Revision as of 16:45, 17 May 2015

Is your desktop a shining example of neatness and cleanliness? Or is it a big heap of icons only fit to be sorted in some manner? How many files are in your Documents folder? What does your directory structure look like? Easy to work with and a natural fit for you and what you do? Can you easily find what you are looking for or does the way you organise suck totally and drain your energy?

Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are helpful for many tasks, but they box you in in the tasks the designer designed the GUI for. M$ systems come with a preset set of directories, and so does linux (if it isn't stripped). Like beliefs and rules, such predefined organisations can act like post hypnotic suggestions (spell casting) and filter our experience of reality and affect us in undesirable ways.

Not only that, standard default folders tend to fill up with junk files and folders that are not at all important. For M$ that is in MyDocuments, for Linux that is /home/user and most such application directories have a dot in front and are not visible (you have to set "Show Hidden Files" in your "View" menu if you are using a GUI).

Case study: Uncluttering your machine

There is so much written about cluttering and uncluttering your machine, about (re)organising your files and directories [1], some of it may be useful for you, some of it may not. Just use what you need. Here I describe steps for reorganising your machine in highly generalised form that worked for me for building a resilient machine that allows me to focus on what I want to do with it and quickly recover from intrusions and crashes.

Methodology

• Step 1 Make a decision to unclutter your machine

As with anything, cluttered systems are reflections of cluttered lives. From having chosen to unclutter your life, you can choose to include your machine. Imagine your disk crashes unrepairably (good riddance), or having your files in a centralised cloud and the company owning the servers goes bankrupt or the internet (connection) goes down for a long time (time to party, be with family members, enjoy a campfire), what files on your machine would you probably feel sad about not having access to? Put those files on an external harddrive.

• Step 2 Create your own file system from scratch!

My host machine uses a standard file system and has a couple of fake files on them. All files containing personal data are on an external harddrive that I only mount when I need access to it for either putting or accessing these files. In a public context I put the machine offline before doing so.

• Step 3 Separate application files from data files

On a linux system this is already the case. Apparently, M$ MyDocument directories get a lot of junk added to them ...

• Step 4 Customise and accessorise

You can get some beautifying icons for linux from gnome-look or the icon-archive.

• Step 5 Regular maintenance

You can make a backup of your entire system with rsync or with unison. Rsync, which stands for "remote sync", is a remote and local file synchronisation tool. It uses an algorithm that minimises the amount of data copied by only moving the portions of files that have changed. It operates in a way that is similar to ssh, scp, and cp.

rsync -a dir1/ dir2

The -a option is a combination flag. It stands for "archive" and syncs recursively and preserves symbolic links, special and device files, modification times, group, owner, and permissions.

An additional way of dealing with clutter, attachments to particular installations and the risks of infections, is to reinstall the operating system regularly. I reinstall around every six months and just before and after any event.

Synthesis

Focus on your priorities, make efficient use of your time on this planet, choose a design for your life that allows for relaxing and replenishment, and make it so.

References

[1] Zen and the Art of File and Folder Organization http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15677/zen-and-the-art-of-file-and-folder-organization/