Why Folders Are Killing Your Notes (And What to Do Instead)

Organize your ideas like a knowledge pro — ditch folders, embrace the Data Lake, and let tags do the magic

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

All professionals take tons of notes. Project managers, engineers, marketers, and everyone else start their working day by reading and writing notes.

Do they prepare a meeting? They work on the agenda.

Do they lead a meeting? They compile the meeting minutes.

Do they strategize the next move? They write a white paper.

And so on.

All of those are notes.

Now, think of companies with years of notes from thousands of people. What a treasury of knowledge is that? And how likely it is to be so unorganized that it becomes inaccessible?

Also, think of personal notes. What a gold mine that quickly becomes a useless mess!

Why does that happen?

The mess’s origin

It starts with the naïve approach of creating folders. This is the beginning of the end.

Sooner rather than later, your folder system grows so detailed and complicated that many folders contain only a couple of notes, and you…