Simple File Organization System (Mac/PC/Cloud)

So in every primary folder I've got, whether it's clients, marketing, operations, hr, I have an archive folder and sometimes those are named differently. And so when a client is inactive, then they get moved into inactive. We finish the project and they're inactive in my prospects folder. If they decide not to move forward with us, then they get moved into not moving forward.

I am a pack rat. This is there, I've said it out loud. I love to keep everything. I have hard drives from 20 years ago with some of my oldest content. I have my Dropbox account probably from 10 or so years ago, even though I've moved over to G Suite just because I didn't want to get rid of anything. Over time, my drives get unorganized and they are hard to keep a handle on. And while I think I'm getting better at it, I know today's guest is most definitely on the next level with regards to that. So we're going to be talking about file organization, picking the right platform, getting the naming convention right, thinking about how to structure and set things up for your team so they're easy to find. And really, I feel like this is at the hub of keeping things efficient and organized for yourself and your team. So I'm joined by Sean Lemon, who's actually the founder of the digital organizer. I'll make sure I pop a link to the website so you can check it out. And after checking out his story, it's clear that he's found his passion. And at the heart of it, he's really great at taking very complex ideas and making them quite simple, which is perfect because it fits with our systems approach. And we were having a little bit of a chat just a moment ago and he's a systems thinker, so I know this is going to fit incredibly well. So firstly, just like to welcome you, Sean, to the Call Man.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited for our talk today.

Yeah, me too. To kick things off, I'd like to. I know I kind of did a little bit of a confession at the start there, but do you have any thoughts on where people go wrong with their file organization and setup and what are some of the challenges and problems that that creates?

Yeah, I'd say one of the biggest problems that we see across the board is everyone is trying to organize everywhere. You're trying to organize your Google Drive, your OneDrive, your Dropbox, your Box.com account, you're trying to organize your attachments in emails, in Slack. It's just out of control. How many different tools we have, and we're trying to keep track of everything in all of the different tools. And doing that is making us crazy and it's just spreading everything out. And so it's really important for us to find a single platform that we can store our files to be our primary storage location, consolidate them all there so that we have one source of truth. And if you get something from these other locations, you always know where you're going to put that file. So you don't have to organize a ton of different places. That's by far the biggest thing that we see. And if we can tweak that, we see really good success of staying organized.

And that file organization. Like there's quite a few tools, you almost need something, in my opinion, that's quite robust, that integrates a few things together. Like we think of a G suite and that covers emails, calendars, files, and that way it's all locked in or Office365 or, you know, and then obviously they got their suite of tools and SharePoint and I don't know if you've got any thoughts around that. If it's a case of you need to choose one of those anyway, probably to send your emails and things. So is it just a matter of starting there and thinking, right, what, what am I going to select?

Yeah, and it can be as simple as that. When I'm usually recommending someone who's considering a potential platform change, I like to find out who do you, who are you hiring and who are you interacting with most and what tools do they use. So if you've got a company comprised of mostly young people, they're going to be mostly familiar with the Google platform and less so with the Microsoft Suite.

Yeah.

And so it might be a better choice for you to go with Google Workspace and how you use that for your email hosting, contacts, calendars and your file storage as well. And that's kind of that Nikon versus Canon, you know, for cameras back in the day, is what do your friends use? That way you can swap gear and lenses and find out what you really like. We're at a point where the technology is so similar that it's kind of splitting hairs of do you want this feature? Which one are you more comfortable with? So figuring out that piece is really helpful of guiding you into the right direction. And then what do you like using the most? But yeah, you pick a platform and make sure it's cloud based.

Yeah, definitely. Now that everybody's working virtual and I've been on G Suite for ages. So it's. I've almost come to the conclusion that that's not even like an option now. I think having cloud based that everybody can tap into, not, not worry about location and I think finding something that the team is comfortable with or that you're already using and then just making a decision. I know it was a little bit painful when I was splitting between Google Drive and Dropbox as I, I just started off with Dr. And I found myself there and then I thought, no, I've migrated to G Suite. And then I kind of just needed to make the jump and once you get in there and then you're familiar, it's very hard to go back or think of anything else now. So.

