<story><title>Show HN: Open Paperless – Scan, index, and archive paper documents</title><url>https://github.com/zhoubear/open-paperless</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jopsen</author><text>Question: why bother organizing papers?&lt;p&gt;I just throw everything in a box, if I ever need it again later it&amp;#x27;ll take a long time to find.. but I rarely need to find a document again.&lt;p&gt;Complexity of archiving a document is O(1) with a very small constant.
Complexity of retrieval is O(N) for a large N.&lt;p&gt;But I have few retrievals in my system, so why pay a higher per document cost?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tombrossman</author><text>&amp;gt; Question: why bother organizing papers?&lt;p&gt;Because being organised makes you more effective. With your &amp;#x27;throw it all in a box&amp;#x27; system, you have a high barrier to finding documents in the future and this discourages you from doing so. However, with a more organised approach you are more likely to retrieve specific documents.&lt;p&gt;One example: Some mid-priced electronic device breaks a few months after you buy it. You might weigh digging through all the paperwork versus shrugging your shoulders and throwing it away. I would go straight to the warranty document and also look at my credit card issuer&amp;#x27;s warranty&amp;#x2F;returns policies(if any), and I would return the item for a replacement or refund. No biggie, only a few minutes work and I as a consumer prevail in exercising my rights.&lt;p&gt;Sounds boring but I believe it is definitely worth making the effort.</text></comment>
<story><title>Show HN: Open Paperless – Scan, index, and archive paper documents</title><url>https://github.com/zhoubear/open-paperless</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jopsen</author><text>Question: why bother organizing papers?&lt;p&gt;I just throw everything in a box, if I ever need it again later it&amp;#x27;ll take a long time to find.. but I rarely need to find a document again.&lt;p&gt;Complexity of archiving a document is O(1) with a very small constant.
Complexity of retrieval is O(N) for a large N.&lt;p&gt;But I have few retrievals in my system, so why pay a higher per document cost?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pymai</author><text>- if you need to retrieve things often&lt;p&gt;- if you need more than one box. will you still have a single box 10 years from now or will it be 2?  good luck trying to retrieve something in 20 years when you have even more boxes&lt;p&gt;- it only takes 1 fire or flood to destroy all of your documents.  once they are digital you can easily make copies and store them in a few different locations&lt;p&gt;tbh making digital copies isnt that complicated compared to throwing something in a box.  i just scan everything into a year&amp;#x2F;month folder and do as you do... worry about finding them later.  spending time tagging or naming stuff after theyve been digitised is optional.</text></comment>