Chapter 4. Folders and filenames — building a desk you can share

Key points

• Start with four boxes: clinical, teaching, research, publishing
• Standardise filenames as date_content_version
• Do not aim for perfect; start roughly and tidy as you go

Step 1: four large boxes

No need to overthink it. Divide your work into four.

Clinical — patient handouts / home exercise sheets / assessment forms / SOAP templates

Teaching — study-group material / lecture slides / material for supervising students

Research — paper PDFs / data / conference material

Publishing — blog / long-form posts / draft social posts / video scripts

Make these four folders and start throwing scattered files into them. Rough is fine at first. What matters is not perfect classification but being divided into four at all.

Step 2: make a rule for filenames

Unglamorous, but it pays. With inconsistent filenames, neither AI nor human can tell which is the latest, or what a file even is.

The pattern to use is

date_content_version

For example:

• 20260529_shoulder-home-exercises_patient_v2.docx
• 20260515_knee-OA_literature-notes.md

Two points only.

• Date first: sorted, they fall in chronological order and you can see when something is from
• Be specific about content: stop naming things "material 1", "new file", "copy (3)"

That alone means you — six months from now — and the AI can both find the file without hesitation.

Step 3: when stuck, ask the AI how to organise

"I cannot work out the categories." "Where should this file go?" You can ask exactly that.

Copy the folder listing (the filenames) and ask:

"Sort this file list into clinical, teaching, research and publishing. Put anything that fits none of them under 'other', and give your reason for each classification."

and you get a first draft of the organisation.

💡 Note: a file listing can itself contain personal information (a patient name in a filename, for instance). Run the Chapter 2 check before pasting.

Do not aim for perfect

Try to finish the tidying in one pass and you will give up.

• make the four folders first
• file things as they catch your eye
• apply the naming rule to new files (older ones gradually)

That level of looseness is enough. The stance repeated in Foundations —

do not wait to understand it perfectly; tidy as your hands move

— applies here too.

Try this

Make four folders on your desktop: clinical, teaching, research, publishing. Then rename exactly one file you touched today under the new rule (date_content_version).

Even one file is enough to feel how good an organised state feels.

Chapter 4 summary

• Start with four boxes: clinical, teaching, research, publishing
• Standardise filenames as date_content_version
• Do not aim for perfect; apply the rule to new files and work backwards slowly