Evaluating Your Favorite Folders

The Challenge of Organizing Folders

I’ll bet it doesn’t surprise you to learn that you visit the same computer folders over and over again. It’s the 80/20 rule all over again. 20% of your folders hold 80% of your useful files.

Do you know which folders they are? And how important they are to you? Is it easy to find the one you need when you need it?

In a perfect world, you will be able to see all your folders on one screen and know exactly where everything should go.

Having an organized folder system on your computer or cloud drive can save you hours of annoying file hunting.

You know this already, but most likely you are super busy and do not have the time to stop and take a few hours to organize your folders. So let’s do it a bit at a time.

To start the process of organizing your digital files you need to know which folders and files you use on a daily basis.

To help you identify and organize your most important folders, I have created a worksheet for you.

GET THE FAVORITE FOLDERS WORKSHEET

As you work you will eventually notice that you visit the same folders over and over. Make a tick mark in the “use” column of the form each time you visit a folder again.

After about a week take a look at your list and you will notice that some folders will have all the tick marks and some folders never even get listed.

For the folders you visit often, take a moment to really think about them.

• Are they named in a useful way or are you the only one who would understand what they are for? Think in terms of trying to explain to your assistant where to find that folder and what should be saved in it.
• When you open those favorite folders how many files do you find? Can you see all of them in one screen or do you need to scroll and scroll and scroll? Do you just have one or two files in your favorite folder?
• Do the files in your favorite folders make sense? Or do you have your children’s school documents in a folder with social media images?

Once you have given your folders a thoughtful evaluation you can consider rearranging a few things.
You can rename a few folders so it makes more sense.
You can consolidate a few folders or break apart a massive folder.

Here are a Few Things to Consider

Computer Files have a default organizational system. When sorted by “name” they arrange themselves by:

1. Special Character (!,#,$)
2. Numerically
3. Alphabetically

You can use this to your advantage and keep your important folders at the top or together.

For those of you who just want to know what folders to create, here is how I organize mine. I use numbers and special characters to keep my important folders on the top.

NOTE: Special Characters can easily get out of hand. Here are a few good guidelines.

• Stick to !, _ , –
• Never use more than 1 special charactor in a file or folder name
• Keep it to no more than 2 or 3 files or folders with a special character at the beginning. Use Numbers instead.

The Luxcentric Folder List

!IN-PROCESS

I use this folder for things I am working on, things that don’t quite have a home yet. It is also good for those files you need only temporarily. Once this folder becomes full (once you need to start scrolling to see everything) be sure to move or delete files to more permanent locations.
This is also for everything I need to create stuff for my business. It includes templates, basic images, backgrounds, branding images and such. If I need to use a file over and over to create stuff it goes in this folder. I have a lot of things in this folder so mine has folders nested within in it.

1-FINANCIAL-LEGAL

This folder is pretty self-explanatory. Anything dealing with my money, the law, regulations or similar things go in here.

2-PROFESSIONAL

This holds all my business stuff. For those of you who have more than one business, you may want to name the folder after your businesses and have more than one 2-folder.

As your business content grows you may want to create 2-folders for each of your primary products or to hold all your client folders.

Examples:

• 2-VIP PROGRAM ONE
• 2-VIP PROGRAM TWO
• 2-CLIENTS
• 2-BLOG POSTS
• 2-OPERATIONS

3-PERSONAL

You know what should be here.

3-PICTURES

I create a separate picture folder apart from the Camera Upload folder that was created by my phone. I move my photos out of the camera uploads into yearly/monthly folders to keep them organized and make sure I have organized copies of the images in case I need to delete them off of my phone to free up space.

Example:

I create folders within my 3-PICTURES folder.

• 2018 pictures
  • 01 January 2018
  • 02 February 2018
  • 03 March 2018

4-REFERENCE

This is where you can put all the trainings that you receive from others. Support materials for stuff you want to do. It is also a sort of MISC. Folder.

zVAULT

I love this folder. Anything you don’t want but are not ready to delete can go in this folder to get out of your way. Then if you need to clear out space this folder can be easily moved to a portable drive or deleted.

Shared folders

As you work and collaborate with others you may collect a large assortment of top-level files. Nesting these folders can be a problem because that can break the link. What I do when I am sharing a folder (sharing individual files uses a different strategy) I name it with my business first, then my partner’s name or business. This way all my shared folders are organized in the same alphabetical area and my people know the folder is related to me.

Example:

• Luxcentric-Protinker
• Luxcentric-Tessa Ing

Whether you use my system or you develop a system of your own be sure to think it through and tweak it as you need to make it useful for how you work.

Good luck and

Don’t let your technology bully you!

Nicole Lux-Ritchie - Founder of Luxcentric

Nicole's mission is to help feminine professionals gain the technical
skills they need to grow their business and focus on their missions.
The focus of Luxcentric is on training practical strategies in the area of the core technologies.
EMAIL - FILES - CALENDARS - CONTACTS

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