How to Organize Short-Term Projects on Your Computer
It’s easy to clutter your desktop when working on short-term projects. Get-It-Done Guy has 5 tips on keeping your files organized and easy to find.
When Melvin is trying to calm down his fiancée Bernice after saying the wrong thing, he has to keep track of many details. Did he or did he not invoke the Goddess? Did he compliment her latest outfit before or after admitting it was all his fault?
In the thrill of moment-to-moment living, we have to track many details in any given situation. But 6 weeks from now, Melvin only needs to remember the essentials: (1) that he was wrong, and (2) that despite his personal taste, gluing rhinestones to his T-shirt does not make it acceptable attire for a formal event.
Short term memory is where we keep track of the tiny details we need to finish the task at hand. Modern tasks often involve files on a computer. If you’re like me, you use your desktop for that. Need to download a research report on the market demand for naked mole rats in cosmetic testing labs? Add that PDF file to my desktop. Editing a photo album for the office party? My desktop gets covered with pictures galore! And when I need something, it’s … somewhere. I was working on it just 5 minutes ago. And it was called … 0345.pdf? I have no idea what it was called.
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So how do we keep track of all those little details when doing a short-term project (or section of a project)? Here are 5 easy tips:
Tip #1A: Use “Recent Documents”
Let’s say you just finished editing the marching orders for your zombie army, and you suddenly remember you need to add a reminder to procurement to have fresh brains waiting to feed the army. But which file was it, again? Was it Zombie_Stuff.doc?
Thankfully, both the Mac and Windows computer have a list of recent documents. Rather than hunting around (er, wherever I saved the files), I can go straight to my list of recent documents and grab the file I was just working on.
In Windows 7, just right click a program in the taskbar and you can see a list of recent documents. In earlier versions of Windows, the Start Menu had a Recent Documents entry. You can re-enable it in Windows 7 with 7 easy steps. That way, your most recent applications are visible directly from your start menu.
On the Mac, the Apple menu has a Recent Items section which gives you quick access to recent documents.
I also like the application Blast on the Mac. It gives you one-click access to recent documents from the menu bar. It also shows the document’s icon and lets you press the Space bar to see a quick preview of the file.
Tip #1B: Your Mac Reopens Closed Files
If you’re on a Mac running Lion, when you start an application, you don’t even need to remember what you’ve been working on. The operating system will automatically reopen the files you had open when you quit.
If you want to quit an application and not reopen windows next time you start it, hold down the Option key when you quit the program. If you never want applications to reopen their most recent windows, you can turn off the behavior in Settings > General > Restore Windows When Closing and Reopening Apps
Tip #2: Use Default Folder X
Another great Mac program is called Default Folder X. It gives you one-click access to recent folders and files right from the File Open and File Save dialogs. Plus, it lets you choose a default folder for each application. Now, word processor always opens and saves to my document library, while my audio editor opens and saves to my media directory. I couldn’t live without it.
Tip #3: Use Short-Term Memory Folders
Using my desktop as a bucket for anything related to my current projects produces clutter fast. I can set my desktop to use “auto arrange” so it looks neat, but don’t be deceived. My naked mole rat files are all mixed in with my zombie brain requisition forms. It’s almost impossible to find anything.
My solution is to make my desktop mirror the way I think. I turn my attention from one project to another. When thinking about naked mole rats, I want all my naked mole rat resources, and only my naked mole rat resources.
I create a folder for each project: Naked Mole Rats and Zombie Food Service. When I download or create a file related to a project, I toss it into that project’s folder. Now, when my attention shifts to a given project, everything is in one place—even though it’s on the desktop. Keep in mind that these are my short-term memory folders, the files I keep are the ones I reference while doing the current phase of the project.
Now my desktop is neat. It has one folder for each project, easily accessed. That folder is now the repository for everything needed to resume work on the project.
Tip #4: Transfer to Long-Term Storage
The resources you need to finish a project in the short term might come in handy again. Either you’ll need them for a future project, or you may want them for reference when you’re revisiting this project in the future. Although today’s commodity prices won’t be useful for Bernice 6 months from now, she may still want to save them for future reference. When she reviews her vendor selection decisions in 6 months, having the pricing information will help her remember her decision-making frame of mind.
Once you finish a project, don’t leave the short-term memory folder on your desktop. Go through the files and file the ones you want to keep into your archival filing system. Bernice archives by project. She just drops her desktop Manufacturing Logistics folder into a folder named Archived Projects and she’s done.
Someone else might save the Titanium Prices file in a folder of commodity prices, and the Delivery Schedule file into a folder of Past Delivery Schedules. The key, as I’ve mentioned in my earlier article on efficient filing, is to file according to how you’ll think when you need to retrieve the information.
To sum up, use your computer to help out your short-term memory without creating tons of clutter. Use Blast, Default Folder X, or the Recent Documents and Recent Applications menus of your computer so you don’t have to search for recent files. Create project folders on your desktop to hold reference material, and transfer that material to your long-term storage when you wrap up each phase of a project.
This is Stever Robbins. I help people build extraordinary lives by understanding the external forces that keep them where they are, and designing ways to re-architect their commitments so they can pursue what really matters. If you want to know more, visit SteverRobbins.com.
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RESOURCES
Click here to be entered into a drawing to win a free copy of Blast for Mac
File So You Can Find Anything – Instantly
Restoring Recent Documents to the Windows 7 Start Menu.
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About the Author
Stever Robbins was the host of the podcast Get-it-Done Guy from 2007 to 2019. He is a graduate of W. Edward Deming’s Total Quality Management training program and a Certified Master Trainer Elite of NLP. He holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS in Computer Sciences from MIT.
