The war on paper, part 2

I must say: At first blush, this duplexing scanner is awesome. No more loading one page at a time on a flatbed scanner, flipping to get the other side. I load in 10-20 pages at a time, hit the button, and put a basket underneath the catch the spoils. Paper jams are surprisingly far between for something that is entry level for its category. I’ve not investigated the character recognition, so I don’t know how well it indexes all of the financial statements, but as long as I can search by a month and year, I should be able to get close enough to hone in on what I’m looking for.

One lesson that’s held true is the importance of having a reasonable filing system. One that gets you close quickly, without being overly specific. We used to have different folders for different kinds of bills. One for gas, one for phones, one student loan payments. We’ve since consolidated to a folder that holds all of the finance documents for a given year. Specificity is directly related to the frequency one must access the data. Don’t have a file folder to distinguish between gas bills and electric bills if you’re going to have to look back at them once or twice a year.

But folders are still needed! I feel it is important to spell that out for my own sake, mostly because of the engineering product lifecycle management software we’re getting at work. It pushes in the opposite direction, with minimal folders and an emphasis on searching for what you need by indexing documents through their metadata (information that’s not immediately in the document, but attached to it as relevant upon putting the document inside the database). Admittedly, that’s where the future appears to be headed, with refined search technologies and greater indexing capabilities to automate document parsing and knowledge retrieval. Call me old fashioned, but I like folders.

And yes, I do see the irony in that last statement given that I’m in the process of digitizing old paper to get rid of it and better embrace the future.

We’ve thus far won many of the battles, but the war is not over. The master strategy has not fully matured. This is the not beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning!! (Thanks Churchill)