Event-Based File Organization
I've tried most personal file organization systems over the years. Completely flat structures with timestamp prefixes. Johnny Decimal's rigid numeric hierarchies. Complex tagging taxonomies. They all eventually collapsed under their own weight.
The problem was always the same: trying to build a perfect categorization system for documents before understanding how they actually arrive in my life.
The Reality of Personal Documents
Most personal documents aren't created—they're received. Tax forms. Insurance renewals. Visa applications. Service receipts. Registration paperwork. These aren't outputs you generate through creative work. They're artifacts from external events that require your response.
When a document arrives attached to a specific event (renew car insurance, file annual taxes, apply for a visa), the event itself is the natural organizing principle. Not an abstract category. Not a predetermined numeric code. The thing that actually happened.
Folders as Event Containers
The model is simple: one folder per discrete event, with all supporting documents inside.
"Car Insurance 2025" gets its own folder containing the policy document, payment receipt, and any correspondence. "Visa Renewal 2024" contains application forms, supporting documents, and confirmation emails. "Kitchen Renovation" holds quotes, contracts, and receipts.
The folder name describes what happened. The contents are everything related to that event. When it's done, you close it and move on.
This eliminates the classic filing question: "Is this a new category or does it belong somewhere existing?" The event already happened. The folder matches the event. Done.
Structure Without Taxonomy
Group event folders under broad life areas rather than trying to build elaborate subcategories. Financial matters in one area. Home and family in another. Work projects in a third. These are semantic containers that match how you think about your life, not administrative inventions.
Inside each area, event folders live as peers sorted by date. No complex nesting. No numeric prefixes tracking which subfolder belongs where. Just chronological containers for things that happened.
Annual receipts don't need individual event folders—they go into yearly archive folders. "2025 Receipts" contains every mundane transaction from that year. These aren't events, they're just records you might need to search later.
Retrieval Over Organization
The goal isn't browsing a perfectly organized hierarchy. It's finding what you need when you need it. macOS Spotlight (or your OS equivalent) handles precision retrieval better than any manual filing system.
Search for "visa 2024" and you get the folder. Search for a specific receipt and you get the file. The organization exists to give context, not to replace search.
This approach requires accepting that most personal file management problems aren't organizational—they're retrieval problems. Build enough structure to know roughly where things are, then let search do the rest.
What This Isn't
This isn't a system for creative work outputs, research libraries, or collaborative projects. Those have different needs. This is specifically for the administrative layer of life: documents that come to you, require processing, and need occasional retrieval.
It's also not a productivity system. Task tracking belongs elsewhere (tickler files, to-do lists, calendar). The file organization records what happened, not what needs to happen.
The relief comes from stopping the search for the perfect taxonomy and accepting that events are self-organizing. Things happen. Create folders that match. Move on.