The blog

For you who prefer listening to reading, this post is also available as an episode of the ""Done!"" podcast:

Sev­er­al names for the same thing

The func­tion that involves putting a short­cut to a file has prob­a­bly been around as long as the oper­at­ing sys­tems we use. It is called dif­fer­ent things on dif­fer­ent platforms:

• In Explor­er in Win­dows, it’s called ​“short­cut”
• In Find­er in Mac OS, it’s called ​“alias”
• In OneDrive, it is named ​“link”
• In Google Dri­ve, the name is ​“short­cut”

Do this

Today, as soon as you notice that you are look­ing for a dig­i­tal file or doc­u­ment in what lat­er turns out to be the wrong place, con­sid­er putting a short­cut to the right place.

You can use the same name as the file you are look­ing for or, through the name, give your­self a friend­ly and help­ful reminder to look in the right place, for exam­ple, ​“If you are look­ing for the report here, click on me instead, and I will show you the right one.url”.

Less time wasted

If you place short­cuts where you need them most, you will find what you seek faster. You avoid wast­ing time search­ing and can instead use the time for some­thing more pro­duc­tive. Of course, the risk of plac­ing addi­tion­al objects in fold­ers and oth­er stor­age places is that it will get messy faster, but I’m sure you will use this trick with mod­er­a­tion so that it helps instead of hinders.

How do you do it?

Have you used these short­cuts in a cre­ative way that you are delight­ed with? Then please write and share.

(Speak­ing of find­ing your way among dig­i­tal files, do you have a struc­ture for your fold­ers? Check out my tips on how to deter­mine if your fold­er struc­ture is right for you!)