If you’re like me, you hate filing paperwork but part of being a productive pastor is developing an effective and meaningful way of filing things. Much paperwork these days can be scanned and efficiently stored in a digital system. I routinely scan my receipts for tax purposes and order them in an OpenOffice Calc spreadsheet but what do you do with the other stuff lying around that you need from day to day or perhaps month to month? What about annual stuff? Enter the low-tech and unconventional “Noguchi” filing system named after it’s inventor, Noguchi Yukio.
A few years back, a website surfaced with information about this different way of filing your necessary paperwork using letter sized envelopes and a spare shelf on your bookcase. The site owner has since taken the images and information down, claiming theft of his work even though he himself was reproducing Noguchi’s work on his site. In any event, information about the system is hard to track down since most of the sites still link to the now extinct site. Dave Gray has probably the best one page synopsis of the system now available through the web but let me try to give you the nuts and bolts of Noguchi’s system.
To Start:
This system requires you to cut the top off of an envelope like you see at left and then, on the right side of the folder, you will place the date and the title of the document stored on the envelope. Color coding may help in finding this file a bit quicker but is not necessary. It would be easy to combine church, home, and related documents into various colors so you knew what to look for. Once the file is labeled and the document stored, you may then place it in your filing system by storing the file on the far left side of the shelf you now has assigned for the Noguchi system.
As you can see by this diagram, the new files are added to the far left of the shelf and older “aging” files gradually make their way to the right of the system. As you access files in your new system, you place them back not where you found them but on the far left side of the system. In this manner, files that are not used gradually end up on the far right and become “Holy files” as Naguchi calls them. The “Holy” files are then stored away in a box if you feel you need them or, if you are looking to remove clutter from your life, thrown away. In my case, if it’s something I feel I absolutely want to keep and it’s on the far right side, I scan the document inside and save it to my hard drive before killing the paper file.
I’ve used both traditional “alphabetized” filing systems and Noguchi’s system and can say without reservation, that Noguchi’s is more intuitive than the traditional method. Why do I feel this way? Think of how we access our digital files these days. Gmail through Google automatically places new conversations at the top of your inbox if someone emails you and links the old messages in the system on a similar thread into one “conversation” so you can remember the context of what you were discussing. This would be similar to Noguchi’s paper system. What about when you’re looking up that really good site you found by accident on the web two days ago? Do you go to your bookmarks to find it? (Provided you bookmarked the site). Perhaps what you might do, and what many others do is go to the “history” file in their browser cache and find the file that way. This would also mirror the processes in Noguchi’s system.
While we’re becoming a paperless society, there will still be a place, albeit a much smaller place, for paper. It makes sense that a new, more intuitive way of filing papers would also develop. The funny thing is, from what I can tell, is that Noguchi’s system of filing is dated at least as far back as 1993. It’s just in the past year or two that it’s benefits came to light on the web via the blogosphere.
Who knows, it might be worth a try to get you organized and get the pile of paper off your desk and into a meaningful system of organization that even busy pastors can use to find what they need, when they need it!
