Video Transcript: One-Touch Calendar Filing System
Welcome back. We're continuing with our course developing great commission skills. The skill that we're focusing on is managing ministry time, and our focus in this video is on the skill topic, one touch calendar filing system. Now that's a that's a long title. I actually refer to this as my one touch filing system, and sometimes I refer to it as my 1 to 31 now that'll make more sense that will make more sense to you in a moment. Now, here's the thing you know, all throughout our ministry lives, there's a steady stream of documents, emails, all kinds of things, informational pieces are coming to us every day, and it's more and more difficult to deal with that onslaught of things that arrive each and every day. Things get lost, things get misplaced. We fail to respond to an email. All kinds of things happen where we sort of get a little bit out of control, in terms of men in terms of managing all those pieces, individual things that are coming to us throughout the course of a given day a given week. Now with the this one touch calendar filing system, we can take care of those problems quite quickly. Now, I was introduced to this system by someone else many years ago. In fact, it was back in the late 80s, and I was so impressed with the simplicity of it, and over the years, I've watched it function. Now I will admit that this is a bit old school. It's the kind of thing that those of you who are very digitally savvy, you might not respond that well to this in terms of the nuts and bolts, the physicality of it, but absolutely, if you find that these concepts work for you, there probably would be digital tools out there that you could utilize in this way, and if not, you could probably create something. I don't think it would be that difficult. It's just my preference is to physically deal with actual pieces of paper, filing cabinet, a set of files. And so I'm going to show you how all of that fits together. Now here's the thing. What I'm going for is the organizing principle. So again, you don't necessarily need to follow this exact approach in terms of file folders and that sort of thing. So concentrate more on the idea, on the concept of it, and if there is another way of achieving that that's more preferable to you than the hard copy versions that I use. By all means, feel free now it's difficult to depict this in a PowerPoint slide, but what I want you to imagine here is that you are looking inside of a file drawer. And inside of that file drawer there are there's a long set of file folders. And there are going to be three different sections to this drawer of file folders. The first section is called the 1 to 31s. Now each folder represents a day of the month from the first second third of the month all the way up to the 31st of the month. So that is your first set of folders. Now I want you to think about how many times you've misplaced a valuable piece of information, or that you've had something sitting on your desk which you didn't quite know what to do with it, you didn't know where to put it for easy retrieval, or it was on your desk, and you found that you were picking it up over and over and over again and placing it somewhere else, multiple touches instead of a one touch. There are all kinds of applications for this, but the idea here is we don't want you to forget things. We don't want you to lose things. We want you to be. Able to
respond in whatever way is appropriate, in a timely fashion. So we start our system with a set of 31 folders labeled 1 through 31 so the way I have it, when I sit at my desk in my office to my left I have a filing system. I pull the drawer out, and I'm looking at three sets of folders, the first one being the 1 to 31s. Now the second set, the second set, well, let me back up in terms of the 1 to 31s. Let's say, for example, that something comes in and it's something that I don't need to deal with today. Let's just say it's, it's the fourth of the month, something comes in and it's not something that I need to deal with today. It's something that I need to deal with, say on the 22nd so what I would do, you see, is I would go to my folder marked 22 and I would place that item in the 22 folder. So as we move through the month, when we get to that day 22 I open my 22 file, and there it is. Now, I haven't had to think of it a single time. I haven't had to touch it a single time between now and the 22nd but on the 22nd there it is. So that's how, that's how this kind of thing works. Now the second set of folders are my months of the year. Folders, 12 of them, of course, January through December, and I placed them in my folder directly behind my 1 to 31s. So when I look down at my drawer, I'm seeing one through 31 and in a second set January through December. So let's say we're in in the month of May, and something comes in. Maybe it's it's actually in the mail, maybe it's an email, maybe it's something that was handed at me at a meeting, something of that sort, and we're in the month of May, but I realize that this is something that is futuristic. It's something that isn't part of what's going on today. It's just something that I'm going to need to to handle say in November. So what I would do is I would go to my November folder and I would place this item in my November folder, so as the months go by, May, June, July, August, September, October. I don't have to think about that item. I don't have to touch it. I don't have to be careful that I don't lose it in some way. But when November arrives, I open my November folder and I take it out and reexamine what it is and what it needs to do, what, how I need to deal with it. Now, here's where this