One of your fellow readers of this blog recently gave me a couple of suggestions for topics I should discuss, so I’m going to tackle of of them today…

“How do you organize your work?”

Well, I don’t organize the way most people do… I don’t think anyway.  See, I typically don’t use software programs to keep things organized for me… I simply create the organization on my own. 

For starters, I have partitioned my hard drive on my computer (for this if you have Vista, you can do this easily, but if you have an earlier operating system you can use a program called “Partition Magic”). 

I have the typical C drive for my operating system and programs.  Then I create a partition called “Business” and one called “Personal.”  Obviously, I place all my business files in the Business drive and all my personal files in the Personal drive. 

From here, I create folders within each of these drives for whatever I need.  For example, within the Business drive, I have a folder called “domains” and then within this folder, I have an individual folder for each of my domains.  This makes it very easy to find exactly what file I need for whichever website I am working on.  I have another folder called “programs” which is where I store all my downloaded programs that I use for my business.  These are the .exe files for the software programs and I do this so that if something happens with my C drive and my operating system crashes, I still have the ability to easily reload the programs when I get the C drive fixed. 

It is a great idea to partition your computer and place separate drives within the hard drive because if something does happen with your C drive and it fails, you will still have all your files, folders and software programs to reload.  Whereas, if you save everything in “My documents” you will loose it all. 

If the unfortunate circumstance of having the entire hard drive fail happens, you’re still in trouble no matter what you do to the drives.  So I still suggest you always back up your files, but if the more likely event of your operating system failing happens, then all your files are safe. 

I hope this helps you stay organized… or at least gives you some ideas on how to stay organized.  I believe you need to do whatever feels right for you.  If you would prefer to use programs that organize everything for you, do that.  If you have another method for organizing things, let us know

Best Wishes,
Shannon