Perhaps you wondered about the answer to this question – just like a person who has been recently given to this question: I would like to get files organized. It seems that I have files all over the place and sometimes hard to find things. Is there a resource (book, for example) that show us the best way to get our files organized? Book, which I think is excellent is Your Life Upgrade Gina Trapani: Lifehacker Guide to work better, faster, better. It has many tips and techniques – and his writing is also fun to read. Thus, in his book worth having if you want more information about the different access technologies, such as organizing files and hard drive. That said, I would also add to provide some ideas that have worked for me.
On a piece of paper (the first), to map the My Documents folder (PC language and I will be here – ;m sure the Mac people reading this are different words). In any case, think of the My Documents folder so great when everything goes (and below). Then the document is formatted in Word,
PowerPoint, Excel, PDF, or another variety, which means that all must be organized in the Documents folder. Since youare writing this, then you have the My Documents folder at the top of the page. Below it, go ahead and write the general category of things you do and work. For example: Books Articles Schools teleseminars Company (any name) Accounting Tips Booklets Vitae Consulting
Write down whatever the categories are for you. You can add more later, of course. For now, you are just trying to get an overall sense of the categories you need.
Next, under these categories, write down any possible subcategories. For example, under your company name, you could have
Contracts/Speaking Agreements
Proposals/Pending Clients
Operations Manual
Forms
and a bunch of other groupings. The issue to think about is: How does your brain work and how do you think of things? Don’t worry about other people’s language. It’s your computer and it needs to be organized in the way that you think.
Remember: what is great is that you can always change and move various items you’re working on into different places. In general, however, you want to limit the number of categories and the number of sub-categories (and for sure the number of sub- sub-categories. It can get ugly if you don’t).
When I first started out with a hard drive, I had a Word category, a PowerPoint category, etc….but then I realized that when I was working on a project, I wanted to have everything related to that project (Word docs, Excel docs, PowerPoint shows, mindmaps, PDFs, or whatever) all in the same general vicinity. That’s when I reorganized my hard drive.
When I was a professor and the three main areas of my work were
Teaching
Research
Service
…then I used those as my ‘big three’ and everything fell under those. Each of my classes was listed under Teaching and my various research projects were listed under Research , and so on from there.
Once you have your categories mapped out and set up on your hard drive, then it’s wise to start actually moving what you have into the new categories. Do this when you’re uninterrupted and not distracted.
On a piece of paper (the first), to map the My Documents folder (PC language and I will be here – ;m sure the Mac people reading this are different words). In any case, think of the My Documents folder so great when everything goes (and below). Then the document is formatted in Word,
PowerPoint, Excel, PDF, or another variety, which means that all must be organized in the Documents folder. Since youare writing this, then you have the My Documents folder at the top of the page. Below it, go ahead and write the general category of things you do and work. For example: Books Articles Schools teleseminars Company (any name) Accounting Tips Booklets Vitae Consulting
Write down whatever the categories are for you. You can add more later, of course. For now, you are just trying to get an overall sense of the categories you need.
Next, under these categories, write down any possible subcategories. For example, under your company name, you could have
Contracts/Speaking Agreements
Proposals/Pending Clients
Operations Manual
Forms
and a bunch of other groupings. The issue to think about is: How does your brain work and how do you think of things? Don’t worry about other people’s language. It’s your computer and it needs to be organized in the way that you think.
Remember: what is great is that you can always change and move various items you’re working on into different places. In general, however, you want to limit the number of categories and the number of sub-categories (and for sure the number of sub- sub-categories. It can get ugly if you don’t).
When I first started out with a hard drive, I had a Word category, a PowerPoint category, etc….but then I realized that when I was working on a project, I wanted to have everything related to that project (Word docs, Excel docs, PowerPoint shows, mindmaps, PDFs, or whatever) all in the same general vicinity. That’s when I reorganized my hard drive.
When I was a professor and the three main areas of my work were
Teaching
Research
Service
…then I used those as my ‘big three’ and everything fell under those. Each of my classes was listed under Teaching and my various research projects were listed under Research , and so on from there.
Once you have your categories mapped out and set up on your hard drive, then it’s wise to start actually moving what you have into the new categories. Do this when you’re uninterrupted and not distracted.
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