Post-its and filing cabinets: how to organise shared work
How to organise a team's documents and tasks, explained with an old-fashioned office, then mapped to digital tools and AI.
Post-its and filing cabinets: how to organise shared work
We build up an old-fashioned office one piece at a time, then map it to digital tools and AI.
PART 1 · THE OFFICE (paper only)
①[≡] sheet ──▶ ②[▭] folder
write it one
down project
│
▼
④[▤] more ◀─── ③[▤] cabinet
cabinets one area
│
▼
⑤[▦] post-its ──▶ ⑥ two kinds,
to do, on linked
a board │
▼
┄┄ snapshot: the one-room office ┄┄
│
▼
⑧ overview ◀──── ⑦ rooms
problem teams
walk? drift? move out
│
▼
⑨ POINTER ◀ the key idea
"it's over there"
├─▷ ⑩ extra: drafting table
└─▷ ⑪ extra: recipe books
┄┄ recap: the whole office ┄┄
PART 2 · DIGITAL
⑫ two setups ──▶ ⑬ the AI
Drive, or starts clean
text + git │
▼
⑭ an office
for the AI
└─▷ ⑮ extra: why git?
Part 1: the office
1. A sheet of paper
We write things down so we don't forget them and so others can read them: a plan, a contract, a guide, notes from a meeting. It starts with one sheet on your desk. Say, the plan for a summer retreat.
┌──────────────────────────────────┐
│ Summer retreat: plan │
│ ──────────────────────────────── │
│ - What: three days away together │
│ - Why: to plan next year │
│ - Who leads: Sam │
│ - Done by: 30 June │
└──────────────────────────────────┘
2. A folder
Sheets about the same thing go together in a folder, with a label on the tab. Usually that thing is a project: a piece of work with an end. The summer retreat gets a folder holding its plan, the venue options and the budget.
┌────────────────┐
│ Summer retreat │ ← label on the tab
┌┴────────────────┴──────┐
│ plan │
│ venue options │
│ budget │
└────────────────────────┘
3. A filing cabinet
Folders go in a filing cabinet, so there's one place to look. A cabinet holds one area of work. Our events cabinet has a folder for each event.
┌─ Events ───────────┐
│ ┌────────────────┐ │
│ │ Summer retreat │ │
│ └────────────────┘ │
│ ┌────────────────┐ │
│ │ Winter retreat │ │
│ └────────────────┘ │
│ ┌────────────────┐ │
│ │ Open day │ │
│ └────────────────┘ │
└────────────────────┘
4. More cabinets
The organisation takes on other areas of work, such as a podcast and the accounts, and each gets a cabinet of its own. A cabinet that gets too full can be split in two. Label each one.
┌────────────┐ ┌────────────┐ ┌────────────┐
│ Events │ │ Media │ │ Finance │
│ ┌────────┐ │ │ ┌────────┐ │ │ ┌────────┐ │
│ │Retreats│ │ │ │Podcast │ │ │ │Accounts│ │
│ └────────┘ │ │ └────────┘ │ │ └────────┘ │
│ ┌────────┐ │ │ ┌────────┐ │ │ ┌────────┐ │
│ │Open day│ │ │ │Magazine│ │ │ │Grants │ │
│ └────────┘ │ │ └────────┘ │ │ └────────┘ │
└────────────┘ └────────────┘ └────────────┘
5. Post-its and the board
Not everything needs keeping. Some things just need doing: "Book the venue", "Send invites". Those go on post-its: small, quick to write, thrown away when done.
Post-its go on a board on the wall, where everyone can see them and move them around. A big post-it can have smaller ones under it, and those can have smaller ones again. Each post-it stays small.
┌─ The board ─────────────────────────┐
│ │
│ ┌────────────────┐ ┌─────────┐ │
│ │ Summer retreat │ │ Pay the │ │
│ └───────┬────────┘ │ printer │ │
│ ┌────┴──────┐ └─────────┘ │
│ ┌───┴────┐ ┌────┴───┐ │
│ │ Book │ │ Send │ │
│ │ venue │ │ invites│ │
│ └────────┘ └────────┘ │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘
6. Two kinds of material
So we have two kinds of material. Reference, on sheets, is what you keep and look things up in; it goes in folders. Tasks, on post-its, are what you tick off; they go on the board.
