Question about Areas and Archiving

T

testie

0
Hello fellow GTDers. I'm fairly new to this and I must say that I'm loving it, hallelujah!

Anyway, I do have some questions about archiving:
I work with graphic design, so I have an Area called "Studio". I just finished an project and I'm not sure where to archive it.

I decided to use dropbox and I have 5 folders:
1. Inbox
2. Projects
3. Areas
4. Resources
5. Archive

So back to my finished project. It's all done and require no more further action, should this be stored in Areas/Studio/Project or in Archive/Studio/Project ?
 
If it is done, and if the first area is an active one and the other inactive, I would put it in the inactive one, out of the way of current and future projects.
 
Awesome, that make sense. However. where would you archive a music collection for example? I have mine in Areas/Personal/Media/Music. Notice the "sub-areas" yay no nay?
 
First, I applaud your starting with deciding where everything should go. It will make all your processing easier.

Second, a thought on hierarchy: It is good for managing complexity, separating things into logical groups. But it also introduces complexity, burying things in various prairie dog burrows. So, I would make my hierarchy as flat as possible and still get the job done. In fact, for something like music or photos, which are basically simply large collections that you continually browse through and add to, I would say put it right at the top, in a folder called 'music' or 'photos'. If these are active areas, why bury them? Typically, you don't need hierarchy until you have more than 9 different groups. So, if you are putting music four deep, that implies you have 9x9x9x9 which is a lot of groups.

Perhaps a way to decide how deeply something should be stored: do I access it daily? weekly? monthly? yearly? maybe never but 'just in case'? Anything daily or weekly I might want right at the top.

Of course, you can use links to make things accessible, or 'pin' them to your taskbar. However, sometimes I have accidentally deleted all my pins, and then had to spend some time digging to find things.

a few stray thoughts for you :)
 
Awesome! Really appreciate the tips, These questions have been keeping me sleepless :wink: But I think that's it for now.

Cheers :mrgreen:
 
testie said:
Anyway, I do have some questions about archiving:
I work with graphic design, so I have an Area called "Studio". I just finished an project and I'm not sure where to archive it.

I decided to use dropbox and I have 5 folders:
1. Inbox
2. Projects
3. Areas
4. Resources
5. Archive
Click to expand...

Although I separate projects in my list manager by area of focus I don't currently separate the reference material or project support that way. So if this were me what I'd do is use Projects for current active projects, drop the Areas folder entirely & change Resources to Reference. Then the issue is Archive. I currently keep archive, reference and someday/maybe files all in one big filing system (well actually 2, one digital and one physical). I am playing with sorting my reference into reference for someday/maybe projects and one for reference and archive but so far I haven't made the switch. But in your system I'd combine Reference and Archive into a single file system.

I also try to not have more than 1 layer deep of folders. So for my digital filing system I have a folder "Active Projects" and a folder "File_Cabinet" and within it are folders, one for each active project that needs reference material and my folders for other stuff. So within Active Projects I have folders labeled "LambTracker_DB_Design" and "Brat_Signs" and "2014-10-30_NSIP_Data_Run" and within File_Cabinet I have things like "Software-Omnifocus", "Pasture_Growth_Info", "Hay_Analysis" and "Mineral_Recipes" which are reference and archive and also thinks like "Knitting_Scarf_Cats_Paw" which is a someday/maybe project. I'm not a big fan of sub groups, I have a few of them, but only when it really does make the most sense. Knitting_Scarves or Software- or Equip- but I try to limit that as much as possible.

I am in the midst of a major filing reorganization, both to delete old unneeded stuff and to rename the files so that they follow a standard convention and can be read on any operating system.

My entire digital system is backed up hourly on one server and weekly to a RAID system with redundancy. Offline storage is also done monthly. I won't use any cloud based services/storage but the principles hold whether your data is stored in a cloud server or on your own machine.

So I'd file the information about the Studio Project into Reference.
 
Oogiem said:
Although I separate projects in my list manager by area of focus I don't currently separate the reference material or project support that way. So if this were me what I'd do is use Projects for current active projects, drop the Areas folder entirely & change Resources to Reference. Then the issue is Archive. I currently keep archive, reference and someday/maybe files all in one big filing system.
Click to expand...

This is approximately how I do it, too.
 
My new system is

1. Inbox (also my new download folder and general references which gets archived into projects or areas on with daily review)
2. Projects (active projects which goes into it's area when done)
3. Areas (active areas which goes into archive when "done")
4. Archive (inactive & completed areas)

I don't see the point with general references as it would just gets clogged up immediately
 
What do you have in your Areas folder? I would have thought you'd have the active projects for each area in them, but that's not how you seem to have it set up. What do you put in there?
 
My thought for archive is for storing completed/abandoned areas. If I for example decide not to continue with my start up company anymore I can archive away from my areas which I focus on.

