Work Space
Mac Tip #209/26-August-2005

Rebecca of japaneseacupuncture.co.nz very kindly suggested this Tip.

Workspace organiser desktop image.

Like many of us, Rebecca is a busy person and likes to keep her time and her computer organised. She uses an ingenious technique for keeping her desktop organised, by dividing it into four quadrants.

Top left is reserved for ‘Current Work’, top right for ‘Larger Projects’. Bottom left is dedicated to ‘Sort me Away’ items and bottom right to ‘Stuff for Breaks’.

As files come into being — perhaps pictures, or Word documents, or links to web pages, she drops them on the appropriate part of the desktop for ease of access during the day.

So how does she know which icons are which? Well, here’s where the ingenuity comes in: Rebecca created a desktop picture with some clear colours and labels, making it easy to drop any file into the correct quadrant.

Caveat: the desktop isn’t a very safe place to store files in Mac OS X, and if you have an automated backup routine you may want to be sure you include the Desktop. The Desktop is actually a special folder within your User folder, at the same level as the Documents folder.

In general, it’s better practice to keep aliases rather than the files themselves on the Desktop.

If you prefer to keep your desktop for showing pretty pictures, then you could easily set up an alias to a folder within your Documents folder and set Rebecca’s organising background picture as the folder background. How? That’s the topic of another Tip.