A project usually has both. Its post-its don't go in the folder, where nobody would see them, so the folder holds a note saying where they are.
Folder: Summer retreat The board
┌──────────────────┐ ┌───────────┐
│ plan │ │ ┌───────┐ │
│ venue options │ │ │Summer │ │
│ "post-its: │ │ │retreat│ │
│ top left" ──────┼─────▶│ └───────┘ │
└──────────────────┘ │ □ □ □ │
└───────────┘
reference: tasks:
keep, look up move, tick off
That's the whole office while it fits in one room:
┌─ The office ─────────────────────────┐
│ ┌─ Board ──────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ │ │
│ └──────────────────────────────────┘ │
│ │
│ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ ┌──────┐ │
│ │Events│ │Media │ │ Fin │ │ desk │ │
│ └──────┘ └──────┘ └──────┘ └──────┘ │
│ cabinets │
└──────────────────────────────────────┘
7. Rooms
The organisation grows again and the room gets crowded. Teams move into rooms of their own, and each takes its cabinet and its board, so the work and its papers stay together.
If a team keeps growing, part of it can split off next door. The podcast gets big enough to leave the Media room, with a cabinet and board of its own.
┌─ Events ─────┐ ┌─ Media ──────┐
│ cabinet │ │ cabinet │
│ board │ │ board │
└──────────────┘ └──────┬───────┘
│ splits off
▼ next door
┌─ Podcast ────┐
│ cabinet │
│ board │
└──────────────┘
8. The overview problem
Now management has a problem. It wants to see every project, but the folders are spread across the rooms. The two obvious fixes both go wrong.
Keep every cabinet in the central office, and the events team walks across the building whenever it needs a paper. Keep a copy in both places, and the copies drift: someone updates one, someone else updates the other, and now they disagree.
A. All in the centre: long walks
┌─ Central ──┐ ┌─ Events ───┐
│ cabinets │◀── walk ─│ │
└────────────┘ └────────────┘
B. A copy in each: copies drift
┌─ Central ──┐ ┌─ Events ───┐
│ plan, v1 │ ≠ │ plan, v3 │
└────────────┘ └────────────┘
9. Pointers
The answer is that the cabinet stays with the team, and the central office keeps a pointer: a thin folder holding one sheet. "The summer retreat exists. The events team runs it, and everything about it is in the Events room." A pointer holds no content, so it can't drift.
The board works the same way: one post-it on the central board can stand for a whole cluster on a team's board. You've seen a small pointer already, in the folder's note saying where its post-its are.
Central office
┌──────────────────────────┐
│ Pointer: Summer retreat │ one sheet,
│ "in the Events room" │ no copy
└────────────┬─────────────┘
▼
Events room
┌──────────────────────────┐
│ cabinet │ the real
│ Summer retreat folder │ folder
└──────────────────────────┘
That's the core picture. Two extras follow.
10. Extra: the drafting table
You don't need everything on tidy paper from the start. Making a document is messy: Sharpies, scraps, sketches, talking it through around a table. Use whatever helps. When there's a result, even an unfinished one, file a checkpoint in the cabinet. You can take it out again later.
Drafting table
┌───────────────────────┐
│ scraps, sketches, │
│ arrows, crossings-out │
└──────┬──────────▲─────┘
file it│ │take it out
▼ │
┌───────────────────────┐
│ cabinet: the draft │
└───────────────────────┘
11. Extra: recipe books
Every office has its own way of doing things: how folders are labelled, what goes in a project folder, a blank form for a plan. Write these down and keep them on a shelf by the cabinets, so everyone, newcomers included, does things the same way.
┌─ Shelf ──────────────────────────────────────┐
│ ┃ How we ┃ ┃ Starting ┃ ┃ Blank plan ┃ │
│ ┃ label ┃ ┃ a project ┃ ┃ (template) ┃ │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────┘
The whole office
┌─ The office ───────────────────────────┐
│ ┌─ Central office ──┐ ┌─ Events ────┐ │
│ │ pointer: retreat ─┼─▶│ cabinet │ │
│ │ recipe books │ │ board │ │
│ └───────────────────┘ └─────────────┘ │
│ ┌─ Media ───────────┐ ┌─ Podcast ───┐ │
│ │ cabinet │ │ cabinet │ │
│ │ board │ │ board │ │
│ └───────────────────┘ └─────────────┘ │
│ ┌─ Meeting room ─────────────────────┐ │
│ │ drafting table │ │
│ └────────────────────────────────────┘ │
└────────────────────────────────────────┘
You can always add levels: more cabinets in a room, more rooms, even more buildings. The shape stays the same.
