Are you ever frustrated trying to find the file or folder that you are looking for within your system?
Have you ever gone down a long tree branch of files and subfolders to find out that no, it wasn't there either?
Well, in today's video, I wanna show you a very simple, but most effective way of managing all of your personal files and folders.
Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity, helping you to get more done and enjoy less stress.
And, you know what? I used to be frustrated too, until I came across the ABC Method, so I'm going to show you everything you need to know about this method so you can spend less time searching for your files, and more time getting your work done.
Now, number 1, just a few caveats to get things going, this system is designed for things that you manage.
The ABC Method is not designed for a shared folder, or some shared resource where you have multiple team members or colleagues accessing and renaming folders and that type of thing.
This is for the things that you control, where you are labeling both your files and your folders.
You can obviously share individual files and folders, but this is for a space that you manage and control.
Number 2, the ABC Method can be used absolutely anywhere.
It doesn't matter if you use Windows, a Mac, if you're using Drive, like the example I'm sharing with you today, or some other resource, you can even set up this system for your physical files, your actual paper documents as well.
And third, last but not least, if you deal with a large quantity of media such as photos, videos, or audio, this system is probably not designed for you either.
Hopefully you have your own resources or maybe your own Drive folder or some other shared folder where you can manage that, or something that's dedicated for large quantities of media.
But for everything else, the ABC Method is going to work for you.
So to get things started, you will see that my top-level file folder structure here on the left-hand side is nothing more than an alphabeticalized list.
I've got one folder for each and every letter of the alphabet, and that's by design because I want to be able to easily and quickly get to the information that I'm looking for.
If I'm looking for something that starts with S such as my Sales Numbers or Sample files or this is some SheetGo examples, I want to get there in one click.
I don't want to have to scroll through a massively long list of files and folders.
You're probably saying to yourself, "Scott, well, isn't it going to list it in alphabetical order anyhow?"
And you would be correct, but do you really want to be scrolling through hundreds, if not thousands of folders to find the file that you're looking for?
So by starting with this top-level design, A, B, C, D, all the way down to Z, you're going to be able to quickly open up something with an F, boom, I'm one click away and I'm immediately at that file level.
Now, you'll notice, of course, every folder within that respective alphabet file folder is going to be with the same name.
I've got File Naming Examples, I've got Financial Statements under F here.
But here's the next rule: it's that we're only going to have folders at this next level.
If I click on this F folder just to open it up here, you can see I have no other files here.
Let's go back to that S example as well, if I open up S, there are no other individual files, the next level down is only for folders.
And then that leads us to the third rule here: if I open up one of these folders, I only have files.
We are not going to branch off beyond that next level.
We've got the alphabet folder, we've got the folder that starts with that letter.
And again, you may have a large number in some of these letters, you might only have a handful or, maybe if it's X, you might have absolutely zero in that folder or some of the other letters.
But the very next level down is going to be the files themselves.
And why that's important, why that can help you with your productivity and being more efficient in finding and also saving the files that you're creating is that you're never more than two clicks away from the area you want to be in.
If I go up here to C, for example, I click once on the C drive, and there is my Client Resources Example folder.
That's it, two clicks away, and I'm into those files, or I can save additional files.
I'm never more than two clicks away from finding the information that I'm looking at.
Now, a few things that have come up over the years.
Number 1: some people will say, "Well, Scott, can't I just search for these files and folders?"
Absolutely, and if you're confident with your searching capabilities, by all means, use search.
But chances are you have a number of things that are similarly-labeled or may not be labeled very well in the first place.
Sometimes I find it's just so much easier to be able to click down here, click on the resources that I'm looking for.
So what are your thoughts on the ABC Folder Method?
Be sure to let me know in the comments down below, and if you'd like to learn even more ways to be productive and efficient, be sure to click on the videos here.
Thank you so much for watching, and remember: being productive does not need to be difficult.
In fact, it's very simple.
