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Jan 10Keeping it Organized
For anyone who has had a computer for more than two months, you probably know how easy it is for your documents folder to turn into a mess. Most people who buy a new computer keep the default file organization system that is already on the computer, which isn’t really that great. Sure, it has separate folders for music, videos, documents, etc, but these folders can get messy. Dealing with hierarchy of folders can just become annoying and a huge waste of time.
As a video editor, I sometimes build folders by client then more and more sub-folders into that. Sure, it looks nice and clean, but sometimes it can take forever for me to just get to one file because I’m digging through folders and folders.
I have decided to try out a new folder structure that I have read in “Lifehacker, 88 tech tricks to turbocharge your day“. Its a pretty minimal folder structure and, to be honest, seems like it would work a lot more efficiently than dealing with complicated hierarchies of folders.
The book suggest using six main folders, but I decided to tweak the folders a little bit and I am going to use four main folders called docs, dosc-archive, junkdrawer and multimedia. As a photographer and video editor, I feel the structure would work better for me. Here is a breakdown of the folders:
- docs - This is the folder that will hold all files that a currently being worked on or used. This folder can easily become a big one, so its important to purge as often as you can. Its a smart move to create subfolders in here, but keep it simple. Try to keep the hierarchy of folders at three. For example, you have a subfolder called clients and inside here you have a folder called acme. That’s a tree of only three folders, docs, clients, and acme. Keep it simple.
- docs-archive – This folder will probably look a lot like your docs folder, but everything in here should be files that are currently not being used or not needed. Just here for archiving purposes. You should be going into your docs folder and purging it as often as you can into this folder.
- junkdrawer – You can call this junkdrawer or temp if you want, but this is where all temporary files that you are working with currently should be held. Redirect your web browser to download files here. If you feel that something you downloaded will become important later, move it to the doc folder. Files in this folder should be cleaned out every few weeks and you can even get your computer to automate the clean up. You won’t have to do a thing. I will get into that in later post.
- multimedia – This is where photos, music and video files go. I know people like to break these things up into their own little folder structures, but when you create an umbrella folder for files that are so large, it will help with your backup. You probably have a different way to back up your video files than you do your document because of how large these files can be. Inside this folder you can then create subfolders for each. This is help me a lot, because of all the photos and videos I have on my computer.
So, that’s the deal. I will give it a try and see if it works. I have a feeling it will. If you have an organization plan that you want to share leave it in the comments. I would love to make some updated posts about it.
