Speaker 1: Maybe you're feeling overwhelmed by all of your digital files, the vast amounts of information and the places where you can store and hopefully find all that information again, but you don't know where to start getting your digital life organized. Then the good news is that I show you how to perfectly organize the four main areas of your computer in just a few steps. So let's get started. Your computer desktop is probably the most important area to take care of when it comes to organizing your computer. I mean just take a quick look at your desktop. 95% of desktops I have seen from colleagues or friends look like this or this or maybe this. But the problem with such messy desktops is that you lose the overview of what's there or not, you lose files or folders or you cannot find what you are looking for anymore. And the more it gets crowded, the more difficult it gets for you to keep track of your documents and the less motivation you have to finally clean up the mess. Regardless of how cluttered your desktop is already today, you can follow those three tips to make and keep it tidy. First you should take a closer look of what's on your desktop today. Review each and every file and look into all of the folders that you have created at one point. Whenever you have a document open, ask yourself why you have saved it in the first place, if this document is important and if you would like to keep it. If yes, keep and close it again and if not, delete it right away. So after the first step you should have reviewed every single file on your desktop and only the ones you want to keep should still be there. Some of you might also have a bunch of program icons on your desktop. By clicking on them, the respective program opens and you can work with it. Same procedure here. Think about whether you need this icon somewhere readily accessible because you use it often or not. If not, just delete the icon. This does not mean that you delete the program but you can still access it via the start menu. But if you need the program often, I would recommend pinning it to your taskbar by right clicking and selecting this action. After that you can also delete the icon from the desktop because you have it on your taskbar. In the second step you should think about whether you want to follow a clean desktop policy or not. I personally like to have a clean desktop because it gives me the peace of mind that every document is stored in its dedicated place. The only folder I have permanently on my desktop is the recycle bin. Whichever option you go for, you should think about a proper structure to organize your files. If you decide to go for a clean desktop policy, you should think about where the remaining files from your desktop belong. Regardless if you already have a proper folder structure in place or not, how to set one up or optimize will be covered later in this video. But if you do not want to follow a clean desktop policy, you can think about which files and folders you want to keep on your desktop. I would recommend only the bare minimum. For example, documents you are currently working on, current project files or documents that need to be filed. There are even desktop backgrounds that allocate space for documents of different kinds. You can either download ready-made backgrounds or customize your own by the two links I put in the description. Now that you have completed step two and have a clear target structure, it's time to do the final step, which is to actually file the document. You can either do that by a drag and drop or cut and paste. Just make sure that you adhere to a common naming convention, be it on your newly organized desktop or your files and folder structure. Always like to start with the date followed by the document name. So for example, 2023-05-22 script organize your computer. This structure lets you easily sort the documents by date. Alternatively, you could number the documents or start each name with the client or project followed by the name, such as YouTube video, organize your computer. Having named your files properly and stored them at their target location, your desktop will be as clean as it has never been before. One final tip to keep a clean desktop is to use a proper desktop background if you're not using one of the organizational templates I shared earlier. I've seen many people use a picture of their dog or cat or a nice landscape photograph. I personally like to use a rather abstract or very simple clean picture because they distract less from the work and make it easier to spot documents on the desktop. Or the other way around, with a lively desktop background, you can easily mask your mess, which is less prominent, whilst a clean background will always show what you should be taking care of. Now that your desktop is clean, let's take a look at your taskbar that we mentioned earlier already. Very often I see people completely neglecting their taskbar, even though it's quite a powerful asset that you have and should be using in the right way. If not, you rather tend to clutter your desktop or take a lot more time to access and find your tools and documents. The taskbar is super versatile, but before we get into its functionalities, let's organize it properly. I would recommend keeping all programs on your taskbar that you are frequently using and need quick access to, as well as I would sort them in a logical way. That's for example my taskbar. It starts with the default Windows start button, then there is the