Crazy thought: What if I move a J.D folder way over there?

The J.D System
#1

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 :laughing:) 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.

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#2

Good point. Could you maybe use just a symlink in your WIP folder? Or move it but leave a symlink inside the original JD structure?

#3

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.

#4

maybe Hook would be an alternative?

#5

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.

#6

Yeah, I’m probably better off finding a way to work with the folders in sutu. Thanks for helping me think this through.

Hook is clever, but for some reason I always forget it’s there, so it’s never stuck for me.

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#7

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.

#8

What about that most under-utilised feature of macOS, the “Smart Folder”?

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#9

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.

#10

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…