I came from the opposite side using the file system (smart folders as they came available) from the day I started using computers in 1982. I stayed with this mostly future proof method for 30 years.

Unfortunately in 2005 I had a stroke and tried to keep using my system (similar to yours) once I had recovered. Recovery has left me with memory problems. When I get in the car to go to a destination that I visit every week, I really have to concentrate how to get there as my brain amy send me to a different place. The place may be a Food Market, but I may find myself not at the local food market but one in my memory much farther away.

Anyhow, this explains why my file system using my methods in the file system for 5 years was not working at all. It ended up in a hopeless mess and made me confused, upset and despondent at my inability to file consistently. Trying to recover form this mess has taken 3 years trying different methods. My brain would work somedays and not others. I even tried using Evernote to keep track of things and that ended up even more disastrous.

I have downloaded many applications, CP Notebook, NValt, Writeroom, Scrivener, DayOne etc etc etc to try to help different aspects of my data storage. I really need to hold a lot of notes; a whole lot more than “normal” people do; because I forget. I need a prompter to help me remember, it’s in there somewhere if only I could get to it. CP Notebook was a great help but failed eventually jus because it took tooooooo long to attach files in the right place. I constantly was rearranging information.

Eventually after looking at this program quite a few times, and not recognising the power of the program I bought it after wasting money on other solutions. Yes, I bought DevonThink Pro. For a person that cannot name files consistently but can remember my own tags, I just place place it in the inbox and let the smart groups I created in Devonthink, take care of the rest based on my tags. I prefer to do this than using the absolute power of DevonThink because eventually I would get confused by how DevonThink sorts my stuff. Based on my tags (I use Tags) I can file it exactly all the time. I tried using Hazel and still do for simple sorting from my downloads folder into broad categories based on file extensions, but failed for further sorting as I had to remember my file naming system.

So now I am very happy but still sorting out some mess with DevonThink Pro. I create groups in DevonThink and copy my smart groups to the same named Groups when I need to export it out of the database. At first I was worried about the security of my data but I also use Dropbox to hold my data, which stores all the files as a simple data structure. So if the database ever gets hopelessly corrupted I haven’t lost my data. It is still there in the basic file system (on a Mac it is a system supported package file). But I will probably not need to do anything like that as a take daily and weekly backups.

DevonThink is fast and I have found very intuitive (probably based on my experience in IT), able to get up and running without reading the documentation. Now I may need t read it to find out what else it can do.

DevonThink has streamlined my filing and note taking, I Index files that I created with Notebooks in iOS. So I have all the information in DevonThink to file anywhere without having to remember any strict filing system. If I didn’t have my disability I would still happily be using the naming system, but my brain doesn’t work that way anymore. DevonThink Pro has taken me from despair to being confident that I can manage all the data that comes in and that I create. It’s great, I don’t care if she is not as pretty as some because I need her brains to help my brain to find things.

Many thanks for your reply – much appreciated.

Yes, I agree with you re the time field being enough and version then not needed, as per my previous comment -

“HHmm is optional – useful though if many people or you are working on the same file many times on the same day

version number is also optional – similar reason as per HHmm – and one could choose just one or the other to differentiate or both if you want to be sure and or are an AR.”

Just depends on how exhaustive one wants to be. Also, re first and last names – I guess to cut down on file name length, one could compromise and just put the full first name and then just the initial of firstname, so SMITH J or SMITH_J or SMITHJ if the surname is obvious or BRZEZINSKIz if not.

Simon -

I feel for you – I get the same problem if wanting to look at filenames if pics in a folder are shown as large icons or icons.

A suggestion, FWIW, would be to get rid of the spaces and the time stamp and use a version number instead (see my earlier post).

So, instead of

2012-07-04-2237-major category-minor category-title.ext

Use

20120704-MN-titlev.ext

where -

M = a code for Major category – have a note somewhere containing a keylist letting you know what each letter stands for – if you need more than 26 categories, use another letter so eg you could use MM, which would give you 676 categories = 26 x 26

N = minor category – same logic as above.

v = version number – leave out the letter v and put a single (or more if you think you may have more than 10 copies) number. No need for a space, as hopefully the title would end in a letter anyway, so you know that this number is the version number. Maybe use the number 0 (zero, not the letter o – this font doesn’t differentiate) for the original and then 1 etc for the versions.

It is a pity the beautiful iPad truncates the vision of your longer filename in that way – it has shades of the limitations of MSDOS that the Mac promoted itself to be better than in the sense that Mac filenames could be longer than the then DOS limitation of 8.3 characters before Windows upped it to 255.

