Since my last entries were about metadata and taxonomy, I thought it would be appropriate to share this web page I stumbled upon a while ago. It explains the Noguchi Filing System, an unconventional method to file information based on its frequency of use rather than any other parameter.
The author, Noguchi Yukio, states that we are more prone to remember when we last accessed some data rather than its alphabetical or categorical information. The system is quite easy to tackle, and all you need is some A4 envelopes – hmm, make that a huge amount of envelopes, actually.
The Noguchi filing system
As soon as you have some mess on your desk or workspace, put each item in a separate envelope, and write the date and a descriptive title on the outside. Then, go to your shelf and put your new envelopes on the left side.
Every time you add new envelopes, they are put on the left side of the shelf, which means that the shelf will first be sorted in chronological order. However, every time you use an item and file it back, you add it to the left of the shelf, meaning that the shelf will soon be sorted by usability. In other words, any envelope always enters the shelf by the left side.
Now, the beauty of it, is that envelopes that are never used will never make it to the left again, so these right side envelopes are just taking space on your shelf without being useful to you. This is the moment where you decide if you can part with the item and throw it away, or store it in a box elsewhere. You use boxes per categories of items. In fact, this is the one and only time when one categorizes anything. Noguchi’s reasonment is that categories are best created post mortem, for conventional filing systems have the following problems:
- user must decide on categorization at the beginning of the system/application, and this may or may not be feasible. A wrong decision upon start may require to recategorize
- some documents may belong to several categories, so that the user may not remember where it was actually stored
- since unused documents reside alongside used ones, looking for a categorized document may require browsing through the whole category. Furthermore, archiving of documents also require browsing the whole category to sort useful data from old
I have not tried this system myself, at least not in the presented approach. What I have done, however, is to sort my mess in chronological stacks and archive them when I absolutely need to, procrastinating this need of course. So, as it is, I may give it a try… but first, we travel!
This system offers a good blend of fresh and relevant content, since both are always on the left side of the shelf. However, I don’t agree with all arguments against categorized data. True, when you’re looking for something you may need to browse the whole category, but at least said category is located in one place, not split into a useful shelf and an archived box. Besides, archiving by date still makes sense in accounting duties for instance. As always, there is no perfect system, just a system that suits you better in a given situation.
What I find interesting, is that this system can be tuned and optimised for online work, as in a blog for example. Entries are naturally sorted chronologically and top to bottom. Useful entries can be kept in a sidebar, as I do, and you still have the added flexibility to use categories. Do you need to recategorize? No problem, do it (easier if you know some SQL to talk to your database)!
Tell me what you think of this system and whether you did/would/will try it out. I’m curious about its true potential.