to HDD, and I hope this helps someone out there.

Alternatives to Paper

It looks like, with improving technology, it’s approaching the end of the road for paper. And so what a relief this article was to me – after my rant about snail mail it’s plain my stance on old-hat methods of getting things done is not favourable.

While I haven’t quite decided to go entirely paperless as yet, I regard paper as a hindrance to getting things done effectively and efficiently. Among other inefficiencies: it’s not searchable, it takes up huge amounts of space (I have one year’s work filling about 10 lever arch files which span half the width of my wall), it gets lost, it’s not easy to back up, it requires one to write which is slower than typing, it’s not interactive, it wastes resources, and it’s a pain to edit.

So it seems to me that as close as possible to paperless, using technology as a helping hand, is the way to go for the sake of sanity. Therefore, for anyone who happens to be striving for sanity, I have summarised here some ideas which are easily (and relatively painlessly) incorporated into everyday life:

Notes

Whenever possible, take notes on a laptop or some electronic device (preferably one which is easy to type on). If that fails and written notes are an absolute necessity, type it up as soon as possible afterwards, or scan it in and use something like Evernote to make it text-searchable – that way you don’t get a huge backlog of stuff that needs scanned.

Also, instead of using random scraps of paper to write reminders, use a file called todo.txt on the desktop to replace post-its stuck to the monitor with a text file. Again, Evernote can be utilised to a similar effect.

Bank statements

I had piles of these and felt obliged to keep them, just in case some hugely unlikely catastrophe occurs at the bank and they lose details of my account balance, and for some bizarre reason accept a statement as proof that I had £xyz in my account (however un-photoshopped it might look). So don’t be like me – switch to online banking and be sure to opt for electronic statements!

Letters and receipts

I’m talking here about receipts for online shopping rather than till receipts (which I normally throw away unless it’s a warranty). Like notes, scan them as soon as they arrive, file them electronically using some sensible organisation (of course using OCR for text-searchability), then shred them immediately afterwards (Unless of course they’re important legal stuff or something), thus forcing the exclusive use of the electronic copy, thus relieving any stress as to where to file the paper copy. After all you could always print them again if necessary.

Of course, paper can be useful for certain occasions – writing letters for instance – which is why I explicitly haven’t given up on it; after all, things like drawing diagrams are much easier. However with the rise of handheld devices equipped with styluses, I hope to see the use of paper decline and more useful technological alternatives being used.