This is on of those slightly alarming honesty posts. Way back in July, I blogged about a Life.File, a very clever web based filing system that helps you to get your paperwork ducks in a row. And it is now November. This has been one of my “goals for the year” for so many years, and it keeps getting delayed, ignored… in fact, it is procrastination defined. With the team from Life.file, I have absolutely no excuse not to tackle this and finally sort things out.
The point is, to have all your paperwork ducks in a row, sounds like a truly good idea, until you start putting it together. Someday is not a good time to get around to this task at all… today is a much better time to get started. The reason I am writing this post is not because our Life.File is sorted and all our paper work is up to date, far from it in fact. But to firstly let you know I am actually well on the way to achieving this goal over, and to tell you a little bit about my journey in getting there. And, secondly, because there is an opportunity for you to do the same… wherever you are in the world, because it is all online and right now they are guiding you through with teeny tiny baby steps, for free on instagram. Read on, read on…
Our Journey so Far…
If you look back at the start of my paperwork journey, I really thought I could do this project over a weekend… I was so wrong. It is very much a slow and steady “wins the race” kind task.
Firstly for years I have been storing paperwork that I thought we would need for this project… we had boxes of papers in closets, on shelves, packed here there and everywhere. Can you imagine if something happened to my husband or I, and in the throws of grief, my kids would have to sift through a lifetime of paperwork. Well massive surprise, you don’t need every paper you have ever saved, in fact you can toss nearly all the papers. The creators of Life.file understand the process and one of their many useful and free resources is the Life.file Starter Guide.
I printed out the list and kept it handy, as I went through our home and unearthed papers from almost every corner… I tossed anything that wasn’t on the list. Really keeping everything is just not helpful. Nobody needs it, nobody wants it. Get rid of it.
My next step was to pop the Life.Style Starter Guide into a notebook. I am a notebook girl. I split the list into groups and I have pages with things to tick off, and blank pages to make notes and keep track of things. I love a notebook for keeping track of a project. I started working through the list almost immediately, making notes where I needed notes, reminders to get things together and find information.
I started to encounter little roadblocks and felt my energy waining and the project started to fizzle. The sort of roadblocks that I encountered, where not huge at all, but in the scheme of things just felt overwhelming. For example, our will is workable for a newly wedded couple several years ago, and is still “okay”, but really it needs a drastic update. This completely stumped me, which is ridiculous, considering everything I need to update our will is freely available on the Life.file website.
Other smaller roadblocks started to spring up, and the project halted. For instance if you want to be an organ donor or not? Well if you want to be an organ donor, how do you go about it? There should be a website you can sign up, and I am still looking for that. Turns out you really have to want to do this, because if it is a vague idea that you had, then you would never get around to it.
Get the Job Done on Instagram
Here is the most important point of this post: The team from Life.file is posting daily tasks on instagram, throughout November, to help get your Life.file in order. Follow them for their daily tasks… don’t wait, just start.
Today was the first day and the task was literally a two minute task: Get your ID documents together and take a photograph of each of them. That’s it. Get your ID card, your passport, your driver’s license and take a photograph of them. And that’s it. A completely doable, quick and easy task.
I am totally in, and by the end of November I fully intend to have a completely functioning Life.File. Join my and follow Life.file on Instagram and do the daily tasks. Think about it, the worst is that you will get started and fizzle out… at least you will have begun. and the best outcome is that you won’t fizzle and you will get to the end of the month with me and have all your paperwork ducks in a row!!!
This is not a sponsored post, I was not paid to write it, but was given free access to the Life.file website to try it out before it launched. Opinions expressed in this post are entirely my own.