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:
.
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?
I found a wonderful flash animation a while back by novelist Jim Munroe.
From his site:
I’ve just finished a Flash adaptation of my Time Management for Anarchists seminar. I started doing the talk a year and a half ago at Canzine and have done it a half-dozen times since, mostly at infoshops and political bookstores (Austin, Montreal, Berkeley, Vancouver) and also at a couple of events (New Orleans Book Fair, the Vegetarian Food Fair). It’s based on the paradoxical notion that anarchists have to be more organized than average if they don’t want to depend on power structures, and presents some ideas on how to kick the boss habit.
Time Management for Anarchists: The Movie. It has a Creative Commons license and he’s encouraged re-mixing. (The original .fla file can be found on his site.) The animation is about 8 minutes long and has alot of great tips that are well presented.
My friend Dav seems to find all of the cool websites. I found this first one, del.icio.us, while reading his blog, AkuAku. Del.ico.us is a kind of central online storage place for all of your bookmarks. What’s cool is that it’s available from any browser anywhere you are. They call it “social bookmarks”. You’re able to log and categorize your bookmarks with one click ease. To use it you’ve got to be comfortable with the whole world having access to your browsing habits, so some discretion as to what you bookmark is probably in order. It does make for interesting browsing… (Also a nice use of .us).
One site that I can claim as having discovered on my own is TiddlyWiki. It’s described as “a reusable non-linear personal web notebook”. The whole concept of Wiki’s is still very new to me. This seems pretty cool… though I’m still working out in my head just what the applications for something like this would be.