![[Southern Railway dining car receipt]](/public/2007/12/dining-car-receipt.jpg)
“What is that?” she exclaimed.
“It’s all the paperwork we’ve collected this year.”
“In one big pile?”
“Well…”
“This is where all our bills go?”
“Well, our paid bills. Unpaid bills go into a pile on my desk.”
“Your system sucks.”
“It’s a perfectly good system. It’s just optimized for writes.”
“Rights?”
“No, writes. As in, INSERT BILL INTO PILE.” My wife is a business coder; she understands the world in terms of SQL.
“What if you need to find a bill you’ve paid?” she asked.
“No, it’s not optimized for reads. Reads require a table scan.”
“Don’t you index them into folders?”
“Yes, once a year, I take the big pile of paperwork and organize them into separate piles, and file them.”
“Why don’t you file them as they come in?”
“But that would slow down the writes.”
“We need a better system.”
Many hours and one shredder later…
“OK,” she explained, “this is the box for unpaid bills. This is the box for things that need to be filed. Once a month, you will empty the box and file them. And this is the box for receipts.”
“Receipts?”
“Upon entering the house, all receipts go in this box.” She points to a small blue box. “Once a month, I’ll sort them into medical, saveable, and chuckable. Medical receipts get filed under FSA, saveable receipts get filed into folders, and chuckable receipts go into the shredder.” I eye the shredder with disbelief.
“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to a three-page flowchart.
“That’s the flowchart that explains where everything goes.”
“And where does the flowchart go?” I asked not-innocently.
“I’m just going to put it on top of this box for the time being.”
“I have the utmost confidence in the longevity of this system.”
It is immensely hilarious that two of the “related articles” are titled “not even trying” and “do nothing”, and that the third is titled “rounded corners”. I don’t know what kind of stuff you’re using, but it’s definitely better than even markov chains.
Comment by Jesper — Friday, December 28, 2007 @ 7:18 pm
I say you take the flowchart to Kinko’s, blow it up to poster size and then just tack it up by the file cabinet. It’s functional wall art!
No?
Okay. Well, regardless, the whole thing is fantastic.
Comment by Patricia — Saturday, December 29, 2007 @ 10:04 am
Oddly enough, my wife and I went through a similar shred-and-file fest yesterday. Fortunately, we agree on the level of order needed in our system (which is somewhere between yours and your wife’s).
Comment by Adam Rice — Saturday, December 29, 2007 @ 12:58 pm
I have a similar system: [funny SQL redacted due to stupid security code] where I place everything in a pile.
It’s just that MY pile is a queue. The system that does the sorting, filing, and shredding is a separate system called Roxanne.
Comment by Michael R. Bernstein — Saturday, December 29, 2007 @ 2:21 pm
I used your system (the original one, not the new and “improved” one) for a year, and I loved it. Also, reads could be optimized somewhat when you know the approximate date of the item you want to retrieve, which most of the time, you do.
A few months ago we went to a slightly more organized system, where “the pile” is now in an accordion folder divided by month. This has four benefits: 1) It reduces the likelihood of the pile getting scattered on the floor and subsequently put back out-of-order, 2) it makes lookups where you know the approximate date even more accurate/timely, 3) when an item is removed from the pile, it has a better chance of going back into the approximate position it belongs, and 4) one accordion folder sitting on the floor next to the desk looks much neater than a whole shelf stacked with assorted papers and envelopes.
With the end of the year approaching, I had considered emptying the accordion folder, filing everything, and then starting fresh with the same accordion folder. But I’m leaning towards just filing the whole accordion folder (basically putting it on a shelf somewhere) and getting a new one for the new year.
Comment by Kevin H — Monday, December 31, 2007 @ 1:05 am
That made me laugh out loud! I’m glad my wife leaves everything to me. It reminds me, I did a first order filing of all the year’s paperwork at the beginning of the Christmas holidays (6 categories) and I forgot to do the rest. Maybe next Christmas…
Kevin H, I like your idea.
Comment by Paul Morriss — Wednesday, January 2, 2008 @ 8:25 am
I guess you are talking about the way many people in SWs deliberately remove indexes pointing to to slow writes in which would cost few jobs a few more minutes, when in reality the whole time is wasted in searching and working on that stuff by application almost all the time becuase of poor indexes more time is wasted as a whole.
Comment by LJS — Thursday, January 3, 2008 @ 10:11 am
Mark, thank you for formally describing, in terms a programmer can understand, the logical basis for the filing system I’ve been using for the past 9 years.
I always thought I was just a lazy procrastinator, but you’ve shown me that there are true performance benefits to this model, in terms of write operations. Since 99% of my interactions with my paper files are write operations, it totally makes sense to optimize that process for speed.
Last year, for a while, I tried something that was kind of a cross between your wife’s 3 box system (medical, saveable, and chuckable), and Kevin H’s accordion folders divided into months. My system was not as clean and simple as either of those, though. It involved zip-lock bags, rather than folders, and I had too many categories. Plus, each month I’d have to label a whole new set of bags, and it quickly became unmanageable. I called this a failure after only 2 months, and went back to Mark’s original system.
This post was hilarious, but also made me think about a trying another new filing system, myself. Thanks for the tips, and of course for helping to justify my piles of papers.
Comment by spugbrap — Thursday, January 3, 2008 @ 12:31 pm
“optimized for writes” — brilliant! I no longer have need to feel guilty and I’m SURE my wife will understand (haha). She’s not, unfortunately, a business coder…
Comment by Peter Keane — Thursday, January 3, 2008 @ 6:52 pm
I’m going to tell my girlfriend that stacking dishes in the sink is really me optimizing for writes and just choosing to perform data validation upon retrieval.
And then she’ll kick me out.
Comment by Sam Jones — Friday, January 4, 2008 @ 12:33 pm