Save Time by Organizing Your Files

How much time do you spend searching for files on your computer? Hours? Days?

Consider creating a filing system for all of your digital bits and pieces that makes locating that pesky document fast, intuitive and easy.

Firstly, don't be shy about creating folders. If you want to put all of your bills in one place, create a folder called "Bills". Then create folders within that folder for all the bills that you want to save. You might have one called "Gas Company", and another called "Electric Company". Create as many as you need, and keep them within the "parent" folder to make them easy to find.

When you create a document, whether it is a word processing document, spread sheet or PDF, consider how you are going to name it.

Remember that operating systems, like Windows, file numerically first, and alphabetically second. That means that a file called "Gas Company 1 November 2007" will appear on your list before "Gas Company 2 September 2006".

To keep my files in chronological order, I use the following naming protocol: "20071101 Gas Company Invoice". This ensures that Windows will list all of my documents in ascending order by year, month and day.

Knowing that your operating system likes to order things numerically can also save you a lot of time when looking for the actual folders. In my case, I have hundreds of folders within "My Documents". One that I use a lot is called "Writing" which, by definition, is well down at the bottom of the list. I can move it right to the top of the list simply by renaming it "01 Writing". I use this trick to keep my most commonly used folders right at the top of my search box. Similarly, I can move folders I almost never use to the bottom of the list simply by prefixing the "Alpha" name with the number "99", so that "Aardvark Research" becomes "99 Aardvark Research".

Take a few minutes now to contemplate and update your file naming protocols, and you'll save dozens of hours of frustration in the future.