The Life-Changing Magic of Searching

In our seemingly endless quest to get more done in less time, organization has become one of our collective obsessions. There are tv shows, apps, stores, systems, and Instagram pages all dedicated to the idea of organizing things and information.

We organize because it feels good. Sorting and organizing have been tied to the dopamine reward center in our brains. This means that when we catalog information our brain releases chemicals that make us feel euphoric and motivated. We also categorize things because it helps us process information.

“Productivity and efficiency depend on systems that help us organize through categorization.  The drive to categorize developed in the prehistoric wiring of our brains… Fundamentally, categorization reduces mental effort and streamlines the flow of information.” – Dr. Daniel Levitin. The Organized Mind

Given the benefits of organization, it’s no wonder most of us are frustrated by the same organizational problem – electronic content.

I don’t know about you, but I’m always on a quest to organize the files on my computer, my email, and the countless blog posts, articles, videos, websites, and Pinterest boards that I am using as research at any given moment.

Every day, I’m saving a new recipe that I found on Pinterest, sending a Buzzfeed post to a friend, or keeping an article for a future project. Although I love that I can easily access all of this information, I’m overwhelmed by trying to store it in a structured way.

And I’m not alone. According to a poll by LexisNexis, workers around the world are increasingly overwhelmed by the amount of information they have to manage each day, and our productivity is suffering because of it.  Our brains just aren’t designed to handle the amount of electronic date that comes at us each day. Yet, we all want to be “in the know” so we try anyway.

So how do we keep it all organized when it seems like a war that we can’t win? Here are 3 tips that recently have been helping me:

Use Evernote & Create An External Brain

This idea comes from Less Doing, and it’s a great one.  Instead of trying to manage all of your electronic info, store everything in Evernote.  Evernote is an app designed to help you save ideas, webpage, and articles. It syncs across all of your devices and is free. However, the best part is that you don’t have to organize any of the info you store there.  You just dump it and let Evernote do its thing.

What is Evernote’s thing?  Well, whenever you need something, do a quick topic search in Evernote, and it will pull up every article, note, or webpage related to that topic in your notebook. Ultimately, we organize information so that we can find it later.  Evernote is the ultimate finder, and you don’t have to do anything. Seriously, just save it there and let your external brain do the finding for you.

Use Folders But Not Too Many

Folders are a great way to categorize electronic content, but if you have too many, you won’t be able to find what you’re looking for anyway.  So, I’ve found that the best way to catalog my information is just to have 2 top-level folders for my computer and email.

For my laptop, my top-level folders are Business and Personal.  For my email, they are Essential and Optional. There are subfolders under these. However, allowing only 2 top-level folders helps me to catalog data quickly and stops the overwhelm that I’d feel if I had hundreds of loose files everywhere.  With 2 folders, I’m always on top of things.

If I have time later, I can separate the data into subcategory with thoses folders.  But if I don’t, my two folders work just fine.

Get Better At Searching

Rather than attempting to keep up with your electronic content, get better at using search tools.  Remember, you organize so that you can find it later. Learning better search methods will help you do that.  Here are some search operators that generally work across all platforms:

• “search term”  this search returns the exact match of a word or phrase;
• OR  this will return results related to search term A or search term B, or both;
• AND  this will return only results related to both search term A and search term B;
• –  this operator excludes a word or phrase.  For example a search for “reality tv” -Kardashians will return pages mentioning reality tv but not Kardashians;
• Filetype:  restricts search results to those of a specific filetype like PDF, DOCX, TXT, and PPT;
• Site:  limits results to those from a specific website. So a search for site:buzzfeed.com limits my search results to those found on that site; and
• Related:  returns results that are related to a particular domain.

For a complete list of the 42 Google search operators, go here.    

Now that you know about the life-changing magic of searching, I’d love to hear your tips on organizing electronic content. What systems do you use now or what has helped you in the past?  Leave a comment below and let’s start a conversation.