Thought this might of interest to some:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17892731

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Andy Brice
https://www.hyperplan.com

thanks very much! very interesting to see how other people are tackling the challenge of organizing their information.

Don't bother with elaborate tag or folder based taxonomies. Search is more efficient. I, at least, cannot accurately predict what taxonomy I'll need 5 years in the future, nor can I consistently tag every file correctly. There is some empirical support in favor of search over tagging [1].

that is interesting.
We also had a discussion in this forum if powerful search such as Google's semantic search could nullify the need to organize (hierarchically arrange or tag) information.

Am i the only one who things that googles search is terrible?

It helps you to find something, but it does not allow you to search for something.

Thanks for the link, Andy.

It is so interesting to learn about the varied ways people go about organizing their information. One day someone will describe a system and everyone will say, "That's the one. I need no other." Or not.

Steve Z.

Very interesting thread, Andy. Thank you for posting it.

A lot to absorb.

I habitually organize work documents hierarchically with descriptive names. Very old school, but decades of work files and hundreds of GB of user data, I feel if I didn't keep this then I'd really be lost. Search utilities such as Houdah Spot and FoxTrot help a lot.

On the other hand files like receipts and the like I just throw into a big DEVONthink pot since it takes a second or two to search for them with DEVONthink's excellent search features.

Because I'm an incurable CRIMPer, I've kept extensive notes in many different apps over the years. Finding them is the challenge. I know of no utility that could, for example, search across Evernote, Bear, Tinderbox, etc., and find a phrase or concept. Same shortcoming on Windows.