This is the second post in a series entitled “How to Defeat Your Digital Mess Forever“.

I’ve been exploring a lot of folder systems for filing and processing work over the past year, and here’s what I’ve been sticking with for a few months now, and it works well.

It builds around our Filing System we developed in a previous post, and answers a question our reader Rohit asked:

I am curious about your organisation. How do you differentiate data storage in ‘Active Projects’ and ‘References’, as is evident from your screenshot? Not just storage, but also how does your workflow function, for me to better understand this post?

Let’s take a look at the steps to make this folder system, and how I work with it in my everyday context. Keep in mind that I use this for everything – university, work and private life.

The Folders

I have three folders I use for ALL my work on the computer: Inbox, Active Projects and Reference.

Inbox collects all incoming stuff that needs to be dealt with. Active Projects holds files you need to be working on currently and Reference is your long term storage. I have an A-Z folder system.

All folders are created freshly in the Home folder of my computer.

Workflow

Now, on a high level, let me explain a bit how this works:

My Inbox is a initial collection point for anything: text files with ideas, notes or to-do’s, and mostly downloads. This is the only other inbox I maintain apart from my digital task list and my physical notebook.

Active Projects can also be interpreted as “Pending”. I keep files here that I’m currently working on. This might be a blog post, a presentation or a collection of phone numbers of old school friends I’m trying to build.

Reference is long-term storage. I channel items here that I need to keep digital copies of, or that I need to look up for any kind of work.

Sidebar Setup

Since all my work resides in these folders, I don’t really want to see my home folder anymore. I access photos and music through iPhoto and iTunes, and I don’t watch movies on the computer. Thus, the home folder becomes somewhat redundant.

I only need access to my three folders, which I have dragged to the sidebar. This allows me to eliminate the Home folder, which contains folders like Documents or Downloads, which I don’t need but can’t delete either.

Icons

To make my three folders look a bit nicer, I used some nice GTD Leopard icons.

To change the icons of my new folders, you just click the icon file, hit Command-C to copy it, right-click on the folder you want to patch, choose Get Info…, click on the icon in the top left, and hit Command-V to drop the icon.

Control Incoming Streams

The last step to make this system functional is to get all incoming files to automatically go to your new Inbox.

In most Applications such as Mail, Firefox, Safari and Xtorrent (the ones I use most to download things) you can choose the downloads folder in Preferences. Just set this to point to your new Inbox.

That’s it. It’s a simple setup, and it’s a way of simplifying your computers life down to just three folders.

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