Organizing Your Computer

The computer was created for our convenience. And it does provide us with all that when new or newly formatted. However as the number of files accumulate, things start to become unmanageable. A carelessly placed file here and another there, unnecessary files hogging space in your folders, loads of junk mail undeleted and desktop overflowing with shortcut icons – all these things can make a convenient tool a big headache. After all what good is a storage system if you can’t find a particular file when required?  

To avoid such headaches and unnecessary cursing at times of stress, you should organize all your files and folders and stick to that rule.

First of all start with the weeding of unnecessary files. Check for any unwanted, useless files and get rid of them. If you don’t feel so safe about deleting them, store them in a separate folder and work on their importance later.

Clear your desktop too. Keep only the shortcuts to mostly used programs on your desktop and quick launch bar. No sense in keeping shortcuts to programs that you use once in a while. We have the start menu for this purpose.

For your home computer categorize folders in terms of subjects like personal, work, photos, documents, letters and so on. For your office computer you might find it easier if you categorized your folders in terms of dates. For each month create a folder and in it a subfolders for each day of the month. Inside each you may add a text file with some comments. For more important work or projects though, you are better off with specifically named folders.

Avoid building the folder tree too deep. Creating sub folders within sub folders of sub folders can confuse you thrice as much as it sounds. Try limiting it to folders, sub folders and sub folders if possible.

At the end of the week, make it a habit to clean up your computer. Schedule a time for this activity and stick to it. The more you procrastinate, the larger and unmanageable the task will become.

If you follow these steps with a little disciple and commitment, you won’t have much difficulty in keeping an organized and well maintained computer system