how do you organize your data?
September 2nd, 2003
this question was posed today on slashdot. quite interesting to think about. i’ve struggled with this a lot – i’m not a very organized person. i tend to do the “nested crap/stuff method” which i’d love to get a way from…
the brain looks cool. maybe google it? and i’ve seen a few more “interesting” ideas. maybe i just need to learn to throw crap away…
Categories: life
I like a clean desktop so I create one folder called “in progress” and that’s where I throw everything I’m currently playing with (downloads, sample code, temporary bookmarks, etc).
About once a month or less I spend an hour or two to clean the folder out. Half of the files get trashed, but some go into my (more) permanent file system. I have a preset folder hiearchy mostly based on file types. There are about 10 top level directories. None are more than 3-4 levels deep. It works well for me. I can find older stuff as long as I remember the type of file. Everything else is top of mind anyway, so it’s not a problem.
Every great once in a while (once a year?), I’ll go through my long term storage and straighten it up. Purging and just re-aquainting myself with what I have. Sometimes I’m amazed at the things I save.
i’m gonna try something similar to what you mentioned – another friend said the same thing you did.
i’ve got so much crap all over my drives… i seem to never delete anything! crap code, crap downloads, crap folders… outlook emails from 100 years ago… send items folders with like 10,000 messages! one day i’ll tackle this mess, but not today!
(ok, before anyone responds, i know outlook wasn’t around 100 years ago. it’s an exaggeration.)