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Tag and Dump styles of File Management
caseykoons | Feb 14 2007
In kind with Todd V's question about file management, I seek the experience of those who have come before. I'm a graduate student and have found that the sudden increase in the amount and diversity of data that is coming into my computer completely broke (my trust in) my old filing system. I find myself wishing there were an iTunes-like app for file management, no more spacial metaphors, just all my files with meta-data to group them and arrange them on the fly. I am a Mac user, a Quicksilver cultist, and an (albeit confused) user of DevonThink Pro. I am considering abandoning the folder structure, and having a dread heap /Documents folder that I access entirely through desktop search technology like QS and Spotlight and organize ad hoc with DT and Smart Folders when I need. My question is: have any of you implemented a system like this? Will it violently explode in my face? Do you tag? What sorts of tags do you use? Any advice on this sort of system would be greatly appreciated. 15 Comments
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 Though that being said, a...Submitted by BMEguy on April 19, 2007 - 12:16pm.
jason.mcbrayer;9024 wrote:
Though that being said, a good searching system that understands the contents of your files, rather than just the metadata, will almost always be enough to find anything you are looking for. The problem is with those files whose contents are hard to abstract or search (image files, for example). This is true, but I guess the point I was trying to make is that the first few times you need to use a search (like Spotlight) to find the files that you didn't or haven't tagged, you'll start to question the system slightly. In most cases, that will mean one of two things: 1) this motivates you to be more vigilant in your tagging, or 2) you become a little more lax in tagging since you end up having to search anyway. If for you it's #1, great. Tagging will probably become a useful resource for you. If it's #2, your tagging system will most likely quietly implode after time. I'm not against tagging. In my own experience, I find it's most useful for those tags that are completely unrelated to (or at least, not explicitly expressed in) the content of the item. Things like "get citation" "use for PNAS paper" "share with lab" "read" are great things to tag with because they express my relationship to the item. However, tags like "cells" "polyimide" "network biology", are not as helpful because usually that information is already encoded in the paper's content and can be teased out with Spotlight or DevonThink. This works for me because 95% of these items are journal articles in pdf format--as you mention, someone using mostly image or audio files would have to adopt a different scheme and would probably find great utility in extensive "content" tagging. I guess I think of it like GTD's "trusted system": in order for you to really have faith in the results, you have to know that your system is completely capturing the inputs. » POSTED IN:
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