Knowing where to put things is invaluable. Having a sense of structure to where important information goes and my path to accessing it has been a tool that has paid incredible dividends over the past few years (if, indeed, a tool can pay dividends).
I've mentioned my writing advice folder on Twitter before; it's not something I can easily share for a ton of reasons, but knowing that that's where I file things like that and that that's a place I can go to get unstuck on problems is amazing.
Matt Webb's rules for blogging also shaped my workflow for these shards. I have a shortcut which prompts me to type an idea, which it then saves as 'IDEA [The Idea].txt' in my blog folder. When it's time to write, I skim the list for something that interests me right now.
Information in context.
I had a pretty good folder structure for projects already, but Antony Johnston's system from The Organised Writer helped take that to the next level.
My 'Projects' folder is synced through Dropbox and pinned to Windows Explorer. Here's a (redacted) snapshot of the top level:
The next layer down is slightly different for all of them, but broadly has a 'stages of the project' structure:
‘Games’
‘Fiction’
The next level down is the individual projects. Here are a bunch of short fiction things:
I can move projects between 'stage' folders depending on their status. This has secondary benefits for things like selective file syncing on my laptop. But most of all: I always know where to find something.
I also have a template of 'useful folders to stick in any new project', which are: Archive: Folders or files that form part of the project and I want to keep around, but which I don't want to actively surface when looking for information day-to-day. (In long-term projects with more complex file structures, individual folders might have their own Archive, e.g. [Project Name] > Design > Archive.)
Materials: Stuff I have been sent about the project. Usually limited to 'stuff I have received from a client or collaborator'.
Press and Praise: Save nice things people say about your work! 'Press' is a more obvious element -- if I think is out and receiving attention. But even just if someone says something specifically nice about something you did on Slack, save it. You might never be able to do anything external with that, but if you're having a bad day, it's nice to be able to go and look at those things.
Project Management: Everything related to organising the project. Especially: contracts, statements of work, invoices, remittance advice, timesheets, your log of work. I cannot overstate how useful it has been for me to keep all of this in one place per project. Having a specific place for that info makes it easy to file it routinely, and knowing where to go looking is 👍👍👍.
References: On smaller projects, I often collapse this with 'Materials', but if you've got a lot of external references, here's a good place to list them, store copies, or link out to them. Might be duplicative with a moodboard, etc. if you're using it, but link out to that if not.
Generally, actually, if I have stuff on the web, instead of using brower bookmarks (though I will if I access it, like, daily), I save web shortcuts into the folders. Same if there are other project-relevant folders which need to live outside of Dropbox, like a local repo copy. Everything I need for a project is in one place.