I understand the pigeonhole filing example, but I quit "filing" years ago. It's tedious. Tagging also takes too much thought, particularly at recall time: did I tag that "development" or "programming"? I just use search.
I have a script that monitors my desktop. Any file not modified within the past 8 hours is moved to a folder dated for the end of this week. That gives me 52 folders a year, granular enough to find a file manually if I know roughly when I dealt with it.
My desktop stays clean except for what I'm actively working on, and I don't look for files hierarchically or by category/tag. To find something, I use Spotlight search. That's faster than navigating a folder hierarchy would be even if I knew exactly where the file was.
That's also why I love Gabor's reMail on the iPhone.
I have a script that monitors my desktop. Any file not modified within the past 8 hours is moved to a folder dated for the end of this week. That gives me 52 folders a year, granular enough to find a file manually if I know roughly when I dealt with it.
My desktop stays clean except for what I'm actively working on, and I don't look for files hierarchically or by category/tag. To find something, I use Spotlight search. That's faster than navigating a folder hierarchy would be even if I knew exactly where the file was.
That's also why I love Gabor's reMail on the iPhone.