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Do you have events that take place in the future? Are you having trouble keeping track of the documents for those future commitments?

What if I could show a simple system for filing these documents?

We all have them, reservation confirmations, theater tickets or maybe a brochure for upcoming event that you may want to attend.

I have a simple proven way to keep track of this “stuff”. David Allen talked about the Tickler File in Getting Thing Done. It’s a simple yet very reliable productivity tool.

It’s called a tickler file.

Here’s how to get started:

43 folders – Go get 43 blank folders!
Months – Label 12 of them w/ the months Jan-Dec.
Days – Label 31 with the days 1-31.

The initial setup:

Put the days in front and then months in back.
The current day should be first and the current month should be first. Then every file should then be in sequential order.

Here’s how the system works:

Each day you process the current day’s folder.
The next day you move the previous day folder to the back. You should now have the current day folder in front. Open it up and process all the stuff in it.
You are making a filing system that files by date.
Everything is filed by the month and day they take place on.
On the first day of every month you sort through the month folder and file the documents into the day folders.

A simple hack of the system:

I don’t use 31 folders for the days. I simply don’t have enough stuff to make it useful to me.
I break it down by weeks – 1-5. During my weekly review I look through the upcoming week’s folder.

A tickler system is simple to setup but yet it’s a powerful productivity tool.

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I also sometimes stick someday/maybe items in there to jog my memory. This is a great system for those of you who suffer from impulse buying. Simply print out a picture of the item you want to buy and put it in the file say about 2 weeks from now. Then you can decide if you really need it or not.

You can also file things early to act as a reminder of what is coming up.

Do you have a system for filing stuff that happens in the future? Have any of you tried a digital version of a tickler file?

Let me know on twitter:

https://twitter.com/AdamVolosik