Organization, Week by Week: Week 5

This week's organizational subject is one of my absolute favorites — files on your computer!

The way I organize my files is pretty simple. It's a method I snagged from one of The College Prepster's  blogs, and I love her simple way of keeping everything where it belongs. It takes a lot of clicking, but everything is somewhere that you know and remember.

First, I have basic folders for everything I need.

The UNC Chapel Hill folder contains all of my class folders, which are broken up even further. I won't bore you. 

The Life folder contains things like recipes, templates, charts, etc. Things that I use on a day to day basis. 

The High School folder clearly contains all of my documents from high school. I keep my notes and assignments from all of my AP classes for Jonathon's sake. There's very few things from junior and senior year that I don't have.

The Writing folder contains my random attempts at writing fiction and my files for National Novel Writing Month.

The Jonathon folder contains anything I've made or written for him. Like our couple bucket list or the long distance coupon book I made for him. 

(We're going to look at the UNC Chapel Hill folder the closest, because that's the folder I interact with the most.)

Second, I break the folders up into smaller categories.

In this case, I have a folder for each class I'm taking this semester, Fall 2012. 

(Before this page there's another where I have the Fall 2012 folder along with empty ones waiting for Spring 2013, Fall 2013, Spring 2014, etc. I plan ahead.)

This is also where I keep a copy of my official schedule. 

Third, I break each class folder up into categories, depending on the material and the structure of each class. 

In History 107, I have four main categories. 

You may have more or less depending on your class or whatever you're organizing in the folder. You don't need to be too specific in this case, because of my next suggestion. 

Fourth, I color-code my documents.

If you click the setting button on the top of the Finder (only on a Mac, I don't know what you do with a PC) you can look down towards the bottom of the drop-down menu and find a section called Labels. There's colors there, and if you choose a color, it will highlight your document of choice that shade.

I use yellow for lecture or class notes, red for PowerPoints, blue for class assignments, grey for syllabi, and purple for readings. 

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Rules for Organizing Files:

1. Name everything. 

You should not have a folder full of "Document 1, Document 2, Document 3", etc. You also don't want folders full of "asghsgaewon" and "khsdgase" and "asdfghjkl". You don't know what those documents are. You will probably lose something useful. 

2. Making categories and sub-categories is helpful. 

I know clicking through ten different folders is tedious, but it's also helpful — to a degree. Don't get carried away. Know your limits with folder creation — just because you can create a folder for it doesn't mean it warrants one.

Sub-categories that separate a file entitled "Recipes" into "Dinner", "Lunch", "Breakfast", or what have you — helpful. 

Sub-categories that are so specific you have two files per folder — not helpful. 

3. Purge your files once every six months, or if you're in school, at the end of every semester. 

Keeping old files that you don't use or don't need isn't helpful to anyone. It slows your computer down and takes up valuable space. If you don't think you'll need it again (or if you think you can find it online or recreate it the next time you will need it) then delete it. If it's some kind of assignment or big project for school or work, keep it.  You never know when you might need to revisit it. 

4. Just because you printed something out or wrote it by hand doesn't mean you don't need a virtual copy.

I'm terrible about this. I retype all of my notes from every class that I handwrite in, then I save those to my harddrive and to Dropbox. If I print out an assignment sheet from my class's Sakai page, I also save it to my harddrive and to Dropbox. I like to have a sheet to scribble on or notes to highlight and annotate, but I also know my tendencies to lose things. 

Assume that you always need a virtual copy. 

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Happy categorizing!

Much love,

Paige