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.