search icon and the task viewer, which lets me access my timeline and other virtual desktops. Thereafter comes the file explorer, where I have in a few folders that I'm frequently using. After Google Chrome, which I basically use every time I work on my computer, there are all the Microsoft 365 applications I need, which are Outlook, Excel, PowerPoint and Word. This is then followed by Spotify and my note apps Notion and Obsidian. Then my Adobe Creative Cloud suite and applications for video and content creation follow. Finally, I have some other finance or content creation apps that do not belong to any of the other broader categories. To add programs to your taskbar, you just need to have them open, in which case an icon will automatically appear on the taskbar. Then do a right click on the icon and choose pin to taskbar. That's also how you can unpin it again. You move the app on the taskbar via drag and drop. Maybe you have recognized that I have set my taskbar to be on the left side of my screen. That's because I use an ultra-wide monitor and wanted to have it more compact. You can change the location and many other settings of the taskbar by right clicking on a blank space on the taskbar and choose taskbar setting. They can choose its location on the screen if you want to lock it, which I would recommend, and if you want to use small taskbar icons, which I have activated as well. So feel free to go through those settings and tailor the taskbar to your own personal needs. Let's also look at the third rather neglected, but also important area of your computer that needs organization and structure, because without it you miss the chance to save a lot of time and be fast and efficient. I'm talking about your internet browser. Now you might think that it's just there to search for things, but it's way more. Not only in my professional life, but also in my private life, there are many websites and pieces of information that I need frequent access to, or that I have found once and would like to keep for future use. I mean, isn't it the same for you? Maybe there are certain dashboards at work that you need to access frequently. Maybe there's some important HR information that you would like to have at hand, or maybe just simply the lunch plan at work that you want to review before going there. There are many other examples, and that's how you organize your browser and your bookmarks. I'm using Google Chrome for this, but I'm sure any other browser has the same or similar functionalities. As with your desktop or your taskbar, start to review what's there, meaning what bookmarks you already have set. If there are none, you can skip this very first step. If you already saved some bookmarks, review them and decide if you still need and want to keep them, or if not, delete them right away. If you want to keep them, make sure the links still work and are not dead yet. Second, think about the structure that makes sense for your bookmarks. At work, for example, I have a folder for admin with subfolders for HR, travel, or IT-related documents. Second, third, and fourth folder are topic-related where I save bookmarks related to those topics A, B, C, or D. And within that, I have again subfolders related to those topics. For personal use, I have a slightly different structure, which is along topics as well. I have one folder for travel and holidays, one for my finances, one for my projects, one for other miscellaneous topics, and one for another personal topic. Within each folder, I have again subfolders. For example, in my travel folder, I have subfolders for hiking, biking, and overall service providers such as airlines. In addition to my folders, I have some direct bookmarks in my bookmark bar with quick access, for example, to WhatsApp or YouTube. Once you have your target structure and created the respective folders, it's time to move your bookmarks. In Chrome, I would recommend doing all this in the Bookmark Manager that you can access with Ctrl-Shift-O. There you can easily move bookmarks via drag and drop. And finally, let's come to the top tier of computer organization, which is file management. In general, there are several different strategies to file management, some that are more organized and structured, and some that are less. Essentially, it all comes down to your own personal preferences and way of thinking and structuring. The one system I use is the classical hierarchy structure that resembles a multi-level hierarchy, which might look like the roots or branches of a tree. That's why sometimes it's also called tree structure. And when it comes to organizing your files and folders, you should follow the same steps as we have been doing for the other areas of your computer, such as your desktop or your bookmarks. Review what's currently there, if it makes sense, and if it follows a hierarchy structure. If yes, that's great, but if not, it's time to move to the second step and think about a proper structure. This should fit your requirements, resemble your way of working and thinking, and ideally, you should be able to use the same structure, for example, for different years or projects. Once you know which structure you want to implement, it's time to act and file all your documents by following a proper naming convention again. Now, if you want to know more about the hierarchy structure and a best practice to implement it, watch this video next, where I go into all of the details you need to know to finally master your files and folders.