Maybe you may want to consider contacting Cupertino and suggest that they fix your problem in iOS for the next iteration of iPad or seek one of those keen Apple Shop support guys to see if he can fix your problem now. There must be a workaround (apart from the above) where some obtuse setting can be tweaked so you can see your full filename. Maybe the file listing should be set to detail and not icons or something, or you can adjust your column width in the listing a la darkside behaviour (Windows).

All the best, cheers and enjoy.

Michael

Your blog has helped me considerably in developing my file system and I’m happy with it. I year down the line it works well. That was until I bought an iPad!

Have you got any tips for naming conventions on an iPad where screen real estate is at a premium? Let me give you an example. My normal naming convention is as follows:

2012-07-04-2237-major category-minor category-title.ext

On my mac this display well. On my iPad I get:

2012-07-04-2237-m...

I hope you can see my problem. I could of course place the date/time stamp and category’s at the end of the document, but different apps handle the displaying of file names differently on the iPad. I need to shorten the file name.

At the moment I’m looking at placing a header into each document with all the data and use the title alone for the document. The difficulty here is that the file name no longer gives me all the information I need. Worse, how do I integrate this with my mac file system?

Any help would be much appreciated!

• Question: How many versions would there be at exactly 2012 07 04 2017? I’d bet only one, so wouldn’t that make the versioning superfluous? A time stamp seems to do the same thing as a version stamp.

For book notes I use a notation that goes: Date_YYMMDD-N3-Author_last_name – Title

(note the space between name and tile)

Two comments: - Every time I look at my book list I want to do a mass rename to get rid of the space, but inertia is a powerful force. - At one time I used Last_Name First_Name but found that those first names are remarkable unnecessary, especially since I’ll have it in the text file as well, so now everyone, including al the Andersons and Smiths out there only get one name. So far it seems to work, but then again I’m not at 10M.

Your systems are very useful and have given some great extra ideas, especially the software to be able to rename files. I have about 10 million files on my system, not all named the way I want.

From about 2007, I have been using a system that Dr Marc Dussault (see http://www.marcdussault.com) told us about in some seminars, which I find quite useful and incorporates most of the keys that a search program (eg the search feature in Windows – yes, I am in the dark side) would need when looking for a file. He has also found it quite useful in storing and retrieving all his files created in his attainment of 4 PhD degrees.

So, the format is as follows -

YYYY MM DD HHmm – author SURNAME author Firstname – Subject Description – version number 0…x.(file extension)

HHmm is optional – useful though if many people or you are working on the same file many times on the same day

version number is also optional – similar reason as per HHmm – and one could choose just one or the other to differentiate or both if you want to be sure and or are an AR.

So, as an example, a Word document by John Smith made on 4 July 2012 at 8:17pm and entitled “The nocturnal habits of widgetised dooverlackease” and this is his 15th version of the document and he intuits that there may be another 140 versions to go, the file name would be -

2012 07 04 2017 – SMITH John – The nocturnal habits of widgetised dooverlackease – v 015.doc

Of course, one could also add any other fields in the name, such as W2 as above – for items written by oneself, type 2, and inserted in the above format according to the general rule of the type of information going from left to right in the file name goes from the most general to the most particular – in this case from reverse formatted date starting with the year and ending with the version number.

Using this method, in addition to alluding to shades of the Noguchi Yukio method, results in files being listed chronologically not just by date, but also by time (using 24 hour clock field separated by 2 spaces from the date field – my doing), and then by alpha on the surname, then by all the other fields.

I prefer to use spaces to make it more readable rather than to concatenate all the numbers and or the letters or to use the horrid underscore_to_separate_words. However, in spite of most applications being able to handle these spaces, I have found that if you use spaces for picture files (jpg, png, gif, tiff etc) names, and in spite of most image manipulation programs handling these file names with no problems, sometimes you find that web applications where you may upload such a picture file with spaces in the name results in an error which is fixed by concatenating as per the start of this paragraph.

I hope the above is useful.

All the best, cheers and enjoy.

Michael

I stumbled across your blog as I have been researching how to best simplify and future proof my workflow: leading to text files, NVAlt and Simplenote. One issue with these solutions is the flat folder structure, tags get you so far but you are still presented with a long list of files. So your and AmberV’s excellent posts made a lot of sense as a means of providing additional, searchable, robust, easy categorisation.

