[Yesterday: 3.4 miles]
In the olden days before computers became a ubiquitous feature of any office environment there was a position called secretary. That person was there to deal with papers, appointments, phone lists, records management and other essential functions.
In a modern office only those at the rarefied top of the pyramid get any help at all with such things, usually in the form of an “executive assistant.”
So it is up to me, a computer guy, to try to manage my own papers, appointments, phone lists, records management, etc. I get by pretty well with appointments and phone lists. But my papers and records management are terrible.
I use my ever expanding email archive to keep track of historical activities and decisions. That’s not really the best, but it seems to work. I save most of my inbox and sent messages and put them into offline folders by year, so I have a “Inbox 2013” folder. That gives me search capabilities. When someone asks, “when did we last do XYZ?” I go searching through the email archive.
It is good that I don’t have a lot of financial records to worry about. I don’t buy much, I rarely have travel expense reports and such things. Mostly I stuff those types of papers into unlabeled folders in a lateral file drawer which is dedicated to “office stuff”.
I frequently print out paper copies of documents from Oracle or another vendor, stuff about bug fixes or how to install new updates or whatnot. Those go into piles on the floor, sometimes into 3-ring binders. When I go through the piles I see that I have multiple copies of the same documents. Sigh. I have no document management worth speaking of. Some of these also end up in the “office stuff” lateral file.
Anyway, today I have someone coming over to visit my office space and I need to clean up the piles on the floor. Most of it probably should just get tossed. I’ll just print it out again when I need it.