Life Of E's

Maybe you are wondering about the answer to this question – just as the person who recently voiced this question:

I would like to get my computer files organized. It seems that I have files all over the place and sometimes I have a hard time finding things. Is there a resource (book, for example) that can show us the best way to get our computer files organized?

A book that I think is excellent is Gina Trapani’s Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, Better.  She has a multitude of tips, tricks, and techniques – and her writing is also fun to read. So, her book is worth having if you want to learn more about MANY different aspects of using technology, including organizing your files and hard drive. With that being said, I’ll also add offer some of the ideas that have worked for me.

On a piece of paper (first), map out your My Documents (and I’ll be using PC language here – I’m sure Mac people reading this will have different terms). Anyway, think of your My Documents folder as the big folder where EVERYTHING goes (and it is, basically). So documents formatted as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, PDFs, or any other variety, i.e., everything needs to be organized in your My Documents folder.

Since you’re writing this out, then you have My Documents at the top of the page. Underneath that, go ahead and write the general categories of things you do/work on. For example:

• Articles
• Books
• Schools
• Teleseminars
• Company (whatever your company name is)
• Accounting
• Tips Booklets
• Vitae
• Consulting

Write down whatever the categories are for you. You can add more later, of course. For now, you are just trying to get an overall sense of the categories you need.

Next, under these categories, write down any possible subcategories. For example, under your company name, you could have

• Contracts/Speaking Agreements
• Proposals/Pending Clients
• Operations Manual
• Forms

and a bunch of other groupings. The issue to think about is: How does your brain work and how do you think of things? Don’t worry about other people’s language. It’s your computer and it needs to be organized in the way that you think.

Remember:  what is great is that you can always change and move various items you’re working on into different places. In general, however, you want to limit the number of categories and the number of sub-categories (and for sure the number of sub- sub-categories. It can get ugly if you don’t).

When I first started out with a hard drive, I had a Word category, a PowerPoint category, etc….but then I realized that when I was working on a project, I wanted to have everything related to that project (Word docs, Excel docs, PowerPoint shows, mindmaps, PDFs, or whatever) all in the same general vicinity. That’s when I reorganized my hard drive.

When I was a professor and the three main areas of my work were

• Teaching
• Research
• Service

…then I used those as my ‘big three’ and everything fell under those. Each of my classes was listed under Teaching and my various research projects were listed under Research , and so on from there.

Once you have your categories mapped out and set up on your hard drive, then it’s wise to start actually moving what you have into the new categories. Do this when you’re uninterrupted and not distracted.

And remember, this is just the way I do it, which believe it or not, is not the only way. Or, gulp, even the best way.

Topics ranging from money to productivity to speaking to writing to coaching to business set-up and more are featured there. And, to make sure you are productive in your personal and professional life, I invite you to access the free resources at http://www.TopTenProductivityTips.com

(c) 2009 by Meggin McIntosh, Ph.D., “The Ph.D. of Productivity”(tm)

Through her company, Emphasis on Excellence, Inc., Meggin McIntosh changes what people know, feel, dream, and do via seminars, workshops, writing, coaching, & consulting.

Tags: files, Gina Trapani, hard drive, organized