Digital Organization

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Organization is not my strong trait.  Well, let me rephrase that.....organization in a physical sense is not my strong trait.  Digital organization, however, is my jam.  I love keeping files neat and orderly throughout my devices and clouds.  Sometimes I even, gasp, delete emails from long ago!  One thing that always scares me though is seeing the state of someone else's organization.  It can be utterly terrifying, and more importantly, a time-suck to find something.

Most people do not have some sort of system they use to keep things organized, which leads to loss in productivity in finding their files.  I know a lot of people that their desktop looks like a minefield, similar to the picture below

this scares the teacher....

Too much going on is not only disorganized, but it can be a sign of too many applications on your computer, thus slowing it down.  Please note: just having a lot of documents and icons on your desktop does not itself slow your computer down; it actually has almost no impact on computer speed.    Here is my desktop at work


A little crowded, but that has to do with several shortcut icons the county pre-loads that we cannot remove.  Makes me sad as that is roughly 60% of my desktop icons.  Now this would not be a purposeful blog post if I did not offer some advice, and I want to key in on specifically organizing files.  This applies whether you are storing files on your desktop, somewhere else on your hard drive, in your Google Drive or Dropbox, or something else along those lines.

1.) Use Folders (Think big to small)


Folders should be used to help keep your files organized and in a specific place.  As a teacher, I have several folders when I open my google drive, but they are considered "big" folders.  That means that within them I will have other sets of folders that help lead me to a very specific place, or a "small" folder that has my files in it. 

2.) Use useful names

I cannot begin to explain how hard it is to look for a specific file (or folder) and the original user left the name as "untitled" or "mydocument".  AHHHH!!!!!!! The first thing you should do is name the darn thing!  As a teacher, all of my files related to teaching begin with some type of abbreviation
  • ACT - some time of activity for a lesson
  • NOTES - links to lessons, or the actual lesson itself
  • QUIZ - i think you got that one...
  • TEST - same here...
  • WS - worksheets that I might use for classwork/homework
I also always use the SOL Strand that pertains to the topic I am working with.  For instance, this is within my "Lessons" folder for my Geometry class.


Everything has a nice label as well as a very short description to let me know what it is.  Easy to read, easy to locate what I am looking for.  Which partly leads to my last tip

3.)  Develop your own system

This is crucial.  What works for me might not work for you, or might be amazing.  You need a system that makes sense to you and allows you to keep your files organized and in a happy place.  This is not to say that your system is to just keep everything saved to your downloads folder!  Bad, bad user!  Your system should also be something that works regardless of digital platform.  Your system should be good if you are using Google Drive, Dropbox, your PC, stuff on your phone, a thumb drive, etc.  Everything should have a place and it should be the same regardless of the tool you are using to organize it.

Now go start that Spring Cleaning!!!

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