The importance of record keeping

5032 Views 11 Replies 11 Participants Last post by NitroChemist, Sep 1, 2020

HighVoltageNITRO

Discussion Starter · May 30, 2007

I wanted to create a post on the importance of record keeping. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered what you guys/gals might think. At some point I decided it’s OK if you think me crazy because that in and of itself is part of the fun.

For more than 25 years I have been restoring vehicles and modifying my new vehicles to fit my tastes. Until this vehicle, I have never participated so much in a forum dedicated to the adoration of one that I own. Used wisely, this forum is a great resource of knowledge and creativity.

Through many of those years, I found record keeping to be a tiring, boring, and tedious ordeal. Many times I simply lost receipts or worse, the directions for the installation of an item that sometime later I found that I desperately needed. Ever been there?

The method that I finally settled upon I have been using for more than 10 years. It works well and it is easy for anyone to do.

Purchase a 1” or 1 ½” 3-ring binder and a 50 pack of 8 ½ x 11 top loading sheet protectors. Put everything about your vehicle in this one place. Most of the time, you will never have to remove the paperwork again, yet it is always there for future reference. As you can see, I still have the one I did for the '03 Liberty that I owned. For the vehicles that I restored, I gave my book to the buyer because it was a record of all that went into the restoration.

It is great for keeping window stickers, all types of invoices, packing slips, instruction sheets, TSBs (from this forum), ideas for future modifications (also from forum), photographs, you name it.

I almost titled this post ‘The importance of being anal retentive’, but thought better of it. But just for fun, I hit the net and plagiarized one site for a definition. You may think if the shoe fits. . .

The expression anal retentive derives from psychoanalytic theory. Sigmund Freud theorized that after birth, a person progresses through a series of stages that, in a healthy individual, would reach an adult state of low anxiety, mental stability, the ability to interact with others, the ability to have a sexual relationship, etc. A person interrupted at the late stage of the anal development is an anal retentive, and this is thought to result in adult personality or behavioral traits that include orderliness, rigidity, obstinacy, obsession with rules, and meticulousness. The adjective anal alone denotes this stage, and hence denotes these traits.

See less See more

Save

Reactions: 3

1 - 1 of 12 Posts

mdwcalif

· #11 · Jul 2, 2008

Hey, HV, I love this. This is how organized I would be if I were able to FOLLOW THROUGH on things. Have you heard of the disorder called "perfectionism" accompanied by "procrastination?" It is ME. It causes me to make beautiful large piles of projects TO BE DONE, and I won't touch them until I can do them exactly right.

I have done landscaping projects in my yard (ok PAST yards) that I documented this well (with plant heights, colors, bloom times, fertilization date records, etc) -- but I've never managed it on most other things ... yet.

Save

1 - 1 of 12 Posts

This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.

Top Contributors this Month