Anyway, I'm constantly tweaking ;)
 
The initial goal of Areas (as far as GTD goes) is to separate out the, well, Areas, of your life. So to use myself as an example, my Areas are Personal, Freelance, and Work. Then inside of each I have my projects and reference materials for each. So when I'm at work, I only look at my Work area. When I'm working on freelance stuff, I only look at my Freelance area. Et cetera. Is there a particular reason you veered away from this? Do you have all open projects and tasks in one big section?

I like your Archive concept - it's no longer relevant material. I would have kept References though, for current reference material, or generic reference material not related to a project (interesting articles, how-tos, manuals, etc.). Where do you store this?
 
testie said:
My thought for archive is for storing completed/abandoned areas. If I for example decide not to continue with my start up company anymore I can archive away from my areas which I focus on.
Click to expand...
Then why keep it at all? Abandoned stuff you won't pick up again can be tossed unless it's historical in nature or you are a major scrapbooker ;-)

For me the line between what I might do, what is "finished" and what is active is so blurry as to be non-existant. I can go from nothing being done on a project I may have started 3 or 4 years ago to making it full on active and back again after the season for working on it is passed so I like to keep my entire array of options (reference, archive, and someday/maybe) in a single filing system for that reason. Sometimes just reviewing them will spawn either a new project or ideas to enhance a supposedly completed one so it's good to see them all together. That may just be because of the nature of my work and the way I think though.
 
Oogiem said:
I also try to not have more than 1 layer deep of folders. So for my digital filing system I have a folder "Active Projects" and a folder "File_Cabinet" and within it are folders, one for each active project that needs reference material and my folders for other stuff. So within Active Projects I have folders labeled "LambTracker_DB_Design" and "Brat_Signs" and "2014-10-30_NSIP_Data_Run" and within File_Cabinet I have things like "Software-Omnifocus", "Pasture_Growth_Info", "Hay_Analysis" and "Mineral_Recipes" which are reference and archive and also thinks like "Knitting_Scarf_Cats_Paw" which is a someday/maybe project. I'm not a big fan of sub groups, I have a few of them, but only when it really does make the most sense. Knitting_Scarves or Software- or Equip- but I try to limit that as much as possible.
Click to expand...

Hey Oogie -

Maybe I missed your explanation of how you name your digital folders elsewhere - sorry if I did.

I've been trying to figure out what I want to do, as part of my computer consolidation project. Your naming convention makes sense to me - I like how your titles could just be printed on a label.

Heather
 
Hrlakat said:
Maybe I missed your explanation of how you name your digital folders elsewhere - sorry if I did.
Click to expand...
It's here somewhere but I can't find it.

I have a laptop, desktop, iPhone and iPad that all need some set or subset of my digital files.

For my main desktop machine I have created 4 digital "file cabinets" One for each organization I am an officer of to compartmentalize the stuff related to those groups for when I pass those tasks on to someon else, One for current active projects and one for reference. This is a work in progress so I have many more folders than that right now as I am working the system. For now as I find stuff related to either organization I just dump the file into that organizations' top folder and move on as I am focusing on my personal stuff for now.

Within each "file cabinet" folder I have a single layer of folders that sort alphabetically automatically. There are a very few of the folders that actually have a second layer but that is in the minority. Everything goes into a folder, even if it's just a single file. The digital equivalent of David Allen's file a single piece of paper.

I have a very few groupings that I manage by naming their respective folders in a way that makes sense. i.e I have folders like Software-Scapple, Software-Omnifocus, Sheep_Breeding, Sheep-Disease_OPP, Sheep-Disease_Scrapie.

I have DEVONThink for small bits of reference and that is undergoing a re-org as well. I do separate the DT stuff into that that I need on either portable device (phone or iPad) and that that I only need on the 2 larger computers. I use separate databases for the different types of info.

Use standard filenames with no spaces in the filename so that they are readable on all operating systems.

Use standard file formats that are open source or ubiquitous (eg JPEG and PDF)

Dated files are in the format --_.

Circa dates use -00- in place of any missing data.

Range dates use _ between the data ranges i.e 2014-10-05_2015-01-01_.

Hope that helps
 
So back to my finished project. It's all done and require no more further action, should this be stored in Areas/Studio/Project or in Archive/Studio/Project ?
Click to expand...

I think you may have answered your question. If this level of detail/hierarchy is preventing you from RAPIDLY deciding where to store it, then does it really matter?

So here are two solutions: Consolidate Areas/Studio/Project into a single bin. Or just choose a bin based on you initial gut reaction, rely on the search function within your computer, but make sure that your filename that is logical and could be instantly recognized a year from now.

These questions have been keeping me sleepless...
Click to expand...

Its great that you are analyzing your workflow processing and finding gains in the system. As any long practicing GTDer will tell you - keep your GTD implementation as simple as makes sense to you. Focus the customization of your GTD implementation on maximizing the ease and flow of your process.
 
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