Historically, I’ve kept a “WIP” (Work in progress) folder at the top level of my Dropbox folder. When a project is finished (as if I ever finish any projects ) I move the folder to the Attic or Filing Cabinet or somewhere else.
I was thinking about references and integration of J.D with my existing habits and wondered about moving J.D folders out of the J.D hierarchy while I work on them.
So, I create a new, numbered project folder in it’s rightful place in the tree. Then, I move it to WIP or whatever while I work on it. Then when finished I just move it back. This gives me an immediate, permanent J.D number for the project, but I can put it where I want it, temporarily, anyway.
Is this crazy talk?
One drawback I can think of is that if I’m not diligent with keeping an index, I could lose track of the last-used number, since it’ll be somewhere else. I’ve not yet decided how careful I want to be about indexing, but this would force the issue.
Otherwise, maybe I just learn to work within the J.D tree instead. This probably makes the most sense, but Old Dogs and all.
Yeah, I could, but I’m allergic to symlinks most of the time, so I’m first thinking of ways to avoid them. Usually I consider adding a symlink to be a design failure of my system :). I’m not all that rigid about this, though.
That was my first instinct. Which OS are you using? Can’t you just drag the folder in to your Finder/Explorer sidebar to keep it in the list of favourites there while you’re working on it?
That said, if it’s a folder with a number that you’ve just stuck on your ~/Desktop for a while, I don’t actually see any problem. Like you say, just be careful not to re-use the number by accident.
For me, when I put what should be current/WIP projects in a nested folder in a hierarchy, that usually ends up being where they go to die. I can’t be trusted to remember that a limited number of WIP projects are actually current without them being bucketed together somewhere, so I like the idea of J.D-numbering the project’s folder and moving it to ~/Desktop or ~/WIP or wherever for now, and then moving it back to the hierarchy when it’s done.
I never think of Smart Folders for some reason. Probably because it requires me to figure out what the filter should be based on and then I forget to update whatever that is later, making my Smart Folders a little dumber :).
Good suggestion, though. I’m currently looking at whether this is even necessary, and if so, what the simplest thing that could possibly work might be.
I’m trying to set up smart folders as a part of my photo workflow/re-organization project. In theory, as various Hazel rules process new photos they end up in a folder watched by FlickrUploadr, which will then send the new photos to Flickr – a new album for each folder, or into an existing album for an existing folder. Theoretically…
Hi, I’m thinking about implementing JD with my sprawling, massively disorganised, photo archive. May I ask if you implemented a JD index and how you dealt with issues like year/location/subject/people? Thanks in advance.
If any other readers / contributors care to chip in, I’m ‘all ears’.
All of my photos are organized via YYYY/MM folders and that’s it. I used to keyword every photo for people and type of content but AI has gotten so good that I no longer feel the need. I just make sure every (or most, anyway) photos have a caption so I know the “why” of it. I leave the who and what up to computers
I spent an hour thinking and putting together a table in Obsidian. When I looked at it, it felt like I was recreating the wheel. I have most of the information you mention @jack.baty available to me in Path Finder. Since I don’t use Lightroom preferring to use Affinity Photo for my workflow I’d possibly consider to tweak metadata using Lyn to add keywords for search. I’ll keep thinking of ways to use JD as I like the elegance it suggests.
) I move the folder to the Attic or Filing Cabinet or somewhere else.
