Business Cards

[Anonymous]

What is an effecient method of storing business cards?

[craigm]

I take the contact information and put it in my palm as soon as possible. Then I can take the business card and store it in my recycling bin.

(Usually I do this after the person who presents the card leaves :wink: )

[spectecGTD]

Very diplomatic of you to wait until they leave.

I sometimes have business cards associated with hard copy paperwork for some clients. In those cases I put the main or cover document on the photocopier with the business card aligned just below it, then copy using a reduction to 93%. This marries the business card to the paperwork and THEN I pitch the card into the recycle bin.

For paper-based stuff, I've learned that reducing & combining pages often creates thinnner files and also puts more info at my disposal on a given piece of paper. Lots of times I'll even reduce two 8-1/2 x 11 sheets to half size on a single sheet. It's still readable.

[Anonymous]

Thank you. I was hoping to learn of a less time-consumming method of storing the info on the cards. Maybe there is a kind of rolex file or something.

[Anonymous]

They make several binder-like things that you can slide cards into. I have some that are 4.25x10" and some that are just Avery sleeves that fit into a regular 3-ring binder.

I get tons of cards in the course of a workshop or presentation, and it is faster to just stick them in it than copy into my Palm. Only the ones I need right now get entered.

[Anonymous]

Addressing the rolodex file comment above:

Many years ago (before I started using my PalmPilot and the "enter the data and toss the card" process), I found a small paper punch in an office supply store. The punch was designed to make (in one press) the cuts necessary in the bottom of a business card for placing the card in a rolodex file. As I recall, the punch was kinda expensive (US$5 or US$6) for a device about 1 inch by 1 inch in size. But it certainly did the job.

In the spirit of purging things no longer needed, I may have finally thrown it away some time ago, when I went "electronic."

Joe

[Anonymous]

I don't know if you want to go electronic in your Business Card management, but if you do, the Corex Card Scanner is absolutely magnificent.

http://www.corex.com/index.asp

It comes with software to almost automatically synch with Outlook-it even ads new categories in Outlook if they are 'missing'.

It has a Palm conduit feature, but since I synch with Outlook, I don't bother with the Corex software's synching.

I processed about 90 cards today in about 45 minutes. You can do it lot quicker, but to validate each card's data takes a little time.

Stephen
'

[jrichardn]

It's Labour Day weekend and I'm sitting in my office GTD-ing my files. :-)

I find an old pile of business cards in a box of papers from my California office 2000-02, I check that they're all in my Outlook Contacts - they are - and then I toss them toward the business card file box, thinking, that'll be a little later in the GTD-ing of my main office.

Then I think: Wait! Should I keep the cards at all?

I check the DA forums, and find this thread, and the answer is: No!

Sometimes working on a long weekend can be ok. :-)

Cheers, Richard

[Anonymous]

Thank you. I was hoping to learn of a less time-consumming method of storing the info on the cards. Maybe there is a kind of rolex file or something.You mean Rolodex?
"I don't know," said the cop. "But you can get your Rolex repaired here: http://repair-place.com/rolex_repair.html" :lol:

[Gameboy70]

I throw mine in my in basket at home. Then when I'm processing my in basket I enter them into the Palm Desktop, which enters them into the Palm on HotSync. Then I toss the cards in the wastebasket as part of my ongoing jihad against paper accumulation.

On GTD Fast, DA says he staples them to a letter sized sheet of paper, which gets filed according to the event on which they were collected. If a group of cards were collected at a particular conference, he creates of file for that conference, and all the cards are stapled to the paper, and the paper is dropped into the file.