Hi there,
To each his/her own style. Below is mine.
The desktop is empty - 3 folders:
- My documents (which gives me access to my work database)
- Shortcut to my current project file
- Temp file (sometimes I need to have quick access to specific files, so I dump them there and once done I relocate the file to their right location)
Every project file:
- 01_Presentations
- Steerco 1
- Master presentation (only the latest version would be there)
- Work in progress file (i have all my sub sections there)
- SteerCo 2 (same)
- 02_Excel (same structure as steercos)
- 03_Internal research (it organizes my research from previous projects and internal documents from my colleagues and even the project's technical proposal)
- 04_External research (it organizes all articles, databases, studies collected by topic/source, depends on the situation)
- 05_Admin (it contains documents such as client's contact list, budget sheet, etc.)
- Every document name is structured as follows "YYYYMMDD_project name_file name_V01_KK[initials of owners]"
- Always number your files, put 01_ as your most frequently used folder or subfolder (so when you navigate you folders, you will just press enter/enter/enter/ to directly reach the document you need)
Outlook:
Too many styles over there - what I recommend is to find a style that doesn't take too much time in maintenance. (some people color code and put stars, etc.... I don't)
What I recommend that every email you send the title to be structure " [project name] | [topic]"... this will help you when you want to archive all emails relevant to this project, you will just have to search for [project name] and outlook will filter all correspondence in the project.
I hope this helps.
Khaled