Organizing files goes a long way, and we’re talking principally about digital files here, although all the same principles apply to physical ones. A few reasons:
- Needing to reference previous work internally is really common. And trying to find what was previously done is too often a frustration point.
- Few people do it well.
- Being organized outwardly shows that you’re probably organized inwardly. And everyone wants to work with an organized person!
But there are two problems with this.
The first is that most people don’t even know how to do it. Here are a few tips that while not universal rules, I’ve found work really well:
- If in doubt, write it and organize it.
- Get into the habit of doing this from the first moment you start a project.
- Spend a few minutes as you prepare for and plan your day organizing each morning. The daily morning routine prevents crud from building up. Personally, I just create lots of files and put everything into one working directly, and don’t think about it. Then, when I begin the following workday, the first thing I do is organize all the files from the previous day.
- The core is just having dedicated folders for any issue that will have four or more files and put anything related to that into that dedicated folder.
Good file-naming conventions go a very long way. Some best practices for file-naming are: put the keywords into the filename, even if long and end file-names with the date in the year-dash-two-digit-month-dash-two-digit-day-of-month format. This would look like, “Meeting notes Q1 planning Morgan Sam – 2020-05-16.” These conventions help because file search algorithms always prioritize filenames and will always do funny business for dating, so you want to easily see when approximately a file is from.
But there’s a second problem: it’s hard to keep up. Lots of people start by being organized on day 1, but less so on day 60, and much, much less so on day 180.
There is no magic solution, but the general process is the same as anything else you’re focusing on: start small. Stay focused. Define yourself or re-define yourself to be someone who is good at that. Create the habit and the ritual.
And the best part? I started to enjoy this ritual. Since I start each day reviewing all the files from the previous day, more often than not, I gleam new insights from reviewing the previous day’s notes. The same may very well happen to you.
