Efficiency Tip #41 – Folders

I mentioned this when I talked about pictures, but it goes for all content.  Use folders to organize your files and do it in a logical way.  This is the single most important technical skill anyone can master and it is easy to learn.

I keep everything I create in the My Documents folder.  This makes backup simple; I only have to copy one folder to my backup drive.  I have generic folders for most things – music – pictures – taxes.  Inside these folders are more folders that separate content into more specific categories: Taxes/2007, Taxes/2006, Taxes/2005, and even Taxes/2007/Receipts.

My folder rule is simple.  Every project gets a folder and all the files for the project go in the folder. 

The graphic to the right shows my “courses” folder structure.  Each semester I create folders with the course numbers I teach.  The previous semester’s folders are copied into a “semester” folder and then moved to the “archive” folder.  The “semester” folder has a name in the form “2007 Spring”.  By organizing files in this manner I can easily grab work from any student by knowing the year and semester the student participated in a specific course. 

One other important tip.  Notice the top folder in the graphic is named “~UF Courses” instead of “UF Courses”.  There are two folders I use multiple times each day.  I want those two folders at the top of the My Documents list for quick access.  I prefixed their names with the Tilda so those folders are always alphabetically first.

You may think this “folder organization” is overkill.  I cannot disagree more.  Right now I have more than 159,000 files in My Documents dating all the way back to 1993.  If it were not for folders it would be complete chaos. I use Google Desktop as well, but it’s the folder organization that prevents my insanity.

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