Folder Life-Hackery

I was telling a colleague this afternoon about the way I’ve organized the folders on my hard-drive. It seemed like something that might be helpful to others out there, so I put together a quick “how to” as a kind of Karmic “thanks” for all of the “Getting Things Done” lifehacks I’ve gotten from sites like 43 Folders and Lifehacker. (It’s a “Mac specific” tip… sorry WinX users… though quite possibly the unzipped folders might work fine on your machine.)

First, unzip the following file to your desktop. (Option click to download / Double click to unzip once it’s there).

It’ll look like this:

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Open up a finder window. Make sure that you have it set to “Pane View”.

Drag the “_Files_&_Folders” folder from your Desktop into your “Documents” folder on the left hand side of the finder window. It should look like this when you’re through:

Drag the “_Files_&_Folders” folder from the “Documents” folder to the left hand pane below the “Music” folder and drop it. (This will create an alias to the original folder.)

Once you’ve “dropped” the folder it should look something like this:

And that’s it. You now have a made to order “Getting Things Done” type A-Z filing system. I’ve found it so much easier to find things in this virtual filing cabinet. “Receipts” go in the “R” folder. “Serial Numbers” go in the “S” folder. It’s pretty easy to get used to dropping things into their appropriate folders as you go.

Simple, right?