Hi! This is Cyril from Work Smarter, Live Better.
In this video, I want to give you one simple advice to name your soft file which can help you to find your soft document much quicker.
The first thing we do when we work with the team is we declutter their world. Declutter!. Declutter their desk, declutter their soft file, declutter their inbox, declutter their tasks, declutter their time, declutter their brain…
So, we have a session where we do a big purging prune of the soft file. And so, we discuss principle and then after we said, “Well, let’s do it! Let’s open your laptop or your computer and let’s go and do it.” Because I’m a big believer that you learn when you do, not when you listen.
I was working recently with the manager of a large bank in Australia and he had soft document galore. He had many documents in his C drive, many document in his personal drive, many document on his desktop. It was document everywhere. So, I said, “Okay. Let’s do a purge.” So, we open the first folder and he looked at all the document in it and so, the first document was an excel spreadsheet and he looked at me and say, “Cyril, I have no idea what this document is.” Just the naming itself didn’t mean anything. So, he had to double click on it which open excel then loaded the document and when he saw the document, he said, “Ahh, now I know what it is. I don’t need this document.” Close it, delete it. The next one was a word document. “Cyril I’ve got no idea what it is.” Again the name was not clear. So we had to double click on it, open the document, load it. “Ahh, now this one, yes I know what it is but I don’t need it here anymore.”
My advice on this one is very simple.
My advice is put a name so clear that you do not need to open the document to know what’s inside. A name so clear that you do need to open the document to know what’s inside. There’s an international naming policy, which quite simple, which is yearmonthday – type of document – name of document – creator.
So, for example 20160910-Proposal-ABC Corporation Leadership Coaching for Team of John Smith-Cyril Peupion. Now it’s a little bit long but with this, you know exactly what’s inside the document. You can do a search for all documents sent to ABC Corporation, for all documents sent to ABC Corporation in 2016, for all your proposal, for all your proposal sent to ABC Corporation. It’s really simple after to do the search.
This is this week Work Smarter, Live Better and hope you’d enjoyed it. If you like this video, click on the like below but also what I like is, what is your tip for finding your soft file much quicker, for naming your soft file?
Let’s continue the conversation below. Have a lovely day. Thank you very much!
