Digital organization

By Nick Glavan

 I consider myself a very organized person. Family and friends alike are aware of my specific preferences when it comes to everyday situations like loading the dishwasher, retrieving the emergency pack of gum from the passenger-side glove compartment, or simply stacking and prioritizing pieces of mail.

And while I am far from the beacon of organization and order (I bow to you, Marie Kondo), being able to logically place items around my dwelling, and being able to locate and retrieve them when necessary, has been a much appreciated life hack. 

So, while I’ve been pro at organizing my physical space for many years, I have not always been so spot-on when it came to my digital environment. I have been guilty of saving many documents to the “Downloads” folder or to my desktop, and then scrambling to recall the difference between “Presentation 1 (1)” and “Presentation 1 (2)”. I’m pretty sure I am not the only one.

In an effort to enhance my digital organization, I have created a few rules that have helped me to file away emails and documents alike, with a better sense of how to search and find almost anything on my computer. I am still far from perfect, but these are a few things that have vastly improved my process. 

---

1. Save it first: As mentioned above, I am often downloading attachments and my default is to save every download to a common “Downloads” folder. The best way for me to avoid the eventual search for the document-I-downloaded-earlier-in-the-day-but-accidentally-closed is to save it in a specific location before I begin editing.
2. Consistent naming: The first characters of the document name should be as follows Year(XXXX)-Month(XX)-Day(XX) Document Name. This is a tactic I’ve snagged from several professionals I’ve worked with over the years. You might say, Nick, there is already a way to determine when the last time the document was edited(in “Details” view of your File Explorer, also my preferred view), so isn’t dating the file unnecessary? Well, I like keeping a daily version of edits to documents. And when sorted alphabetically by document name, which commonly the default sorting method, it organizes each document in order of it’s versions. Now it’s easy for me to search a document name and find the most updated version or jump back to an older version to see what has been changed. 
3. Folders, folders, folders: Did I mention, folders? In fairness I have been a folder lover since high school, where I had each semester’s course separated out. These were also subfolder-ed in a tier of Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, and Senior, with each of those having a Fall and Spring folder divergence path. I have never been upset, organizationally speaking, for having too many depths of folders. You will need to master how to use your search bar when you have cascading folders, but if you keep your pathways and tiers consistent in their uses, you’ll be able to pinpoint anything you’ve saved.​

Pro-tip: When making folders, trying naming them with 01, 02, 03, etc. in front of the folder names to keep things consistent in order. That way even if the folder names are not alphabetically in the order you’d like, you can swap around the pre-numbers to get it organized in your preferred sequence. Keeping the zero in from of single digit numerals is important for keeping folder 01 higher up the list than folder 10!

1. Regular clean up: Even I, a self-acclaimed organization superfan, slip up. I have things on my desktop that I saved there for a temporary file and never put it where it belonged. So every few weeks, I set aside some time to go through the errant files, open them and check to see what’s inside, and either save it correctly in its subfolder or send it to the recycle bin. Many times, I find myself saving duplicates in the Download or desktop area of things I already have properly saved in my folder system, so clearing out unnecessary extras helps keep my computer tidy.

I have also applied these rules to my email inbox, eventually filing all finalized correspondence to a folder, and keeping in my inbox only “incomplete” email threads. Even on my personal devices, I have 4+ tiers of subfolders that keep music files, tax documents, emails, contracts from previous apartments, etc. all within a few minutes of searching. 

I’ll end with saying that these are the rules that work for me and my brain. Everyone thinks differently and everyone can develop rules that make sense to their own brain. I love being able to double click my way through a series of folders, each getting slightly more specific until I’ve found what I was looking for. But developing a system that works for you and giving yourself the leeway to course-correct if you start slipping is the most important part of growing your organization tendencies, in my opinion.

I’m curious to hear: what are your rules for keeping yourself organized digitally? How do you name documents or folders? Do you apply any of these rules to other aspects of your life?

Looking forward to hearing what methods our network of friends uses to keep their computers and themselves in order!
​