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in this video i will show you how to properly organize probably the most common thing you own well what could that possibly be i'm not talking about money nor is your clothes or anything like that it's simply your digital files on your computer of which you own at least thousands or even hundreds of thousands or millions so in this video i will not only share the best structure to organize digital files and folders but also very practical examples how to best organize your files at work university or school and within your private life following these tips will help you to increase your productivity and organization tremendously as well as to limit the time searching for documents because you know everything has its place and can be pulled up whenever required maybe you're not yet fully aware of the amount of data and files you own nowadays so just check the number of pictures on your phone real quick and maybe even the number of files on your computer and you'll realize that you own a ton a ton of pictures videos documents and any other files or folders to organize all of the files overall there are three major types of file management systems chaotic storage math dumping and hierarchy structures and if you stay until the very end you will not only know what the best practice in digital file managements are but also which crucial aspect you should consider when organizing your files to avoid getting this first as i mentioned there is chaotic storage which is a system from the logistics industry so describing that items in a warehouse are always stored whenever there's place for example amazon also uses this method in its warehouses and just stores the same item at random across the entire warehouse that makes the item faster to pick as part of a bigger basket when the orders arrive but only works with multiple items of the same type so might be difficult for organizing your files then there is mass dumping meaning you just have one place where you store all of your documents or files and by all i mean all this is similar to the email inbox approach for some people where they do not have this folder system but just leave again all of their emails in their inbox without any further grouping apparently this works for some people however by far the most widely spread and popular most effective file management system is the hierarchy structure the hierarchy or tree structure is called like that because it resembles a multi-level hierarchy which might look like the roots or the branches of a dream question to you if at all which of these three file management systems are you currently using and please let me know in the comments because i'm super curious about that so let's dig into the most popular and effective method the hierarchy structure where your entire file system will be based on different hierarchy levels first you have level 0 l0 with overarching folders covering broader topics then there's level 1 l1 which is the first level below including sub-topics of level zero then there's level two l2 which is another sub-level with even more granular sub-topics of level one and so on so in theory there is no end to a hierarchical structure but in practice it often boils down to three to five sub-levels so now let's take a closer look at some practical examples of how a hierarchy structure can look like at work university or school and finally in private life at work for example my level 0 usually contains three folders admin projects and topics or domains and to keep a clean structure make sure to always number the folders in a proper way such that they are ordered based on your preferences and do not just randomly move around depending on date of creation or date of modification therefore i recommend using an ascending two-digit number like zero one zero two zero three and so on so within our admin folder zero one on l0 most likely i would have subfolders like employment documents resume training or learning and development and so on just general folders here again within each folder use the same two digit number zero one zero two and so on for all of the subfolders within the second folder my projects folder on level zero i always have a level one structure like this project a b is my project number one project cd is project two and project three four or five would again be labeled however the project is called and within each project subfolder i recommend a level two structure that looks like this there's an admin folder followed by input data then there is a folder for analyses one for meeting documents and maybe another one for final reports by having always the same or at least a very similar structure for my project folders it makes it super easy to find documents even after a very long time let's maybe look at one more level so within the meetings folder within that folder for example you could have a level 3 subfolder for each and every meeting you have especially for work and university or school sometimes also in private life it definitely makes sense to label each document properly in practice that means not only stating an obvious and clear name but also equally important stating the date of the document for example you could label a meeting presentation as follows 2021 0 5 21 project a b important meeting which is year month date underscore project name underscore title of the meeting and depending on how many changes you make that day or save several different versions of the document you can add different suffixes such as v1 v2 etc for the version number of that day or sometimes something like vf for final or vs symbolizing that this document was sent out for example to a client next let's take a look at an example from school or university so when i used to go there i had a quite straightforward file management system that i can highly recommend talking about university level zero was my respective degree so i had two folders one for my bachelor degree in international business and won for my master's degree in international business with a major focus on finance level 1 in both overarching folders included the semesters of the degree however i slightly changed that numbering here so i started with an overall admin folder followed by the individual semesters so my first second third semester and so on and with each semester folder i would then have a level two folders for each course and within that maybe even level three folders for scripts term papers group works or the like finally let's look at a folder structure that can be used in private life and that is actually similar to my own structure which works really well in my opinion on level 0 you can have overarching categories such as a photo for your finances one for your insurance for housing contracts vacation another one for hobbies and maybe one for self-development and so on obviously you can mix and match the categories based on your own preferences for now let's further take a look at the contracts folder on level one you could have sub photos for each and every contract you have such as your mobile phone your gym or your car releasing before you're now starting to organize your files and folders there's one tip that you should definitely know that for windows there is a maximum file length of 255 characters so the 255 characters are not a maximum for a single file but for the entire file path so the one you can see in the file explorer therefore make sure to stick to short and concise folder and file names throughout your file levels otherwise you might run out of characters and are not able to label your files and photos anymore but don't worry you don't miss that point since windows will happily remind you with this and by the way as you might have seen i am a windows user and i use office 365 including all the common office applications the best thing however is that onedrive the cloud storage of microsoft is also included in that package so this allows you to easily synchronize all your files with your cloud space or even just fully work on your cloud which is what i'm doing that way you make sure that all files are safely stored and still available in case you might encounter any hardware problems so you find a link to microsoft 365 in the description below if you found these tips in that video helpful hit the like button and don't forget to subscribe to the channel also check out this video where i share tips on how to become more detail-oriented on this one where you will learn how to take effective notes at work or school thanks for watching and see you next time