using my AOFs elsewhere

[Greyone]

After getting my AOFs sorted , I'm now wondering about using them to order the files on my PC and my browser favourites. has any one ever thought or succeeded in doing this ? I came up with this idea because i think its strange having everything in my GTD system orderly including the files I keep on my PC. But my normal stuff , such as spreadsheets i update and documents I collect are just like the support material for projects.

Being a commuter, i keep a bunch of bus and train timetable son my hard drive so i can look things up. I'm not quite sure where these would go because they're not part of a project unless i go for a trip. But if i don't then they are not part of any project. but I keep them because experience tells me they will be needed in the future. Any ideas anybody ?

 

[Oogiem]

After getting my AOFs sorted , I'm now wondering about using them to order the files on my PC and my browser favourites. has any one ever thought or succeeded in doing this ? I came up with this idea because i think its strange having everything in my GTD system orderly including the files I keep on my PC. But my normal stuff , such as spreadsheets i update and documents I collect are just like the support material for projects.

Being a commuter, i keep a bunch of bus and train timetable son my hard drive so i can look things up. I'm not quite sure where these would go because they're not part of a project unless i go for a trip. But if i don't then they are not part of any project. but I keep them because experience tells me they will be needed in the future. Any ideas anybody ?

I'm still working on my major huge file reorganization project for al my electronic and paper files and notes.

I was putting them into AOF buckets but it got too complex to maintain so now I have just a flat filing system. I have a folder for Active Projects, one for Reference and then one for each of the organizations I am an officer of. Same structure in my small portable note taking system with for me is DEVONThink. I am just now getting to the bookmarks and I'm doing the same thing. I am creating 2 top level folders in my browser, Reference and Active Projects.Within those I have folders for the collections of related bookmarks. So the bookmarks for the web sites for all the credit cards, bank account and investment stuff are in a Folder called Financial under Reference. Ones related to a specific current project are in a folder with the same name as all my other files and in the Active Project folder. I am treating the default place to put bookmarks as an inbox and filing or deleting those bookmarks as part of my weekly review. It's still a work in progress, I've got lots of backlog of old sites that I need to check and decide on. Most are just being deleted but a few are still relevant.

The timetable stuff wold be reference for me I'd probably file them in a folder called Travel_Timetables in the folder Reference_File_Cabinet on my system but do whatever works for you.

 

[mcogilvie]

After getting my AOFs sorted , I'm now wondering about using them to order the files on my PC and my browser favourites. has any one ever thought or succeeded in doing this ? I came up with this idea because i think its strange having everything in my GTD system orderly including the files I keep on my PC. But my normal stuff , such as spreadsheets i update and documents I collect are just like the support material for projects.

Being a commuter, i keep a bunch of bus and train timetable son my hard drive so i can look things up. I'm not quite sure where these would go because they're not part of a project unless i go for a trip. But if i don't then they are not part of any project. but I keep them because experience tells me they will be needed in the future. Any ideas anybody ?

I do use an AoF file system. Because it is reference and support material, bus schedules would most likely be filed under Personal.

 

[Folke]

I do not file my reference stuff by AoR (AoF) but by a flatter and more specific structure that evolves independently of how I have my AoRs defined at the moment.

 

[TesTeq]

I do use an AoF file system. Because it is reference and support material, bus schedules would most likely be filed under Personal.

Of course if you're not the Public Transportation Planning and Scheduling Manager in your city. In this case bus schedules should be stored in your main Work archive file...

 

[Myriam]

Of course if you're not the Public Transportation Planning and Scheduling Manager in your city. In this case bus schedules should be stored in your main Work archive file...

Or... if you use them when going to the school to pick up your grand children. In that case they should go under "granddad" (or "grandma").

Which leads me to the point that I think that for me personally it wouldn't work to store reference material according to AOF*. During my work as a consultant I come across people that need a hand in managing documents. And almost every time one of the first eye openers is the message to A) keep reference files away from the stuff you work on (active projects) and B) store reference file in a atsructure as flat as possible (A-Z). Even without talking about further organising, those two discoveries usually help a lot.

*But if you believe it might work for you: just do it !

 

[Greyone]

Thanks oogiem and folke - what you both say is a caution. And the vote here seems to be for a flat file structure rather than AOF. I have a project coming up which is to plan my route to work using my bus time tables. Unfortunately I use the same timetables for shopping trips and fun days out. When I've finished the project the end result will be a spreadsheet with my bus times to and from work and a collection of timetables. The timetables I will certainly keep for reference. For the moment I'm going to have a new folder called reference and a sub folder called work bus timetables and see how it goes . For my ie favourites I have a folder called travel and town with a folder for each town I have specific urls for and I have one called travel operators for all the bus companies.

But general I think i'll start with a flat file structure to get things organised and take it from there.

 

[Greyone]

Thanks also TesTeq, that's very sensible. I've decided though to have a go with my IE favourites first. They're easy to backup and difficult to review. I've tried that several times and never completed the project.