Right.

I definitely think that that first step of choosing then obviously we need to get the whole team using that platform because you know, I'm going to think through the lens of the business owner and you'll be setting up accounts with that. It's, it's easy for things to get unruly. So. Yeah. I don't know if you've got any first thoughts on how to structure or set up or. I know you do. Yeah.

Well, that's funny. It's just you. Our businesses are comprised of people and the more people we add, the more brains we add to the mix of how they want to organize or not organize at all. And things can get pretty out of hand quickly and just one person goes rogue and starts using Dropbox while it. Everyone else is using Google Drive. So I would say the most important thing for this is really deciding. I'm going to use Google Drive and we're going to consolidate everything over there and you need to download the stuff from Dropbox and OneDrive and get people to upload their files from their local computers into the shared file system. So that's number one. Get it all together in one place and then you can start parsing it out and organizing from there. But it's not good enough just to get it all in one place. You should really delete the stuff that you've just downloaded and moved into Google Drive from the other locations. And that feels kind of scary of like, oh, I just, I just copied all this stuff and I can see it in Google Drive. But still it's the delete button and your pack rat. I mean it's been encouraged by buy all the marketing companies out there to make their product sticky. Don't delete it, you've got plenty of space. But then there's this fear of deleting things of like this cost me a lot of time and money to create.

Need it one day. Exactly.

What if I need it and you never actually do? It's so rarely. Or you delete it and then you need it the next day. But we're downloading, we're uploading, we're getting it into the centralized place. So as long as we verify it's there, you really do need to delete it. Hit that delete button and, and move on with your life. And so we need to burn the bridges behind us and say we are not using this anymore. We are downgrading our Dropbox account from teams to personal and your accounts are going away and we're not using it like that. That's a compliance or a change management thing that we really just have to enforce once we move our stuff over there. But when you consolidate it, then you can set up a good folder structure.

With the folder structure. One thing that I talk a lot about and I'd love your insight on, because it's about making sure that team members just get it. Like I want them to instantly go, oh, yeah, that's a bit obvious to me. If I can't find the thing I'm looking for, even if I've tried search, I still have a shot at finding what it is I'm looking for. Because folder set up has some intuitive sense. And anytime I can find a structure that fits in, let's say this file organization situation, but then we can take that same structure and move it into project management or we can move it into other tools. So that way people naturally know where to go. So from a small business perspective, generally we kind of organize into departments or teams and we think, oh, you know, well, everything to do with marketing is going to live in here. Like that's the high level structure. There's probably, I think we do that bit. All right. But then when you get into the folder structure underneath that, then it kind of starts to go a little bit haywire. We have some rules around some naming conventions and how we, you know, put dates at the front of things to try and get it to organize and stuff like that. But from a high level, where do you start as far as thinking of structure?

Yeah, well, I think you're on the right path there of thinking about departments. And so even if you are a solo operator, we still want to think in departments and how we structure the files so that when we bring in our first contractors, then we know what folder set we're going to share with them. So we want to start out with that department. Departmentalized thinking. But we also need to think about projects as well because that's where we've. When we're working on project, we're going to involve content, we're going to involve marketing. Finance may need to be involved. So there's a lot of people cross departmentally that need to access that project. And so we need to think about a different way to organize our deliverables. If we're a content creation company or something like that. So what is it that you do? What's the deliverable? And for some companies that projects folder or their different brands, if they have different brands, they may have a whole separate folder structure than what's different from the departments.

That's an interesting one because you hit the nail on the head with one of the pain points and trying to go one way or the other because we end up having the projects effectively set up in as a. The subfolders inside those departments. Right. Marketing, we might have the same project folder and then we have another folder. Now probably what we should do, and I'm thinking about this out loud, is using a, you know, add a shortcut. So it's shortcut one location. But at the moment they're actually separate folders which then becomes a little bit painful across departments to find things. But as soon as I've said it out loud now it's immediately obvious I really should be just setting them up as shortcuts. So everything still from that project gets pulled into one folder.

