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Getting organized with OSX labels

Shawn Medero suggested the subject of using OSX labels to get organized.

Here’s a quick tip: think of labels less as ornamentation or overly-specific vertical tags. Think of your labels as a system of functional markers that complement your existing organizational system—that provide information you might want during a search, backup, or time-based script events and reviews as an example.

So, for example, you already probably organize files by project or client, suffixes tell you what kind of thing something is, and dates tell you, well, when something was made and updated.

So try using your labels for stuff like this:

  • do/don’t include this in backups
  • post this to the web later
  • put this on my résumé when I update it
  • print this on the first of every month
  • update this every season (insurance records, etc.)

That way, stuff can be scattered all over your drive and still be instantly locatable by its functional, temporal, or contextual purpose.

With the release of Spotlight, I suspect this stuff will get a lot sexier and more useful, too.

John's picture

I used to organize my...

I used to organize my Applications into subfolders-- like Games, Crypto, Tools and Toys, Communications, etc. A result would be often that something would be so well filed that I'd never find it: installing software in OS X (that is, copying the one file) is so easy that I often forget that I have a neat little app or toy, and you can only use Quicksilver to find stuff that you know about.

So now I just keep all my applications in one big folder, unorganized. This increases visibility. Then I label games and silly stuff purple, and so on.

 
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