The Importance Of Keeping Your Computer Files Organized

Last updated: January 5, 2018 at 1:38 am
The importance of keeping your computer files organized cannot be stressed enough.It is vitally important to keep your computer files organized. There are a multitude of different reasons for this for every person, especially ADHD’ers.

On my computer and external hard drives, I used to not organize computer files very well. I often would just save files in random places, and then wasted epic amounts of time finding the appropriate file(s) when I needed them. A while back, I had thousands of files to organize from roughly 10 years of my life, and it took me a very long time to go through the files and organize them. Going through pictures was especially difficult because I had to look at every picture and figure out where each photo was taken.

Organize your computer files

After all of that organizing of files, I learned valuable lessons. While the easiest thing to do in the short run is to put your files in some random place on your hard drive and think “I’ll organize it later”, later often never comes, or if it does, a lot of work has to be done, work that could have been avoided if you had organized them correctly in the first place.

The Freudian pleasure/pain principle basically says that, in life, we want to avoid pain at all costs and get as much pleasure as possible. But, we must weigh whether we would prefer a little pain now and a lot of pleasure later, or a little pleasure now, but a lot of pain later. We can consciously choose either option.

We often want to avoid organizing our computer files because it is boring or we might think it is not very useful. But regardless, it is of extreme importance to do this in order to improve your productivity. Here is an analogy you may like. Imagine if you go down to your local library which has hundreds or thousands of books, and the librarians refuse to organize the books in any meaningful way. They just randomly put books on shelves. How long do you think it would take to find any book? You might have to go through the entire library collection just to find one book. So, like a library, investing in organization is vital to your success. Libraries save lots of time by sorting their books in logical ways.

From my own firsthand experience, I know of this because recently I became a hardcore organizer on my computer. While it takes a little bit of effort and self-discipline to constantly make sure your files are organized, the payoff is huge. It actually saves a lot of time in the long run, will make you feel good, and give you more self-respect. If I am downloading a file from the Internet, copying from a flash drive or other medium, or just making a local file on my computer, now, I immediately decide which folder it should be saved in and that folder should be logical. In addition, I make sure to name the file appropriately.

Name Your Files In Logical Ways

Imagine going through your files of today on your computer or external hard drive, years from now, and you wanted to find particular files.  You may have forgotten what you were doing for most files of today or why they even exist. If you didn’t name your files appropriately, finding a particular file would probably be a nightmare. You would probably have to manually go through hundreds or even thousands of files to find what you wanted. You could have saved all of that effort by just initially saving them in a good location and naming them well and logically.

Be proactive about this! If you just keep putting it off, eventually you may have major problems. There may be times when finding a certain file is urgent, but you can’t find it because you have no idea where it is on your computer.

I guarantee you that diligently organizing your computer files will save a TON of time in the long run. Time is one of the only things we can never get more of, so if you value your time, I recommend that you organize your files into appropriate places on your computer and name them well. What did you think of this article? Let’s continue the conversation in the comments below.