Yeah, yeah. So that's a great strategy for, for that if you've got a department that's pretty siloed, say marketing primarily does well just, just the marketing and they're not really involved in too much else. But then people occasionally need to access stuff that marketing is doing. So we don't want to take the folders that they're used to working in and then just move them into the project folder. So we create a shortcut to that content and then we put that in the project folder and make sure that everyone's got access to that folder. So you've got a little bit of access issue from there. So you want to, you'll want to familiariz yourself with what your sharing permissions are and everything. But that can be so helpful just so that you're not spreading things out. Because one of the things we like to do is organize around the role and the functions that people are filling. So we don't want you jumping in and out of a ton of different folders and going back and Forth all over the place to do your work. Since your role is doing this one thing. If we can group that together as much as possible, that's what we want to do.

Yeah.

And then if someone else needs access, there's your shortcut.

Yeah. And so that sounds like the high level strategy. And then even maybe slightly the level down. Like we've got the high level hierarchy for some folders and you might do it department based. And maybe there are other things. Sometimes it's not always department based. You might have an administration folder which might sit across the entire organization that contains logos and letterheads and things that everybody might access at that high level. And sometimes another one that we have is sometimes like a video storage folder is another one. And every business is probably going to be a little bit different. Are there any other general principles at that high level to think about?

I would say thinking about roles, what your deliverables are and the access level of. Can I share a top level folder with a contractor and not be worried about sensitive content inside of it? Yeah, that's that other big piece that it starts getting granular. But if we can think about it at the front end of. Of I'm really contractor heavy right now in my business. And so I need those top level folders really accessible for the contractors because I want them to be able to get in and out of whatever they need. So I need to create a separate space for more sensitive material. And we could call this executive or whatever along those lines. So that that's where we put the more sensitive material. And it may be across department and maybe we share that with our leadership team so that they have access to that sensitive stuff. But we're not exposing everyone else to it. So from a high level that's definitely something that you want to add into your strategy of. Let's just not make it complicated for access of. Oh, I don't want them to see this folder. Pull that stuff out of there and make it simple.

Yes. Yeah. And we do something similar. And if it's. If it's a contractor that's not across departments then we end up having like for marketing we'll have a subfolder for consultants that within each consultant effectively gets their own folder. And then you just share that folder. And when we kind of go that next level down, so we kind of talk a little bit about the high level buckets and then we kind of. There's probably going to be. I don't know if you've got any extra thoughts on how to organize underneath those departments or if we go all the way, thinking more about file names and structures, which is probably the last thing to think about.

Yeah, no, I definitely have something in the middle and that's archiving everywhere. So I like an archiving strategy and I picked this up from Tiago Forte, you know, building second brand, and any people deep in the productivity realm know who he is. But he introduced this concept of creating archives and in our main folders now, I previously had an archive folder that was just like my deep archive. And we'll set a lot of people up with this, especially if they have a hard time deleting things or they've got a lot of old material and, and they're ready to delete a lot of stuff. But there's other things that are just not ready to delete. They haven't gone through this purging process before. So we'll create a deep archive and that's where we're putting all of this stuff that, that we are not ready to delete. But it's really unlikely anyone's going to go looking for it. We want it in a separate place so that we don't share it with everyone, so it doesn't show up in search results. So it's available and we can give someone access in that if we need to or find it for them, but we don't want it polluting search results. So that's that deep archive. I said I don't have a deep archive anymore because I found I never accessed any of it. So I finally just trashed most of it and then moved to the rest into my other archive folders. So in every folder, primary folder I've got, whether it's clients, marketing, operations, hr, I have an archive folder.

Yeah.

And sometimes those are named differently. And so when a client is inactive, then they get moved into inactive, we finish the project and they're in inactive in my prospects folder, if they decide not to move forward with us, then they get moved into not moving forward. And so it's a way to keep every one of our folders very focused on content that is applicable right now. And it's setting us up for tomorrow. Anything that's finished that we would want to reference that needs to go another layer deep so that it's just an extra click and we just create as much focus as possible.

