Comment by naikrovek

I had a go at this today and was instantly reminded of why all my past organization efforts fell flat on their face: I don't know how to categorize things, and I can't seem to figure it out.

If there is an obvious delineation, I will accept it and use it. If there is a line separating categories and that line is blurry at all, I find it impossible to both confidently choose where it goes and know where I filed it later on. I can know where to put something or I can know where to pull it from. Never both, somehow. (I am as confused by this as you are, but it is true for me.)

So everything winds up in piles, both physically in real life and in my filesystems. The only way I can remember where something is, is to remember what the pile looked like when I placed that thing on the pile. Then I know exactly where it is.

In network file folders I can find something by remembering my own history in that folder and remembering about how many items were there when I created the thing I'm looking for. Then I sort by creation time and I count that many down, and it's usually one or two away from that number, in one direction or the other.

My windows desktop is organized autobiographically as well. I can never remember what I named a folder, but I know exactly where it is on the desktop.

I'm basically a nightmare for anyone that needs a tidy environment. If you clean up my stuff, everything you organized is lost to me forever.