How to Organize Files?

The goal of organizing files is to access files quickly anywhere and anytime.

How to Access Files Quickly?

A Good Structure

We need a structure that makes it easy to find any file or folder quickly. A hierarchical structure is a good choice, almost all modern computer systems using.

It is a good idea to organize files according to their category. For example, suppose I am taking a math course. I will put all my math homework files into Course/Math/Homework/. But what if I take quantities of courses, which many students do? The folder list under Course/ is too long to find a specific folder easily. At this time, we can organize files by date, such as Course_2020/Math/Homework/. If you want to know why I use a one-layer folder Course_2020/ rather than a two-layer folder Course/2020/, please continue reading.

Is a Deeper Folder Structure Better?

In practice, if we name folders only by category or date, we may get a rather deep folder level, such as My Name/Postgraduate/Course/2020/Math/Homework/Chapter_1/…. If we want to find the homework of the first chapter in the math course, we may have to search and click for at least seven times, which is too time-wasting. It is worthy of trading long folder names for a shallow folder structure. I suggest using _ to transfer a 2-layer structure into 1-layer, e.g. Course/2020 to Course_2020, which works well when there are a few folders under Course/. We may spend two or three years on postgraduate. If we use category and date as folder names, we have three folders at most, Course_2020, Course_2021, and Course_2022, but we can save the time of searching and clicking. However, this trick is not applicable when there is a lot of 2-layer folders. If we have homework of 20 chapters, it is not advisable to transfer Homework/Chapter_1 to Homework_Chapter_1. Anyway, we need to take care of the depth of the folder structure.

A Specific Filename

How can we find the homework we need from Homework_1.pdf and Homework_2.pdf without opening them? This even becomes more difficult when we are taking a lot of courses. Therefore, it is important to give specific names to our files. There are three key components when naming files, date, author, and thesis. The date is not necessary to be the created date and the date to present is better sometimes. I usually name group meeting files as following:

• YYYY-MM-DD - Author - Lecture Thesis

The computer systems will automatically sort files according to the date at first. So I just have to know the probable date to find the file I want. In the meantime, I will use the following name rule when writing a paper.

• Paper Thesis - Author - DRAFT - YYYY-MM-DD
• Paper Thesis - Author - VER2 - YYYY-MM-DD
• Paper Thesis - Author - REV2 - YYYY-MM-DD

The date means the last modified date. VER and REV mean version and revision respectively. I will send Paper Thesis - Author - VER2 - YYYY-MM-DD to my tutor and save his suggestions as Paper Thesis - Author - REV2 - YYYY-MM-DD.

How to Access Files Anywhere and Anytime?

You may need a cloud service, such as Apple iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive. Store our files on the cloud so that we can access our files wherever we can sign in our accounts.

Backup Every Day!

We never know which comes first, accidents or tomorrow. It is late to backup when our disks stop to work. Remember to backup files using at least two cloud services. And I usually name the backed up folders as follows:

• Folder Name - Backed up on YYYY-MM-DD

Hope this article can help you.

Mr. J is with you!