A reader has asked whether I am still using the Noguchi filing system. The answer is “Yes”, but only for those documents which don’t fit easily into a conventional filing system. For these I find it a godsend.
Just to illustrate the difference, here are the most recently used file titles in my conventional system (for how I organize that, see File for Success):
I wouldn’t dare trust the contents of these files to the Noguchi system - I need them not only to be complete but to be in the right order within the file.
After using the Noguchi system for a bit over a month I have 48 envelopes. It never takes me more than a few seconds to find a document. Here are the most recently used:
Basically these are all the type of things which used to lie around because I couldn’t decide which file they should go in, or because I needed to read them in detail before filing them. Now the answer is easy: “Put them in Noguchi”. Result: they don’t lie around any more and can be easily found.