Part 2: the digital office
12. Same shapes, two ways
The office maps onto any digital setup. Here are two. Google Drive is the one most people know (OneDrive and SharePoint work the same way). Text files with git are plain files in folders, plus git to keep everyone's copies in step, and they suit AI best.
| Office | Google Drive | Text files + git |
|---|---|---|
| Sheet | a Doc | a Markdown file |
| Folder | a folder | a folder |
| Cabinet | a shared drive | a repo |
| Post-its and board | a task app (Asana, Trello) | tasks kept in the repo |
| Pointer | a short Doc with a link | a short file with a link |
| Drafting table | a Doc with comments | a Google Doc or an AI chat |
| Filing a checkpoint | name a version | a commit |
| Recipe books | "how we work" Docs, templates | how-to files, templates |
| Copies on two desks | one live shared copy | everyone has a full copy, kept in step |
| Earlier versions | per document | the whole folder, with who and why |
Rooms depend on how you're organised: often a shared drive or a repo for each team or area.
The same retreat folder, two ways:
Google Drive Text files + git
Events (a shared drive) events/ (a repo)
└─ Summer retreat/ ├─ summer-retreat/
├─ Plan (a Doc) │ ├─ plan.md
└─ Venue options │ └─ venues.md
├─ open-day/
tasks: in Asana └─ tasks, in the repo
13. A new colleague: the AI
An AI starts every session clean, as if there were no yesterday. All it knows is what it can read, so it needs the cabinet. The easiest thing for it to read and write is plain text files in a folder: it can open a whole cabinet at once and find its way around.
New session: knows nothing
│ opened in a cabinet
▼
┌─ events/ ─────────────────────────────────┐
│ reads the folders and files │
│ "Summer retreat? Here's the plan." │
└───────────────────────────────────────────┘
14. An office the AI can work in
That's why text files in git make a good office for an AI. Each part of the office gets the AI's version:
- Sheets are Markdown files: plain text with simple formatting, easy for people and AI to read.
- Each area has its own repo, so you can start a session in the right cabinet and the AI knows where to look.
- Tasks live in the repo too, in a tracker such as Beads, with big tasks and small ones under them.
- Inside each cabinet door is a note for the AI, a file called
AGENTS.md, which it reads first: how this cabinet is organised and where things go. - The recipe books become skills, written recipes the AI can follow, such as how to start a project, alongside templates.
- Google Docs is still a fine drafting table. When there's a result, file it as Markdown.
A cabinet stuffed too full slows the AI down as much as it slows you, so split it.
events/ a repo: the Events cabinet
├── AGENTS.md note inside the door: read me first
├── skills/ recipe books
├── templates/ blank forms
├── summer-retreat/ a folder
│ └── plan.md a sheet
└── .beads/ the board
15. Extra: why git?
What do we want from any filing cabinet? Every checkpoint kept, a log of who changed what and why, and copies on different desks that stay in step. Dropbox and Google Drive give you some of this. Git, the tool behind repos, gives you all of it:
- It keeps every checkpoint you save, called a commit, with who made it, when and why.
- It tracks the whole folder, including renames and moves, not one file at a time.
- Several changes can be saved as one step: rename a file and fix every link to it, together.
- Everyone has a full copy, even offline. You clone a repo to get your copy, pull to get others' changes and push to send yours.
- Changes to different parts merge by themselves. If two people change the same lines, git stops and asks, and the AI can usually sort it out.
- It's open and free. GitHub is one popular place to keep the shared copy, not the only one.
It isn't good at everything: Google Docs is better for writing together live, and git is poor with video and large images. Git used to be for programmers. Now the AI handles the technical side.
Shared copy (e.g. GitHub)
┌──────────────────┐
│ events repo │
└───┬──────────▲───┘
pull │ │ push
▼ │
┌──────────────────┐
│ your copy │
└──────────────────┘
History
●───────────────●────────────────────────────● now
Sam adds you rename plan.md and fix
the plan its 3 links: one commit
Next
AI is the interface: how to use AI for knowledge work →
See also: how Life Itself does it, this office mapped onto one organisation's repos.