Bit Literacy - Mark Hurst [53]
“nice notes”: This is the place to store any especially nice or gratifying e-mails you’ve received from colleagues over the years. Don’t let these important messages get lost in the shuffle; instead, give them a permanent home here. Name them however you like, but use the file naming scheme if you intend to scan for particular messages later.
Unless the files in a category folder are likely to be shared (like those in the “expenses” folder), they generally don’t need to follow a strict naming scheme. Files in category folders are more homogeneous than files in project folders, so it doesn’t take much to distinguish between them. For example, in a “regs” folder, each file should simply be named after the website in question; using the full file naming scheme wouldn’t add useful information.
The personal folder
One last folder to consider creating is a second parent folder, separate from the first, called Personal. This can be a useful folder on computers that are used for both work and personal reasons; those two sets of files are best stored separately. The Personal folder can then operate as an informal scrapbook of any files that the user considers personally meaningful: letters, e-mails, or anything else.
Several category folders may be helpful in the Personal folder:
“info” or “important”: This can be a general folder for storing important information like health account data or a text file containing contact information of friends and family. File names here should be short and descriptive—“health insurance” or “addresses”, for example.
“clips”: A folder for personally interesting news clippings, saved in bit-literate clip format. (Year sub-folders can archive past years’ clips.)
“writing”: An archive of any personal writing—notes, letters, drafts, or other scribblings.
“taxes [year]” (e.g., “taxes 2007”): A folder storing all notes, e-mails, and digital receipts pertaining to that tax year. Every January I create a new “taxes” folder to hold all tax-related receipts and notes I get throughout the year, so that I’ll be fully organized for the next year’s tax filing.
A year folder, like “2006”: a scrapbook of miscellaneous items from a past year. I create a new year folder at the end of each year, so my Personal folder contains several year folders.
Finally, note that unlike the main, work-related parent folder, Personal can contain files as well as folders on its first level. Except for folders like those described above, Personal can mainly serve as a repository of any interesting files. A little clutter is OK here, since it’s separated from the main parent folder and won’t affect the user’s efficiency at work.
Managing the desktop
Outside the one or two parent folders, there’s only one other place in the file system that the user needs to keep organized: the desktop. This is often the most misused location in the entire file system. As noted above, organizing by default allows files to lie where they’re created, and that often sends them to the desktop. A cluttered desktop is especially conspicuous—to the user, and even to coworkers passing by. It’s usually visible below any open applications, and it always appears during startup. So just like an empty inbox and an empty todo list, it’s important for the sake of your productivity—and morale—to keep the desktop empty of all unnecessary icons and files.
An empty desktop also has the benefit of making the occasional visiting file that much more prominent. Files on the desktop are like sticky notes on the monitor: one item stands