“If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance your computer is a mess,” Harry Guinness writes for Envato Tuts+. “You’ve got files all over your desktop, a Downloads folder crammed with app installers from two years ago, and who knows where the file that Jason from Billings needed yesterday is. Let’s look at how to fix it.”
“Now, before diving in we need to address the biggest problem with any file organization system: you,” Guinness writes. “There’s no point setting up an intricate file system where every folder is colour coded, tagged, and cross referenced with every other folder. It’ll last about three minutes.”
“There are three main ways you can structure your file system: project or client-based, date-based, and file type-based. There are pros and cons to each method of organizing folders and you can use a combination, for example grouping everything by project but within each project grouping things by file type or grouping everything by year but within each year grouping it by client,” Guinness writes. “Let’s look each way to organize computer files. You should pick the method that seems to fit your workflow best and stick to it.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Wouldn’t you love to see how Steve Jobs organized his Mac?
Okay, so how do you do it?
I use two document management systems.
DevonThink
and
DOCMOTO
So much for the idiocy of using search instead of file structure…
Another reason why iCloud is a toy and unusable for real work, and IOS will never replace the Mac for anything serious.
Those who actually want to do serious work on iOS uses DevonThink To Go which keep the exact same file structure as the MacOS file management app DevonThink Pro/Pro Office. No sweat.