Ah, hey, I know you're tuned in right now, so I'll keep this super quick, but you like awesome YouTube videos, don't you? Well, there's not really that many YouTube channels that create Great content about how to systemize your small business. So I want to make sure that you catch every video that I publish. So if you haven't already, firstly give this video the thumbs up and then go ahead and subscribe to my channel. You can even hit the bell notification to make sure that you're the first to know when I publish anything. So go ahead, do it right now. I'll wait a sec and then I'll transfer you back to the video. Yeah, we do something similar and it was probably just the naming convention and it lives in all of the department folders and some even folders deeper than that. It's always just X archive that way. It always lives right down the bottom. Yeah, whatever sorting convention we're using and then we just try and drag it in there again. That's just coming from the recovering pack rat.

So yeah, it'll be whatever it is, whatever the name is, it's for us, Z dot or Z for the rest of the world.

Yeah, perfect. And then when we get down to the files and I know you, I suppose touched on, I think cleaning up files oftentimes there is some challenges when you've got a truckload of spreadsheets, things spread out everywhere. I mean we try and, you know, consolidate sheets and you need to be careful of creating duplicate files. And when you're using something like Google Drive, you're much better off relying on version control and things like that as a way to go back rather than creating new separate documents where you can. But what are some of the strategies that you think of when you're down at the file level.

So as far as version controls is one of the reasons why I really love Google in Google Docs is just being able to name a version that I'm working on before I hack the, the, the document up or someone else gets in there and I can check that out. And we don't have a bunch of documents. Otherwise adding v, you know, 1.0, something like that can be helpful. And then moving that to the end and changing that name to final or master something so that it's always clear what's the finished product as far as not creating duplicates and what goes where. When you do your file cleanup process, you want to try and really finish out at least the top couple of levels as far as cleaning things out and figuring out what the right versions are. You know, there's, there's a certain level of effort that, that we can put in that at a certain point it we, it's just diminishing Returns of if we go so deep in cleaning out renaming things that it's hard to actually get anywhere and finish the product or project. So you want to keep focused with that and clear out the old versions as much as possible. Identify what's real, get that to the top level and name it well. And if you want, you can rename the other versions if you're not ready to delete them and just add in, you know, possible duplicate or something like that. If you just need to finish this project and you can't delete or whatever, name it, something obvious from there, you know, and then get yourself a good standard naming convention for the rest of your files, at least on the top, top couple levels.

We've never really mastered our naming convention because Google Drive just becomes the place that we put pretty much everything. With the exception of SOPs, we pretty much organize everything into Google Drive. The only real naming convention we have is when it's something like meetings. And we, you know, if we've got a folder where all the meetings from a particular department are getting saved, or if we're working with a contractor and we've recorded those and we're saving that into the folder and we'll typically have, you know, there's an X archive folder, but there's also a call recording folder and we just put those in there. And we will generally go year, month, day, just so that way it will organize in chronological order. Generally, though, the amount of times that we probably have needed to reference those is probably few and far between. But we like to save them just the same. That that's probably about the only real naming convention that we're able to master because it's so varied as to the types of files and things that are saved. So I don't know if you have any insights on how to better do naming conventions.

Yeah, well, we do like using the date, and we use the date more well, basically as a standard. It's rare that we don't put the date in a file and it feels like overkill, but it's instilling a culture of naming things descriptively across the board so that everyone can find it and they know what version it is. It also helps in the cleanup process to realize, oh man, we've left some stuff in here that this is really old. Let me just scan through these real quick and we can see what's the oldest stuff to go ahead and archive it and move it out of the current view.

Yes.