system really, really pays off. When I look at my November file at the very latest, it's November 1. I might if I'm really managing time well, I might take a look a few days before November 1st. I might pull out that November folder, say, on October 25 let's say, and I take a look at my November folder, and I see all the things that are in there that need to be handled in November. But now that November is upon us, what I'm going to do is Redistribute. Let's say I've got seven items in my November folder. I'm going to take each item and say, Well, this is something I need to deal with on the 17th so I place it in my 17 folder. This is something I need to deal with on the 12th I put it in 12 and so on and so forth. So month by month by month, I take what's been gathered in my monthly folders and redistribute it into my 1 to 31 daily folders, and then on the appropriate day, I pull it out, and there it is. Okay, here's an example recently, just for you know, as I was preparing for this course, I thought I needed a current example, so I just randomly selected my September
file, and I pulled it out, and I found that I had placed in the September file a copy of my brother's birth certificate. Now I recall that some months ago, I was involved in shifting some paperwork around. My mother passed away a number of years ago, and I was in charge of handling her her belongings. So I have a number of boxes filled with things that belong to her, and I periodically go through those boxes. One of those boxes contained my brother's birth certificate, so obviously I need to get his birth certificate to him. But I thought, You know what would be interesting would be to include his birth certificate in his birthday card that I will send to him for his birthday. Now, his birthday is in September, so I put it in the September file. Now I haven't thought about that since then. I'd forgotten about it, but when I pulled that September file out, even though it's not September, I'm doing this by way of example, I pulled out my September file. There was the birth certificate, so I just put it back in its place, and when next September rolls around, I will make sure to send him his birth certificate inside of his birthday card, and I think that he'll probably get a kick out of that. So we have our daily files, 1 through 31 and we have our monthly files, January through December. Now let's go one more step into the yearly files. Now, to be candid, I don't have very much in those files. It's quite distant, but I do have them just in case. And every once in a while, something comes up that I end up placing in a yearly file. So the idea of the yearly file is to stay four or five years ahead of where we are. So I might label, you know, 2024 through 2028 or nine, something like that. And every year, as each year passes and I redistribute, say, the 2024 file, you know, I'll add another file on the back end. You know the 2029 file, the 2030 file, something like that. So let me give you let me give you an example. I just checked my 2024 file, and I found information regarding a conference that I'm planning to attend in March of 2024 so I put it in my March file. And when I get to 2024 excuse me, I put it in my 2024 file. So when we get to 2024 in January of 2024 I will pull my 2024 file, and I will find this information, and it will remind me that I have a conference coming up in March of 2024 that I intend to participate in. So at that point, I'll be able to review that and decide for sure whether or not, whether or not I want to attend, and if so, it's probably going to have some instruction about registration and a date. So at that point, I might transfer that to one of my monthly files, or even to one of my daily files, if it's something that needs to be handled in the month of January. So I know this is kind of a lot to take in, and it really is, you know, an old school approach to administration, but I have found this to be incredibly effective over the years, and I've been using this system since the 80s, but you have those three sections of files, 1 to 31 daily files, 12 monthly files, and four or five yearly files. So everything that comes to me, if, if a piece of mail comes to me, Well, let's talk about, let's talk about the rationale. What we're trying to do is make sure that we're just touching things one time as they first come in. I refer to what I do with this these items as handling so you know, what are my handling
options? Well, when I first get a hold of an item, my first question is, Do I really need this? Is this something I need to hold on to? Or can I actually toss it? And if it's something that's unnecessary, I just throw it away right on the spot, or delete it. If it's a digital file that's come to me. There is a really interesting book that I would like to recommend. It's, it's a book by a woman named Marie Kondo, K, O, N, D, O, and the name of the subtitle? Well, the name of the book is the life changing Magic of Tidying Up. The life changing Magic of Tidying Up. Subtitle the Japanese art of decluttering and organizing. So really, that's what this is about. It's about it's about decluttering and organizing. One of the principles that Kondo uses in her book is this. She says, discard ruthlessly. Discard ruthlessly. Our tendency is to hold on to things we really don't need and are never going to use, but we hesitate to discard them. But her tip is discard ruthlessly. Lean and mean is the way to go. Now, if the item needs to be handled immediately, handle it immediately and be done with it. Now you pick up this piece of paper that's come to you through whatever means, or there's an email or there's a voicemail that's come in, and it's something