Shoebox Filing
written by
jaron summers (c) 2018
When it comes to organizing our lives, we use the modified shoebox method around our household.
We scribble Bills on the end of a shoebox — we stuff all our financial stuff into it. We have shoeboxes for everything but our shoes. Footwear we put in apple boxes. I don’t know why.
And, when it comes to the writing, we throw all our stuff on the hard disk. We pretend to organize things in files and folders, but we don’t. When we want to find anything, we use Google Desktop.
Just last week I cursored upon a letter I had written to a CEO, threatening him with a nationwide boycott if he didn’t send me a free Mercedes. It was in a subfolder called “How to Achieve your Dreams.”
And that was tucked away within another folder called, “My Cons.” And that was yet sequestered within another folder called “Dating 101.”
I digress.
This is about organizing…such things as columns that I have inflicted on you over the years. Oh, and thank you for reading them and passing them onto your friends.
I divided my columns into what for me were obvious groups. (Travel, whacky tales, bittersweet, war, and writing tips and my novels.)
It dawned on me that the best way for anyone to access any of my writing would be to simply type in a word in the search engine on my website.
Enter what you want: Taliban, sex, Kate, Amazon, money, etc. Bingo, my Google search engine finds those pertinent columns (plus a short overview).
As that Australian crocodile hunter yells as he steps on a hissing cobra, “Cracky, this is great sport!”
Search engines are a superior way to organize and access knowledge (at least my knowledge) compared to what Aristotle dreamed up. Turns out he was wrong about many things — the earth revolves around the sun, Stupid.
In fairness to Aristotle, he did hatch a plan (to classify items in categories) that was a trifle superior to my six: travel, giggle food, bittersweet, war, writing tips and my novels.
In spite of his forays into epistemology, the Old Greek still figured our brains were refrigerators.
Speaking in fridge terms, I bet Aristotle would have agreed that computers, the internet and Atomz were cool.
Atomz is another dynamic search engine on my website — you can incorporate it on your website so people can access anything you have written. But I think Google Desktop is better.
Oh, we were talking about organizing stuff. Following is a clip on how you organize a fridge.
When you complete your fridge organization, just substitute magazine and news clippings and reminder notes for zip-lock bags and containers. After awhile you will have replaced all your food with things that clutter up your filing cabinet. Leave a space in the fridge for your laptop.
Then shut the door and all your office supplies and files, each in their own shoebox, will be out of the way.
If you want to read an interesting book about the way we organize stuff, have a look at: “Everything is Miscellaneous” by David Weinberger.
P.S. — Someday maybe we’ll use virtual shoeboxes to store all our information in. For example, here’s a thriller I wrote — and you can read it in cyberspace. (hint: you can also buy it in cyberspace. While Aristotle would have been shocked by my novel, he would have loved cyberspace.)
