How best to organise files and folders?
 

I would welcome ideas on how to best organise all of the files and folders on my Mac.

At the moment it is a bit of a mess between live project related 'stuff', reference stuff (mostly by project) and stuff sorted by category (music, ebooks etc.)

Searching the web has been less helpful than I thought it would be.

One suggestion is a structure of:
[LIST][*]Personal[LIST][*]InBox (where anything personal gets dumped b4 sorting)[*]Projects[LIST][*]first project[*]second project[*]...[/LIST][/LIST][*]Work[LIST][*]InBox (where anything work gets dumped b4 sorting, this has an alias to the personal inbox so it is actually one dumping ground.)[*]Projects[LIST][*]first project[*]second project[*]...[/LIST][/LIST][/LIST]
I suspect that there is no 'perfect way' but would be interested in learning how others keep things under control.

Making progress (using hazel)
 

Having done a fair amount of research on this - there isn't a perfect way, as a user I just have to find something that I can apply consistently and that makes sense.

Two things are helping. Hazel (a great program for automating file moves - I hope the any sandboxing introduced in mountain lion doesn't kill it) and aliases.

For live stuff I am working a two level filing system using the documents folder as the root.

The first level is the company, the second is the project for that company.

For new files that I create I am using the format:
[INDENT][I]yyyy-mm-dd - company - project - good description of the file[/I][/INDENT]
I then save them in the documents folder. Hazel monitors that folder, renames everything to lower case and then sweeps the file into the appropriate project folder

That deals with most of my stuff. For some particular clients I need a third level so I have a slightly different format for that:
[INDENT][I]xxyy - yyyy-mm-dd - company - good description of the file[/I][/INDENT]
where xx is the first two letters of the individuals first name and yy the first two letters of the surname. Hazel sweeps the file into the appropriate individuals folder and re-arranges the filename to put it back into the 'standard' format.

I am using textexpander snippets (another great program) to speed up the filename generation.

Any other tricks or ideas I should be considering?

In my Documents, I've set up top-level folders for my areas of responsibility, for example ...

* Sales
* Marketing
* Finance
* Personnel
* Activities
* Surroundings
* Well-Being
* Family

This structure matches closely what I keep in OmniFocus, and each of these folders contain various folders for projects or information. Then, I have folders for general app-related stuff, for example ...

* Curio
* OmniGroup
* Parallels

... as well as for general storage, for example ...

* Databases
* Literature

I use the labels feature to set Work, Personal, Application, and General labels (and colors) to the folders. This helps in list-browsing my Documents.

HTH

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JJW

Thanks.

I handnt thought of using the label feature to the folders. I experimented with changing the folder icons once, but they weren't sufficiently different to aid navigation.

Phil

[QUOTE=philrob;111934]I handnt thought of using the label feature to the folders. I experimented with changing the folder icons once, but they weren't sufficiently different to aid navigation.[/QUOTE]

I have my Documents showing as icons on a grid. Each folder for its Area of Responsibility has a different icon. For example, my Surroundings folder is a pair of binoculars and my Activities folder is a basketball.

I set four columns with my Personal folders aligned in the first column, my Work folders in the next, my General folders in the next, and my App-Based folders in the last.

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JJW