So I gave a lot of thought to how best to adopt this system for myself. I first mapped all the types of docs I have and the groupings that made most sense to me. After many hours of thinking, rereading your post multiple times to clarify the theory, moving things around etc, I ended up with effectively the same six tags as you. It feels like this was my own doing rather than being influenced by you, but either way it does perhaps mean that this system can be more readily transferable to different people or situations than folder structures.

Next was the question of sub-tags. I came at this in a different way. My approach rests on two principles: ease of remembering, and allowing automatic cross comparisons between wholly different documents. The answer, for me, has been to have only a single sub-tag (either 1, 2, 3, or 4) and for the meanings of these sub-tags to be identical across all tags. This obviously removes some information that your system allows, but for me the benefits will hopefully outweigh the cons.

Getting into the detail, I was struck by AmberV’s use of internal and external for several of her top tags and in your system 1′s and 3′s often denoting similar meaning across tags (so I do not profess to be wholly original). I mapped out what I thought could be the most useful binary distinctions between my documents and came up with: internal/by me vs external/by others; abstract/reflexive vs practical; informal/personal vs formal/official; draft vs completed. The first two of these resonated the most as both readily applying to just about everything but also allowing useful distinctions across all tags. Two sets of binary tags leads to four combinations in total, so to reduce typing one number would denote a combination of both variables.

So my system uses the following: 1 = by me and reflexive (e.g. diary entries, charting my weight, wedding speeches, fiction writing, meeting notes, letters to friends) 2 = by me and practical (e.g. tasks lists and project work, made-up recipes, meeting actions, job applications, letters to the bank) 3 = by others and reflexive (e.g. friend’s fiction, health reports from the doctor (as these just record my health rather than require action – potentially financial statements could fit here too), articles about the creative process or say meditation, letters from friends) 4 = by others and practical (e.g. recipes from the web, letters requiring action, training material)

I realise there is a blurred line between these sub-tags, as there is with any system, but it makes sense to me. My file name structure is very similar to yours, though of course a bit more detail may be required in the prose name. I have also added at the end of the name the option for additional metadata (e.g. which chef wrote the recipe). I previously have used [] to denote this sort of information but I realise that ( ) makes more sense so that spotlight searches on “[…” will only bring up tags.

I am only just starting to use this system and have yet to proliferate across all files (where my first step is to get consistent dating in the file names) so I have still to see the benefits of this system, meaning it may well change.

Finally, again, thanks for the inspiring and insightful analysis and practical help, and I hope this comment is of some interest to you or other readers.

Good questions. I’m writing a reply as a post that should be up shortly.

I’ve been trying to get my head round your post and AmberV’s comments, plus the forum posts. I understand the filename system. I have a few questions:

1. Do you apply your system to all files you create on your computer including proprietary or only text files?

2. The folders are causing me an issue. Since the filename pretty much covers the file, there would seem no need for folders, except that you would end up with a single folder with a massive amount of data. Would it be best to use a few folders that cover broad areas such as ‘work’, ‘family’, etc.. This one really baffles me.

many thanks

http://macpowerusers.com/2010/03/mpu-023-workflows-with-merlin-mann/

For instance, in my EagleFiler library, I store fonts, some dmgs of applications I keep when I install a new machine, and other binary data. As I’m slowly migrating data to the system, I’m wondering if it should all go in.

Thanks,

Alan

I’ll keep playing with this system for a couple weeks, and see how well it goes. I’ll probably come back here for additional questions ;-)

Thanks again,

Alan

In my documents folder I have what I think of as my root folders…

• Admin (Bills, finance, taxes and such)

• Commerce (Ephemeral project files)

• Gaming (yep. I’m one of those)

• Organizer (Of less and less use over time)

• Reference (Static items like System notes, shortcuts, graphics files)

• Topics (The biggie, home to 100+ topic sub-folders)

• Writing (The other biggie, where all my work resides)

Why? I like having a specific environment for things like my Writing work. Some day I’ll post a screen shot, but I’ve added icon graphics and background pictures to all my root folders reflective of their individual purpose. My Writing folder has a zen like sprig of wheat on rice paper and its icon is a star burst (kind of).

I’m trying to implement something similar to what you did, inside EagleFiler (with the insurance that if I stop using it, the file naming convention will preserve all the metadata). One thing I did not find clear from your description is where you store your files: you mention aliases very often, so do you keep everything in one folder then do aliases from there?

I’m trying to implement a system similar to this one, and I was wondering if you also integrated administrative stuff filed away (such as bills or bank statements), and if so in which category. (I’m tempted to create a new one for them, but I realize that the strength of the system is in keeping down the number of categories.)

Thanks,

Alan