Workflow Tech, Part 2: Catalog
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Introduction
I focused in the first of this three-post series on how I capture information for use at home, work, for study, and in creative pursuits. This article is part two in that series, where I’ll spend about 500 words talking about how I name, organize, and save files across several platforms and devices.
Catalog
I use TextExpander on OS X and iOS devices. TextExpander probably fits into all three categories, but I put it in Catalog because I use it overwhelmingly to name and tag files. It’s not free, but it’s worth every cent if you find yourself typing the same things over and over again.
You can attach frequently used snippets of text to shortcuts like “ddate,” which automatically expands to “January 20, 2014” the moment you type it. I like to prepend the date to new the blog posts I draft as text files, so I made a TextExpander snippet that expands “.dnb” to “140120.blog.” and then I can add a name after the second period. So the file I drafted this post in is called 140119.blog.Workflow.txt, but all I had to type was “.dnb Workflow.”
That file name is also a big and relatively new part of how I catalog stuff. Computers can change the date they attach to a file based on when it was modified, when it was downloaded, or for other reasons. So I append the creation date to every file I make, formatted as a 2-digit year, 2-digit month and 2-digit day. Then, a period (many people use a dash, it’s a matter of taste) and the type of file it is, like blog, work, fic for fiction. You get the idea. The third component is the title, with multiple words
I find a new use for TextExpander every day, so it’s vital not only to working productively today, but to working even more productively in the future.
Then, of course, there’s Dropbox, which I use primarily to store files I’m manipulating across different devices. Images I edit and store for work, documents I need to share with people who don’t use Google Drive, and the text files in my /Notes folder, where I draft everything I write, all get synchronized across my home, work and laptop computers. With Dropbox mobile apps and the widespread integration of the service by third-party apps and services, there’s never a problem accessing the most up-to-date version of what I’m working on, whether I’m online or off.
Evernote, which I mentioned in my Capture post and about which I’ll write a more in-depth post eventually, is also great for cataloging after you’ve captured stuff. I tend to use Evernote only when there is email or multimedia involved, sticking to plain text notes in Dropbox for regular old writing tasks. But when email or multimedia are involved, Evernote can’t be beat.
I have a notebook for music, where I tag notes lyrics or audio or both. I have another notebook for finance, where I store and tag all my emailed receipts and other financial bits. I even have a notebook for recipes, which I can share with my wife so we can collect stuff as we find it. Evernote “stacks” even let you make what is essentially a notebook of notebooks.
Much of the work over at the Evernote Blog focuses on how to catalog with the app, so check it out if you’re interested. But I usually start my cataloging workflow in my default notebook, which I’ve labelled Inbox, since I’m so used to processing incoming email from that label.
Since we want capture to be as friction-free as possible, I just save into my default notebook. Then, a few times a week, when I need some mindless busywork to do, I’ll dive into my Inbox notebook and start moving and tagging. Sometimes, I realize I don’t really need something and delete it altogether. I highly recommend the default-now, process-later approach so that using apps like Evernote in the field isn’t cumbersome or time consuming.
Conclusion
I could go on forever about this stuff, but the basic system I use for cataloging is a naming convention when it comes to plain text and a notebook + tags system when it comes to images, PDF, and audio in Evernote. I’m sure everyone’s different so feel free to contact me on Twitter and tell me about your workflow.