The Noguchi Filing System

Interesting take on filing documents.

The Noguchi Filing System

A book I read recently has prompted me to try a rather unconventional filing system, the system proposed and used by Noguchi Yukio, an economist and writer of bestselling books about such things. Implementation of the system requires the user to discard many conventional notions about how to store paper documents.

The basic elements of the system are as follows.

All the user need prepare is a collection of A4-sized envelopes and some means for marking the outside of the envelope. If some color coding (optional) is to be done, this can be done with marker pens.

All documents, regardless of their class, level of importance, or perceived chance of being required at a later date are stored in A4-sized envelopes, which have the flaps cut off, as shown below.

And here is the clever part:

New documents (envelopes) are added at the left end of the "envelope buffer," and whenever a document is used (i.e., the envelope removed from the shelf), it is returned to the left end of the bookshelf. The result of this system is that the most recent (and frequently) used documents migrate to the left, while documents that are not used often or not used at all migrate to the right. After the system has been in use for a while, the shelf starts to look like the following.

In the above "frequency-of-use sorting" of files, some of the files on the right side will be classified as "holy files," to be retained indefinitely. These, however, are removed from the shelf and stored in boxes. If a "holy file" is in use, it is part of the working file group at the left. Thus, holy files are really dead files, but ones which the user cannot part with. The solution is to get them out of sight into a box someone. In essence, this system works on the principle that categorized files are dead files, and that categorizing files should only be done when they are to be put in your file graveyard.

Very nice!