The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

What is the problem?

Hav­ing many loca­tions is not wrong in itself or by default. The most appro­pri­ate plat­form or loca­tion to keep infor­ma­tion and doc­u­ments can vary great­ly between all the dif­fer­ent clients, groups, part­ners, and oth­ers you col­lab­o­rate with. For some peo­ple, Google Dri­ve is the per­fect place, some­one else finds OneDrive most appro­pri­ate, and for oth­ers, it is obvi­ous that the infor­ma­tion is best kept with­in the project-man­age­ment tool they are work­ing with.

Search­ing, sav­ing inac­cu­rate­ly, and postponing

The prob­lem is that it can be dif­fi­cult to remem­ber or know where all the dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als are kept when you have many loca­tions to choose from. If you feel unsure of where some­thing is sup­posed to be saved, there is a risk that you save it in the wrong loca­tion which means that you might sud­den­ly end up with two copies of the same doc­u­ment. Which one is the right one?! You risk spend­ing time look­ing for doc­u­ments — time you cer­tain­ly could have put to bet­ter use get­ting things done instead. And, if you are any­thing like most of us, the has­sle of hav­ing to sort out where the right mate­r­i­al or doc­u­ment is might very well result in you post­pon­ing the task alto­geth­er and choos­ing to do anoth­er eas­i­er one instead.

How you usu­al­ly find what you are look­ing for

When you are trav­el­ing and want to know where some­thing is, you take out a map some­one made and on which all the dif­fer­ent places are plot­ted. A map gives you an overview of every­thing and you will find what you are search­ing for much faster and easier.

This is exact­ly what you can do with your dig­i­tal doc­u­ments as well.

Do this

If you also have to look for doc­u­ments in many loca­tions, try this.

1. Take out an emp­ty sheet of paper — either phys­i­cal or dig­i­tal. I per­son­al­ly pre­fer tak­ing out a real­ly big sheet of reg­u­lar paper for this exercise.
   
2. Take a moment to recall all the places where you know doc­u­ments or infor­ma­tion of some kind are stored which you occa­sion­al­ly need to find, use, and make changes in. Draw them all on the paper. You can place them any­where, wher­ev­er you feel they belong. Per­haps you already have a men­tal image of where they are sup­posed to go or how they cor­re­late with one another?
   
3. For every loca­tion, make sure to note:
   • The kind of doc­u­ments that are saved and kept there.
   • What the cri­te­ria for sav­ing new items in this loca­tion and nowhere else is. Will you save some­thing there because it con­cerns a cer­tain work­group? Because it is a par­tic­u­lar kind of doc­u­ment? Because you need it in a spe­cif­ic sit­u­a­tion or context?
   • When and under which cir­cum­stances you can remove some­thing from this loca­tion with­out a moment’s hes­i­ta­tion. I, for instance, have a USB on which I save all the pre­sen­ta­tion-files for my assign­ments as a back­up if my com­put­er sud­den­ly should freeze or not work prop­er­ly for some oth­er rea­son. After the lec­ture, course, or what­ev­er the assign­ment was about is over, I can erase the files with­out even think­ing about it since I know the orig­i­nals are saved elsewhere.
     
4. Alright. You have now made your­self a map — bravo!

Find and save it faster

If you give your­self a much clear­er idea of where you keep dif­fer­ent kinds of dig­i­tal infor­ma­tion, you will find what you are look­ing for much faster when you need it. You will also end up sav­ing new infor­ma­tion in the right loca­tion with more con­fi­dence which makes it eas­i­er for your future self to find it fast when you urgent­ly need to do so.

What’s your way?

How do you make sure you know where every­thing is? Do you have a trick or tool that real­ly helps you? If you do, feel free to email me to share.

(There’s also anoth­er way to make your fold­ers easy to find.)