Like most knowledge workers you probably spend more time in front of my computer than in the living room (that is if you’re not a work-from-home freelancer as I am – in this case you spend ALL of your time in front of your computer…
). Cleaning up your desktop becomes even more important than housecleaning. After all, you can hire someone to clean out the mess in your living room, but it’s you and only you who can clean, sort and organize your hard drive and computer folders.
One of the most obscure parts of the GTD-like productivity systems is the “Research” part. David Allen’s method calls it the Collect bucket – the place where you collect anything that’s of interest for your current or future projects. He even describes a physical way to do it – the “tickler file” – mostly known as the 43 Folders technique. I won’t go into further details on that, as it seems a pretty nice way to organize your physical paperwork.
But having 43 Folders just for organizing files becomes extremely complicated to use on your computer. We need something different.
I introduce you to the way I’ve recently reorganized folders on my Mac OS X MacBook, in a manner that maximizes my productivity, making my daily information collection process a simple, organized and efficient one. This kind of setup can be made on any computer’s desktop(Windows or Linux) – it’s the method that matters, not the design.
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