
Ask HN: Do you have a system for organizing your files? - x1798DE
An ocean of ink has been spilled about how to organize ones&#x27; notes and to-do lists and repositories, but I have not seen much in the way of a general scheme for how to organize the files on one&#x27;s computer. I always end up re-inventing the wheel over time, so I end up having a bunch of places on my hard drive with different incarnations of the same folder (~&#x2F;Documents&#x2F;Pictures, ~&#x2F;Pictures&#x2F;images). I&#x27;m interested in whether people out there have a systematic way of organizing their files (bonus points if you&#x27;ve written up the reasons in detail somewhere).
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Jugurtha
I've been using the same system for so many years and collecting things for so
long, that I pretty much know where every file is.

    
    
      Technology
        Programming
          Meta
            (stuff about architecture, design patterns, etc)
          Python
          C
          JavaScript
          Scala
          Erlang
          Lisp
        Agriculture
        Automotive
        Building
          Architecture (books on colonial architecture, way to build, etc)
        Electronics
        Instrumentation & Control
          optimal control stuff, college stuff,
        Mechanical & Machines
        Signal Processing
        GSM
        Systems Engineering
        Design
        Food Tech
        Fluid Mechanics
        Aircraft & Aeronautics
      Core Knowledge
        MIR (books from "MIR Publishers")
        Mathematics
        Physics
      Documents
        Business
          Silicon Valley
            (books specific to sv: High output management, etc)
          Author1
            books by Author1
          etc
        Ideation
        History - Biography - Journals
        Democracy
        Language Learning
        Military
          Weapons
        Intelligence
          (intelligence analysis, etc)
        Cognitive Performance
          (cognition, meta-cognition, "How Learning Works", etc)
    
      Code lives here:
    
      workspace:
        musing (snippets I write, refactoring pieces of code, idioms, etc)
        python
          flask (flask repo)
          library_repo_etc
        scala
        c
        etc..
    

So, if you ask me about Flask's documentation, it's in
Technology/Programming/Python and so on and so forth..

------
davidh92
I use a (slight) variation of the "Johnny Decimal" System
([https://johnnydecimal.com](https://johnnydecimal.com)). Essentially I have a
folder called "library" with subfolders like this:

    
    
       - [1] Personal
       -- [11] Finances
       --- [11.01] 2017
       --- [11.02] 2018
       -- [12] Travel
       - [2] Work
       - [3] Education
       ...
    

[94.xx] is my special inbox folder which I use when I am to lazy to
immediately sort something.

The website says that you should under no circumstances create subfolders
within a [xx.yy] folder. I do break that rule - e. g. [31.04] refers to a
specific course at university. Within that folder I have subfolders for
specific assignments etc. The alternative would be either a (for me too) large
amount of [xx.yy] folders or a messy course folder.

The big advantage of the system is that everything is identifiable by a simple
number, which makes searching in spotlight really easy. E. g. searching for
"[12." brings up all the folders for my trips in the last years.

I have been quite happy with the system over the last year or so and would
recommend it.

------
yarapavan
Here is an approach, advocated by Zapier folks -
[https://zapier.com/blog/organize-files-
folders/](https://zapier.com/blog/organize-files-folders/)

