How to Build a Searchable Archive for Your Personal and Work Documents

Albert Einstein once said, “Organised people are just too lazy to go looking for what they want.” And I think he makes a very good point. Links: Email Me | Twitter | Fac ebook | Website | Linkedin

Mastering Digital Notes Organisation Course The File Management Course Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes Subscribe to my Substack The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 401 Hello, and welcome to episode 401 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. Last week’s episode on what to keep in your notes sparked a lot of follow-up questions around the concept of how to organise notes and digital files. In many ways, this has been one of the disadvantages of the digital explosion. Back in the day, important documents were kept inside filing cabinets and were organised alphabetically. Photos were mostly kept in photo books, which were then thrown into boxes and hidden under beds or in the attic. The best ones were put in frames and displayed on tables and mantelpieces—something we rarely do today. And notebooks, if kept, were put at the bottom of bookshelves or in boxes. The limiting factor was physical space. This meant we regularly curated our files and threw out expired documents. The trouble today is that digital documents don’t take up visible physical space, so as long as you have enough digital storage either on your computer’s hard drive or in the cloud, you can keep thousands of documents there without the need to curate and keep them updated. Eventually, it becomes practically impossible to know what we have, where it is, or even how to start finding it if we do know what we want to find. So, before I continue, let me hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Julia. Julia asks, “ Hi Carl, I listened to your recent podcast episode on what to keep in your notes, and it got me thinking. How would someone go about organising years of digital stuff that has accumulated all over the place? Hi Julia, thank you for your question. A couple of years ago, I became fascinated with how the National Archives in Kew, London, handles archiving millions of government documents each year. Compared to us individuals, this would be extreme, but they have hundreds of years of experience in this matter, and my thinking was that if anyone knew how to manage documents, they would know. What surprised me was that they maintained a relatively simple system. That system was based on years and the department from which the documents originated. So, for example, anything that came from the Prime Minister’s office last year would be bundled together under 2025. It would then be given the prefix PREM. (They do use a code for the years to help with cataloguing, as the National Archives will be keeping documents from different centuries) Upon further investigation, the reason they do it this way is that older documents are most likely searched for by year. Let’s say I was writing a book on British disasters in the 20th century, and I wanted to learn more about the Aberfan Disaster, where a coal slag heap collapsed, crushing the village of Aberfan in Wales. All I would need to know would be the year, and a simple Google search would give me that. From there, I could search the National Archives for HOME 1966. That search would indicate the Home Office files for 1966. (The year the disaster happened) I would also know that the disaster happened in October, so I could refine my search to October dates. If we were to use a system similar to the one the National Archives uses to organise its documents, we would create parent folders by year.