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A comment on Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you realized is wrong?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you re... by sangnoir on Monday January 30, 2023 @01:01PM (#34583751)
You need to have a system; so it's not exactly "remembering" where you put things, but deducing where an items ought to be and going there to find it. It's similar to people who put all files on the desktop vs organizing files into a hierarchy of folders.
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Re:Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you re... by jimnotgym on Monday January 30, 2023 @02:53PM (#34585467)
A hierarchy of folders is great for hierarchical data like

Accounts>2020>July>july_20.xlsx

For other stuff is a nightmare because it often could be in 2 places. Maybe you have a folder for <bosses_name> and one for HR...now your boss asks you for that hr thing he asked you to do 2 years ago, where is it?

I give my non-hierarchical files filenames with as much meta data as possible, and stick them all in one folder. Search does the rest.

I save my temporary files in my downloads folder. Now and again I delete stuff from a year or so ago.

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Re:Ask HN: Something you’ve done your whole life that you re... by sangnoir on Tuesday January 31, 2023 @06:45PM (#34604075)
> For other stuff is a nightmare because it often could be in 2 places

Symlinks are an obvious solution for OSes that support them, without having to resort to tagging and/or search search

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