Hey everyone,
Today's email is short because it's a packed day for me. First, I admit sadly that I have nothing to report for progress on my archive clean-up. (Last week and weekend were likewise packed. This week looks a bit more promising.)
Let me preface what comes next by giving you my main point in advance: you should always use the organization techniques that make the most sense to you, even if someone else claims another method is better. What works great for them might work terribly for you.
I came across another article a few days ago titled Folders are Dead. So Why Are We Still Using Them?.
As someone enamored with organizing digital information, this grabbed my attention. I'm sure that's exactly why the author chose that title--it's effective clickbait. However, the rest of the article doesn't really break from what the headline says, as clickbait often does. He praises modularization (breaking apart larger collections of information into smaller conceptual blocks) and linking (allowing each module to link to one or more related blocks), and encourages the use of tagging each module to provide an efficient mechanism to filter and search for specific information after you collect or create it.
I agree, with caveats. The part that irked me is that he didn't seem to allow any caveats--just that modularization, links, and tags are the natural and better evolution after folders for digital organization. Maybe he would acknowledge special cases, if pressed on the subject. Maybe he was just keeping the article short. But that's not how it came across to me.
There are plenty of cases where folders still make sense, or at least they can make sense depending on many factors, including our own subjective preferences. A prime example is a photo collection. There are many ways you might choose to sort photos, but most of us intuitively think of them primarily as by time: by year at least, perhaps by month, and even by date. If you ever work with your image files directly (typically JPEG and/or HEIC files these days), some basic folder structure is practically required. Otherwise, you end up with a huge pile of content in one giant bucket.
We can approach a photo collection differently, of course: by location, by subject, by event (e.g. birthdays or anniversaries), or even more uncommon categories like camera or time of day. This information, stored in photo files as metadata, is the same as the article's recommendation of using tags. A single photo might have multiple non-exclusive tags for all the interesting info:
- Time: April 2, 2025 at 3:42pm
- Location: Cincinnati, OH
- People: Bob, Sue, and Frank
- Album: Bob's 47th Birthday Party
- Categories: party, birthday, gathering, family
But the file is still stored in a folder somewhere, probably "/Photos/2025/2025-04-02" or similar.
Now, I admit: if you only use a smartphone to take photos, and you keep them in a cloud platform like Google Photos or iCloud Photos, it's possible you've never had to think about folders in that context. Cloud photo platforms hide this aspect of data storage from you because they manage it for you--although, both platforms still usually present your collection chronologically by default, split by day, month, and year.
But if you, like many of us, keep at least a copy (if not the only copy) of your photos on your own computer or backup storage, you've probably seen those folders.
Another example the author of that article gives is document storage. Here's a relevant excerpt that gets to the core of the article's argument:
While the relationship between document and folder was 1-to-1 in the paper days, the relationship between digital documents is now many-to-many: Each module can contain hyperlinks to many other modules, irrespective of what folder they are stored in.
Here is my thesis: folders are too rigid in a digital, hyperlinked, modular information landscape. Typically, folders are nested, and you need to know exactly how to navigate to that sub-sub-sub-folder to find the required piece of information.
What can you do? Use tags instead. You can still display tags hierarchically in a way that they resemble folders.
This is true, but it isn't universally applicable, and following his recommendation requires storing your data in a system that efficiently supports tagging (and, possibly, linking). For example, you can do this in Gmail or Google Photos as well as many apps specifically designed for taking notes or writing documentation. But outside of these contexts, trying to eliminate the use of folders entirely is like driving a square peg into a round hole. If you have a collection of Word documents, a folder hierarchy on your computer is a natural and effective way to organize them. Trying to rely on tags alone for file-based documents would be a real headache.
Your preference for folders vs. tags also likely depends on how you intuitively approach categories and labels in your brain. Some people are far more comfortable with a well-defined hierarchy than an amorphous blob of flexible tags, which could easily grow out of control. Just like folder hierarchy depth, tags can become unwieldy without maintenance. They're arguably easier to correct in this situation, but the risk is still there.
Rather than claiming "folders are dead," I recommend tuning your organization system to your specific needs. Don't jump in the deep end of either "folders only" or "tags only" and abandon all other options. The idea of organizing via tags may be so foreign that it would be counterproductive for you. Maybe one of your parents was a librarian, and rigid pre-defined structure exudes from your very being. Or maybe you thrive on flexibility and constant connecting and disconnecting of ideas and information, always rearranging things in new ways to see what clicks.
It's good to be aware of different techniques--folders, tagging, modularization, linking, etc.--so that you have as many useful tools in your repertoire as possible. Knowing about multiple approaches helps you choose the one (or combination) that works best in each situation you encounter.
Maybe I'm making more of this than I should, but I just felt it needed to be clarified. Folders aren't always the best option, but they're certainly not dead, nor should they be. Use what works for you.
Until next week, happy data-taming!