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Not the way I want­ed it

For some­one like me who loves struc­ture, it’s almost a plea­sure to look some­where that is well orga­nized, where you can eas­i­ly find what you’re look­ing for, and where it’s imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous what belongs where.

That wasn’t how I felt about this fold­er. I thought, ​“This ought to be bet­ter,” but even though I could have spent some time cre­at­ing a bet­ter struc­ture, it wasn’t some­thing I felt like devot­ing time to right then. Who­ev­er has the time or incli­na­tion to do that (apart from those of us who love order)?

A fold­er struc­ture pro­pos­al on demand

Could I get some help, per­haps? Could an AI do the grunt work? I gave the AI per­mis­sion to look through the fold­er (this time it was Chat­G­PT) with­out mak­ing any changes, and I prompt­ed it:

“I think this fold­er is messy. Can you sug­gest how I could orga­nize it instead?”

After 38 sec­onds, I received a visu­al pro­pos­al for a new fold­er struc­ture, along with an expla­na­tion of why the AI had made those par­tic­u­lar choic­es. I thought the rea­son­ing was sound, and the struc­ture looked fair­ly log­i­cal. But it didn’t fol­low the prin­ci­ples I sub­scribe to for sort­ing and struc­tur­ing dig­i­tal files and fold­ers. For exam­ple, the AI had added num­bers at the begin­ning of fold­er names to make them sort in the desired order, which I’m not fond of.

Fold­ers to my liking

To get a fold­er struc­ture pro­pos­al suit­ed to my orga­ni­za­tion rather than some­thing resem­bling an aver­age of all the data the lan­guage mod­el was trained on, I gave the AI a PDF con­tain­ing an arti­cle I had writ­ten about the prin­ci­ples I fol­low for fold­er struc­tures (which those of you who have tak­en a struc­ture course with me will have heard about). I prompt­ed it again:

“If I ask you to base your pro­pos­al on the sort­ing prin­ci­ples I describe in this attached arti­cle, would your sug­ges­tion be different?”

The AI now gave me a much bet­ter pro­pos­al, one that also har­mo­nized with the larg­er fold­er struc­ture that the board fold­er is part of.

If you don’t have time to get your fold­ers bet­ter orga­nized, let an AI do the grunt work — but give it prin­ci­ples to follow.

Do this

1. Choose a fold­er (with sub­fold­ers) that you think is messy and should be bet­ter organized.
2. Check what your AI pol­i­cy says and what data secu­ri­ty rules apply to the AI ser­vice you use, so you can be sure that sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion won’t leak anywhere.
3. Give your cho­sen AI chat per­mis­sion to look through your messy folder.
4. Also tell the AI which prin­ci­ples you want it to base its fold­er struc­ture pro­pos­al on. You can upload a pol­i­cy doc­u­ment, as I did, or explain your prin­ci­ples direct­ly in the chat.
5. Ask the AI to assess the struc­ture and give you a proposal.
6. When you receive the pro­pos­al, review it and think for your­self. Note the ideas you like and ignore any sug­ges­tions that don’t appeal to you.
7. If you’re free to make changes to the fold­er struc­ture imme­di­ate­ly, make them. If you instead need your col­leagues’ agree­ment on how the fold­er should be orga­nized going for­ward, decide when and in what forum you’ll present your improve­ment pro­pos­al to them.

Time, at last

If you let an AI do the grunt work, you’ll final­ly have time to sort out that fold­er struc­ture that has been both­er­ing you for ages. You and your col­leagues will be quick­er at find­ing things eas­i­ly and sav­ing them in the right place. You’ll also reduce the risk of dupli­cat­ing work because you hap­pened to open the wrong file when a new­er ver­sion was sit­ting right next to it.

How do you do it?

What have you done to make it as easy as pos­si­ble to improve the struc­ture of your doc­u­ments? Write to me and tell me — I’m curi­ous. What says ​“struc­ture” more than hav­ing your doc­u­ments in order?

(Not sure whether the sort­ing prin­ci­ple you use today is the one that works best? Here are my tips on how to deter­mine if your fold­er struc­ture is right for you!)