Speaker 1: I have seen countless different digital organization and file management systems at work or at my client's sites working as a strategy consultant over the past 10 years and come up with the one single simplest file management system that will keep your files and folders in order forever. So what you're about to learn will finally show you a quick and simple but still comprehensive and thoughtful approach to file management. So you'll never need to worry about losing a document anymore and after this you will know what cookies have in common with good file management systems. Now the good thing is that I have seen so many different file management systems throughout my career and I can tell what works and what does not because I was the external consultant literally thrown on the project at a foreign company where I should get up to speed in no time to work with the client team shoulder to shoulder and using their internal documents which were stored in more or less messy systems. So the absolute simplest system to organize your files and folders is by topic. In fact, a very selected list of topics. But let me explain and walk you through some best practices and some poor practices that you should rather not implement. This system works regardless of your operating system, most likely Windows or Mac. Both operating systems even have a default location that you can use to set up your folder structure which is the documents folders. You can find it on Windows when you go to your PC or to your pinned folders for quick access in your file explorer. And on Mac, the documents folder is also accessible under your favorites. So before talking through my suggested folder structure and some examples, let's look at three principles that I recommend taking into consideration when choosing the main topics for your folder structure. First, less is more. I believe that's not only true for file management but can be taken as a general principle in life. This means for your folder structure that you should choose as few folders as possible but as many as necessary. Second, try to keep it simple. Since we would like to come up with the simplest possible structure, let's also do that. Although I know that the more we think about something and the more we might have spent time before bothering about that thing, the harder it can be to come up with something simple. In that case, just try to take out a blank piece of paper, start fresh and keep it simple because it's always possible to make it more complex eventually. And finally, you should think like a child. It might seem very similar to keeping it simple but has a slightly different meaning. Children are very straightforward, very honest and bring so many things straight to the point without thinking outside the box, which is great for some things but not for file management. Rather, you should be able to understand your structure and find your files and folders today but also in two, three or even five years. So when coming up with your structure, think where your future me would anticipate things and find them easily. Just as straightforward as a child would look for some cookies in the kitchen. Do you like the insights from today's video so far? Then you might also be ready to master your digital organization. Discover the Digital Architect, a comprehensive guide I've personally written packing all my knowledge and experience into your ultimate toolkit for digital efficiency. This isn't about just organizing files. It's a complete overhaul of how you manage your digital life. From streamlined file management to best practices for handling your emails, calendar and your notes, this guide provides actionable tips that can transform your approach to digital organization. So if digital clutter has been holding you back, this guide is your solution. Dive into the Digital Architect and start reclaiming your time, energy and headspace today. Click the link in the description below to learn more and boost your productivity. Now, keeping those principles in mind, I would try not to exceed five to eight key topics where each has a folder. For most of you, for personal use, this could be the following, finance, home, education, health, travel, employment, family and acquisitions. Now you could choose to use exactly this list for your folder structure or tailor it by replacing some folders. For example, you might want to add a folder for your hobbies, any personal projects or your pets. What I would not recommend is going far beyond eight folders on your main level. Just because the more you have, the more complex it will be and the more overlap there might be. So better start with fewer folders and potentially adjust as you go. But that's not the end of the story because although it's lean and simple, you still don't know how to find the cookies in the future. So let's say you have chosen to create those eight initial topic folders that I've mentioned. You can sort them automatically in alphabetical order, for example, in the Windows File Explorer by clicking on the column header that says name. Now there are two simple options to manage the contents of those folders where one is by category and the other is by name. By category means that you create subfolders for different categories or subtopics within the main folder. For example, in the travel folder, you could create subfolders for the different years where you then store the respective travel information or booking confirmations. Or for the home folder, your subcategories could be purchase, maintenance or service providers where you then store the respective files and information that belong to those categories. Or you could categorize your acquisitions folder along the big purchases that you have made such as car number one, car number two, mountain bike or your camper van. If you don't like the idea of creating subfolders and would like to just keep the first level with your main categories, you need to manage the contents by name. That means you dump all of the respective files in the main folder without further categorizing them. But if you do so, you need to be a lot more diligent with properly naming the files. I'm not saying that you shouldn't care about proper file names when subcategorizing your files, but it's even more important when you don't have subfolders. Just imagine that over the years, you end up with hundreds of files in your finance folder because you saved your bank statements, information on your stock portfolio or insurance account information as well. Although filing is easy, which is basically just dumping the files in the folder, if you're looking for something in the future, just as the child is looking for the cookie in the kitchen, you need to make it easy to find it. Having dumped dozens or even hundreds of files with random names in a folder, you will not be able to sort or search them. So let me show you two ways of naming your files properly that will help you find them in no time. First, you could choose a naming convention led by date. This means that you always start with the year, month and day followed by a descriptive name and potentially an indicator about the version. For example, 20230913BMWInvoiceFenderRepair. This file would then be stored in your acquisitions folder because it relates to one of your purchases, which might be your BMW 3 Series. The advantage of having a date led naming convention is that you can always sort your documents by date and have a descending or ascending order of documents. Now, some of you might say that Windows and I guess Mac as well, have the information date created or date modified as standard information attached to each file. However, sometimes the date created by the system is different to the actual date of the document. For example, if you store the BMW repair invoice only in October, but the actual date of the invoice is September, you might be confused or mess up your order. That's why I would always recommend adding your own date in the file name. The second naming convention that has proven to be quite practical is purely name and content based. This means that in most cases, you would not add a date to the file name, but name it as clearly as possible. For example, BMW 3 Series Repair Invoice Fender Front Left. And in that case, you would rely on the date created by the operating system. Eventually, it's up to you to decide which of the two or any other naming convention suits you best. I personally prefer the first one and includes the date upfront, so I am clear about it at one glance. But you might also use a mixture of the two approaches depending on your main folder. For example, you could use the date led naming convention in your finance folder, whilst you decide to choose the name led convention in your health folder. There is no right or wrong except for not being specific enough. In fact, you should be as explicit enough with as few characters as possible when naming the files. That's because for some operating systems, you might have a character or path limit that you cannot exceed when labeling files. But proper labeling is crucial for using the search function, which you would need to use more heavily when you decide not to create any subfolders and might end up looking for that one specific file within dozens or hundreds of others. And that's exactly how you will find the cookie that you're looking for even after several years of having set up your initial folder structure. As I mentioned earlier, I believe in the power of less being more to focus on what really matters. But beyond file management, there's another area on your computer that you should apply this principle to in order to be even more productive. So watch this video next, where I'll show you how to finally clean up your desktop and make it more aesthetic than ever.