Wise Startup Blog

Too many times have I seen a parent’s desktop, and it’s cluttered with all sorts of random icons, and shit, including stupid help files, installers, etc.

Now you don’t have to be a techy to understand that you do not need the file to install your programs once it has been installed. In the event you need it again, just go to the website you downloaded it from, and pick up another copy.

This same philosophy can be applied to a majority of the content that’s been found on a cluttered desktop.

With the glut of storage that’s upon us now, there really isn’t any reason that you can’t store all of your files on your hard drive.

Now, applying this Getting Things Done, organization principle, I’m taking it to your computer desktop as well (I’m not even sure if their methodology covers this, I’ve actually never really read much of the whole concept, I just have my own genre of this whole thing, so feel free to carve your niche).

Whenever you save any files, just save them to a generic catch all (think Archive folder). I personally use my iDrive, so that I can access the files from both my laptop and my iMac, and this system works out really well for me. I also keep the files stored locally from my iDrive, so in the event I’m not on the Internet (god forbid), I can still grab the files I need.

So say I need this document I just created, I can, get this, use the spotlight (search for windows users), type in the name, and find it. No need to create complicated folders, label systems, organization, etc.

There is a key component that must be observed for this process, however.

Unlike emails, you can’t search the entire contents of a document (hopefully in Leopard, we will), so you must name your files according to something you would like search for in the future.

Once this is done, you can welcome yourself to a clutter-free lifestyle.

Also, I would suggest de-cluttering your start menu/dock and only keep the bare essentials. Personally I find this clutter-free existence to be quite liberating.

Hope you enjoyed