So we do typically the date and it's always going to be Year, month and day with the zeros. Otherwise it doesn't organize chronologically as you know. And then we typically put the topic afterward. So this is a script, this is a video, this is, you know, a wireframe, whatever it is. And then after that is a description. And so when we have that format for every single name and that's why I want you to finish the project by at least the top two levels of renaming the current files is when someone saves something and it's not descriptive, it sticks out like a sore thumb. And then we can say, hey, notice you saved this file in here. We need to make sure that we stick to the naming convention. Let's just make sure that we keep that up from here. And then it just becomes routine. And what's cool about doing date, category and description is you can just scan down a list of files and we don't have to create as many subfolders when we're putting that category in there. So we can just scan down, see meeting notes. That's what I'm looking for. Or I know it's the date. There we go. Or I'm looking for a specific description that says, you know, wishbone. And then you know, there it is, wishbone. And so it's in that title. And so we can see between those three primary categories what we're looking for and we just need less folders.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Some of these ideas are great and then we're working with a larger team and then how do we actually police this or make it happen or some people aren't wide or don't naturally organize. We, I mean we're getting better at trying to recruit for people up front that that's part of their makeup because sometimes it's, it's hard to change someone but if they come pre programmed that way, then yeah, they just kind of fit in and it works. But like who's responsibility is this to you know, oversee at a top level? Obviously we want everybody to do it and we want to build a culture of this. But is does the buck stop with someone as to how, you know, things are kept? Is it the department head's responsibility? Is it? Yeah, I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.

Totally. So it would either be the department head or potentially the executive assistant of that department head of or a project manager for them, depending on who that role is. So when we're working with a company, we want to work with a point person or people depending on how big it is, so that we can take them through a process of each step, of teaching them and helping them create their own system based on these principles. By the way, if you're interested in these principles, I created a companion guide specifically for this podcast so that everything that we're talking about, of naming conventions, folder structures, the whole process that you go through, you can go to the link in the show notes, the digital organizer.com systemology and. Yeah, and you can actually go through that whole process, you know, step by step. So I go into more detail on that. But we want to work with a point person and that point person is then the person who's really filtering and doing the change management internally to say, hey, we've got some stuff here or there. And then as they are training the rest of the team, then they designate whoever's really going to be the gatekeeper and the keeper of the files, and especially someone who likes routine and kind of doing maintenance tasks. It's like, hey, you know, every 30 days I want you to do just a quick file audit of our department's folders and make sure that things are named appropriately and archived stuff that's finished. So that way it's. It's easier. So that was one part of your question. The other one was, well, what was.

Look, I reckon that hit the nail on the head because I was thinking about who's responsible. Obviously we want to build a culture for this and get every. On board, everyone on board. But I think having someone responsible and whom is that person is probably key. And. And then I start to think, I mean, it all starts with this and getting your files right. And then this will bleed into the other tools and start to influence. And then that way, I mean, we obviously, project management is another big piece for running small teams and how you run projects and getting very clear on who is doing what by when. That's what we see the project management doing. Now we are obviously, we're heavily systems focused and we see some of the limitations that G Suite and some of the office tools have around the organization of systems and process because they equally can get very unruly. And the G Suite tools are a general tool that covers everything. And oftentimes general tools will grow you to a certain point. And then when you find I'm having pain points on these little things, you know, bits and pieces, well, that's when you might break that chunk off and go to a specialist tool that then helps to solve those problems specifically for that and where, you know, we just value systems and process so highly. That's why we Split that out. I'm curious to know your thoughts on the way that the way that we set this up then influences these other tools. And I don't know if you have any thoughts on how this then affects, you know, other tools. Basically.

Yeah. Well, what you described of using a general tool until you hit the ceiling and then breaking that off and adding in a special tool for that is the way it should be done. But it's very infrequently the reality for most people. You do it that way because you're a systems thinker and you want to try and maximize that and do it really efficiently. But for the people who haven't been trained in that thinking, it's just like, oh, I need to do all of these tasks. So I'm going to get project management and put this in place and oh, I need some fancy scheduler because of, you know, where our calendars are out of control and we can't see everything else, they just start adding tools. So you want to learn your tools. Well, and that's why I focus so much on let's get our file system really dialed in and understand what all we can do with it and then we can break that off into other pieces. So how does it play into all of the other systems? Well, when you're setting up your project management, it's going to look really similar to your folder structure, your top level folder structure that's going to be based on departments and most likely projects or your deliverable. So if you are client based, you're probably going to have a client's team in your asana and then you've got a folder for each one of your clients if you're doing like big projects for them. So that's the kind of thinking of once we get that, that structure set up where we're figuring out our departments, what we do, how we do it, each tool should mirror that. So you've got a continuity of a feeling between each one of everything feels familiar. I know I'm going to go here to find this sort of content.

