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The biggest thing I miss in the file folder paradigm is dividers/sections. Like folders, but without nesting. I used to have a tendency to over-categorize and

The biggest thing I miss in the file folder paradigm is dividers/sections. Like folders, but without nesting. I used to have a tendency to over-categorize and nest things too deeply, which makes them hard to find again. Concrete example: nesting classes by semester. When looking back for something, I would usually remember what class it was, but I'd often forget the semester. So now I have to search through a bunch of folders (manually or automatically) to find it. Ugh. A flat structure is much easier to follow. However, I still want all my classes grouped together when I'm listing them. Currently the only way I know to achieve this is by adding a prefix to the file or folder name. This works, but you end up with some grotesque names. The implementation could be regular folders with a flag to indicate their contents should be displayed inline one level above.

mackrevinack 5y ago
I've started putting timestamps at the start of filenames recently and is been working pretty well. yyyymmddhhmmss, then an optional filename if needed. it might still be your idea of grotesque, and the timestamp does take up a bit of space unfortunately but at least its consistent. going with your example above, it would allow you to just have folders for classes and then have files from all years in the same class folder. then you can sort of hack together a divider feature by adding some brightly coloured jpgs with a timestamp at the start of the year which would let you see at a glance where each year starts and ends. it also helps if your file browser will remember to open each folder with the newest files show first at the top