that you really need to respond to, and you think to yourself, I really need to get back to this person, or I really need to respond to this so I'm going to just set it over here on the side. I'll get to it later today. Guess what? You're probably not going to get to it later today, and it's probably not going to take you but a minute or so to respond right now. So if something comes in that needs to be handled immediately, handle it immediately. All right, next, down the line, if, if the item needs to be handled within the next month, but not immediately, go ahead and place it in in the proper 1 to 31 file. Okay, now let me. Let me share one other little insight, kind of a tip on how to use this system. Let's say that it's late in the month. It's the 28th of whatever month, and something comes to your attention, and there's only three days left in the month, but it needs to be handled by the 10th of the following month. Okay, so let's say it came to you on February the 28th and it's something that needs to be handled on March the 10th. Well, what would be the proper place to file that particular item? Well, because it's due in March, the temptation might be to file it in the March file, and you wouldn't really lose any ground with that. But here's a better idea. If it's within 31 days of the time that you receive it, you receive it on the 28th of February, it's something you need to deal with on the 10th of March. So that's only a couple of weeks. You don't really need to put it in your March file. Where you need to put it, it's in your 10 file. So it's kind of counterintuitive to go backwards. But the thing is, once you hit 30 or 31 whatever the last day of the month is when you hit the first of the next month, you're immediately circling back to your number one file. So there's a constant cycle of working through a month and then returning to number one, working through a month, returning to number one. So if you receive something late in the month that's due the following month. The best place to put that would be in the appropriate 1 to 31 file. So that's just something to be on the lookout for.
Now. Here's a moving on with handling options if something doesn't need to be handled within the next. Next month. We're now beyond the 1 to 31s. We're beyond the month. We're now, or rather, we're into the month files. So if I receive something in February that I don't need to deal with until, say, June, the place to go with that would be in the June folder that will give you the opportunity to retrieve that in June and and handle it. Then finally, if you if you come across something that doesn't need to be dealt with within the next year, you can then go to your year folders and find the appropriate year and file it. For example, let's say that an item arrived in, say, 2020 that has to do with an event that's going to be held in 2022 well, what you would do is you would place that item in your 2022 file. That's how this works. Okay, so you're always thinking ahead. Things that are coming up soon will go into 1 to 31s. Things that are coming up in a few months will go in your monthly files. Things that are beyond a year will go into your yearly files. Now, if you go about it this way, you will keep track of everything that you need to keep track of. You know, a lot of things will come to you in the way of hard copies. Things will come to you in the way of emails. When I find something that comes to me, say, by way of an email, I have a double filing system at that point. You know one thing I might do, if it's a recurring relationship, I probably have a digital file to place that in. Okay, let's say I'm on a particular committee, and so I'll have a committee file, and when something comes in from that committee digitally. I will digitally file it in that committee's digital file. But when it comes to the calendar, what I'm going to do is I'm going to look at that email and if that email has any instruction or direction to me that that has to be handled in a certain time frame. I'm going to print that out, create my own hard copy, and then file it in the appropriate 1 to 31 or month file or year file. So that's how I keep track. It's been working for me for years and years and years. I don't lose things. I don't fail to respond to things. And so I highly recommend a system. This system works, and I'm sure there are other systems that are somewhat similar out there, find a way to handle the constant onslaught of stuff that's coming into your ministry life, into your professional life, into your leadership life. Now each day, I begin each day with prayer, with Bible reading, and with a look at my 1 to 31s, it's worked for me, and I think it'll work for you. Managing ministry time well is greatly supported by the one touch calendar filing system. So I invite you to, I invite you to try this system out. You know, get yourself a set of folders. Set up your system. Get a dedicated drawer in a filing cabinet, something that's very close to where you work most of the time. Try this system out. Try it out for 30 days, maybe 60 days, and see what kind of results you get from it. I think that you will find it to be very helpful in staying organized, or, as Marie Kondo says, decluttering and organizing. Well, this completes our video in regard to email and in regard to the one touch filing system. Next time we're going to be looking at the skill topic email and voice mail, control and response, obviously it's a related issue to what we've been
talking about today, but it has its own little flavor and nuances. So that's what's coming ahead, and now I pray that God will continue to bless you and your ongoing studies in the name of Jesus. Amen.