File organization lifehacker

There are a million and one ways to arrange files and folders on disk. Some might argue that spending a moment even thinking about it in the age of desktop search is unnecessary. That may be true, but some semblance of order will clear your desktop and your mind and make you "ready for anything. This scheme accommodates every file I might come across, keeps my desktop clear, smoothly fits in with an automated backup system and also makes command line file wrangling a breeze.

This is just one way that won't work for everyone, but there may be something here to help you get your digital documents under control. In alphabetical order, my six main folders are called: bak, docs, docs-archive, junkdrawer, multimedia and scripts.

Here's a quick rundown of what each does and what it might contain. As I said, I'm a big fan of short and to the point file paths. Windows' default user documents directory is something like:. To which I say, "For the love of all that is good and holy, why, Microsoft, why?

I can appreciate human-readable folder names, but I do lots of command line work and scripting, and I don't ever want to have to remember to enclose my home directory path in quotes or remember the slashes to escape spaces. This consistently lowercase path sans spaces is much easier to type, remember and much more scriptable. To change your documents directory in Windows, right-click on the "My Documents" icon. Under Properties, hit the Move button.

They should all be in folders. Think again about the file-cabinet analogy. It would be messy to have stray pieces of paper not in their appropriate folders, right? The standards you set for yourself will not only help keep files organized but also make them easier on the eye. There are plenty of ways to title your subfolders for projects, but one of the most intuitive is to have folders for stages of your project. For example, I keep a text document with cut sentences and paragraphs from article drafts that I might want to repurpose at another time.

So for photos, I like to have a date structure and folders for key events or categories, such as:. When it comes to naming or renaming your files, make sure you include keywords in case you do have to depend on search.

Consider what your future self or anyone else who might need access to your files would search for to get to that file. In addition to creating a folder structure that works for you, consider tagging files on Mac or on Windows. With tags, you can connect multiple files across folders. Or maybe you want to see all of your photos for all of your holiday celebrations. You might use tags to classify all money-related files, all files related to a specific department at work, all files related to your kid, all files related to home improvement, and so on.

By using tags, a good folder structure, and intuitive file naming, grabbing a file from your hard drive or from cloud storage should be a breeze. In short, it creates a self-maintaining archive of seldom-used files, but it the stuff you use often together. I've tried it for a bit, and it works like a charm.

Hit the link below to read Unclutterer's post on it, or just give it a try. The Noguchi Filing System Unclutterer. Image by Dave Gray. The A. About Lifehacker Advisor Lifehacker Store. By Alan Henry.