You’ll probably notice a theme with a lot of my posts, that they’re about organisation and time management. There is a good reason for this, you only have so much time – if you’re well-organised then you can do more and become more effective as a result.
Over the holidays I finally got to something on my to-do list which has been hanging around for too long… organising and archiving my files.
It doesn’t feel important or urgent, which is why I hadn’t gotten around to it until now… there was always something else which took priority until I switched my priorities around over the holidays and took some time to get organised.
But I’ll tell you what, I found some absolute gold amongst my files, archived heaps of stuff which I used to have to look through every day and it feels amazing to be finally looking at a nice, clean, streamlined filing structure.
I would highly recommend this for anyone, here’s what you do:
- Take a blank piece of paper and ‘mind map’ your ideal file structure, go at least two levels down (my top-level includes things like business, family, finance, investments, knowledge base etc).
- Go through your existing files and add to/edit your mind map to fit anything you’ve forgotten.
- Create a backup of any critical files.
- Open up two file windows, create a new folder in one where you’re going to create your new structure – and start dragging your files over to their new locations.
- If you have any old projects, website versions or anything you’re not using, then start an archive folder in the relevant location and store those out of sight.
- Once finished, drag all of those files back up to the top-level of your documents out of the new folder you created.
- Rejoice in how organised you feel.
There are extra benefits to this too, it becomes way easier to back up your work, store in the cloud and to find things in general. It will save you time each day and make working with your files a little more pleasant.
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