What if you could have all you documents ready to work on where ever you are? Long gone are the days of burning a CD, carrying a flash drive and making multiple copies of files. Only to overwrite the most recent version with an old version because you got confused over which one was the most current. I know how that feels.

Drobox for those of you who don’t know is a wonderful tool. It’s a cloud based storage system that allows you to access your documents anywhere. It works and works well. In fact I wrote most of this blog post on my iPad. I was able to sync the file to my dropbox account once I was home.

I used to have dedicated flash drive and at the time I thought nothing could get better than a flash drive for carrying your documents. Oh how I disliked burning a CD to carry documents it felt so permanent. Once the cloud was established it opened up a whole new way of thinking. If I’m working on my iPad the file will sync the next time I open up my desk top machine. Dropbox also works across many different platforms.

Dropbox stores your folders out in the cloud and then sync’s them back to a local folder.

I love systems and try to keep them consistent when I can. I set dropbox up to mirror my Evernote tag system. This way everything if familiar to me. I use the same symbols in Evernote to tag project and client folders.

Here’s what it looks like:

• !INBOX – This is one of my primary inboxes. In the old days you would just have a tray somewhere in your office and it would collect all your paperwork. I still have one but it doesn’t get used very often. Today I use a folder in my dropbox called !INBOX. It so easy to dump any type of file there and I can process the inbox anywhere.
• @Action Support Files – Here I leave any action support files that aren’t associated with a project.
• @Project Support Files – Listed under here are separate file one for each one of my projects. Remember I’m not using this as a task management system this is simply used as reference filing. The beauty of this is that I can access any document anywhere I sit. ^Clients – If there is file I think I might need to access on the go or for a meeting I will place a copy here for reference.
• ^Clients – I have client specific folders here with non-actionable notes stored here. For example this might be a meeting agenda for an upcoming meeting. I also like have a digital copy of meeting agenda’s so I can print one less for the meeting.
• Apps – I don’t use any apps that can’t be backed up. I use dropbox to store the backed up data. In fact when I choose an app I now make sure it can back up the data to dropbox.
• Reference – I have a general reference folder organized with templates and general reference type files that I want easy access to.

I love being able to open up a file and just work on it. With the cloud and dropbox you really can do that.

Do you use a cloud based filing system? I’d love to hear about it.