Yeah. What I love about the way that your system works and the way that we talk through it is the scalability of it. I can actually see that this could grow up to quite a large size without having to then go, oh, this structure is not, not working for us. Like it works at a micro level without adding extra bloat and doing things unnecessarily, which is great for the now, but then it also has room for scale as we add in team members and Keeps it simple enough that it is scalable because, you know, complex things generally are more challenging as you start to grow and scale. So the simplest you can make it up front definitely saves you down the line. I'm going to pop a link directly to the resource. I was over at the digital organizer.com forward/systemology, so I'll pop a link through to that. But I don't know if you have any final thoughts or sage words for our business owners who oftentimes feel quite overwhelmed with what they need to do, let alone trying to keep things organized for other people. I don't know if you. Yeah. Maybe leave us with some. Some sage words.

Yes. Well, first off, this is a little bit of work to do, but it pays off in dividends. I mean, just the. It was exponential. The return that you get on this and the capacity that you create within your team and the capacity, just the mental capacity that we create by eliminating daily friction because the routine stuff becomes automatic. You can think more creatively and stuff like that. So this is very worth it for that. And the return on investment is huge. But it doesn't have to be a massive project that takes forever. This can be something that you can do at a sprint or it could be something that you do steadily over time. Broken up in milestones. And that's why I want you to go and download that guide because it's broken up in milestones and we have a resource library where if you chose not to work with us and one of our coaches to help you do all of this, because that's what we do is we help people, but we also have a resource library and each one of those videos is a milestone in and of itself that you can get in. Watch this one thing, do the concept and if you just follow it in order, you're going to get to the finish line. You don't have to tackle everything at once. It's little phases. Consolidate and that's a huge win. Just getting everything in the right place and then from there you purge out the stuff that needs to be deleted. That's a win. Celebrate it and move on. If you got a ton of stuff, it may be a bigger project, but you can talk to us and I'll give you some strategies on how we can make this simple and get you to the finish line as fast as possible.

Definitely. When we think about systems and processes and process re engineering and this almost falls into the bucket for many of process re engineering, it's so fundamental because you're touching your files every Single day. And again it's something that then compounds like if you can save a few minutes here or there of a team member looking for what it is that they're looking for in the moment, then multiply that out across every single day, every single team member over the course of a year. Like the impact. It's one of those things. It's similar to getting your project management right and having a central source of truth. Where, where is this project up to, who is working on what by when and anybody at any point in time, if they need to see, they can know where to go to jump in. Which is really important as a business owner, particularly for the letting go piece. And that's I work with a lot of business owners to help with that transition of moving from being the guy or girl who's the center cog and everything relates to them and everything comes back to them. I'm looking for this thing or I need that help with that oil. Let's go to the business owner because they know everything and they know where everything is. We need to put the right structures in place so that the team member has a shot of answering their own questions before they come to you. And you also need the confidence to know I might not be looking at this thing right now, but if I wanted to look at this thing, I could and I know where to go to find it. And it's going to be organized and it's going to look this way and it's going to be to my standard because I've written out a process around it. So I think, you know, some of the takeaways for me. Our team needs to do better around some systems and processes around its regular organization and review of our folder structure. Otherwise, you know, just continues to grow and get more unruly. So I'll, I'll leave it there. Yeah. A huge thanks for your shares and insights today, Sean. I'll pop a link through to the website so people can find out more about the resource and the work that you guys do. And yeah, a huge thank you for your help today.

Oh, thank you.

Appreciate it.