42Tags

Why did we make 42Tags?

Four years ago I noticed that whenever I needed to access some old documents, I spent way too much time looking for them among piles of papers or worse – instead of finding them I had to obtain new ones (e.g. contacting companies again, requesting approvals, etc.).

I felt that the paper clutter was hindering my productivity and organizational ability.

So I bought a scanner and I started scanning papers. I don’t immediately scan the papers when I receive them – I leave them in a drawer for a convenient time to tend to this kind of task.

I created a hierarchy of folders and I scanned each page into a different “jpeg” file.

At the beginning, everything went well and I was happy, but after half a year, I started feeling that the system wasn’t working well. Why?

1) The most critical problem was having a hierarchy of folders – I quickly got papers that overlapped too many of these folders. For example, when my company bought some equipment and I wanted to save the warranty – then I was forced to decide whether to save it under business, or under warranties (which also include personal, non-business equipment).

2) Scanning each page to a different file is a cumbersome chore. You need to create and rename each file, and view them separately. And I am not talking about reordering pages …

3) I started with two separate folders – one called “docs” and another called “scanned docs”. I put digital content (word, excel, etc.) in the first one and scanned documents in the second. I saw that the separation was poor. There were many documents involving digital and scanned content. An easy example is a CV – when you have your resume in a word file and all your recommendations are scanned. It doesn’t make sense to separate them.

So I decided to search for a solution!

To be continued…

Shimon