How to Organise Saved Content Without Overcomplicating It

Before creating a new folder, tag or project, answer these three questions honestly.

1. What topic is this really about? One or two words.
2. Is there a live project it belongs to, or is it a long-running interest?
3. How am I most likely to look for it later — by topic, by project, or by intended use?

If the answers point to something you already have, use that. New structure is expensive; reusing old structure is close to free.

Labels work well as your long-running interests: the things you would still recognise in a year. Eight to twelve active labels is a reasonable starting point. A workable set might be:

• • product
• • engineering
• • management
• • writing
• • health
• • money
• • philosophy
• • travel

If a label only ever applies to one piece of content, it is probably a note, not a label. If two labels are always used together, they probably want to be one label.

Two techniques cover almost every case. First: pick the label that reflects where you will look for it, not every possible topic it touches. Second: if it belongs to a live project as well as a long-running interest, attach it to both — projects and labels are meant to coexist.

A growing pile of unlabelled sparks is normal. Run a ten-minute triage once a week: open the untriaged view, and for each item ask "topic, project, use — or delete?". Do not stop to read; decide and move on. What survives three triage passes without earning a label is usually not worth keeping.

• • You spend longer filing something than reading it.
• • You avoid saving because deciding where feels heavy.
• • You have labels you have not used in months.
• • You have nested labels or sub-projects nobody else would understand.
• • You have started keeping a doc explaining how your system works.

Any two of these together mean it is time to simplify.

Do a "merge, delete, keep" pass. Scan the label list once. For each label, decide:

• • Merge — this overlaps with another; combine them and pick one name.
• • Delete — no clear future use; remove and let the items sit unlabelled.
• • Keep — genuinely used and named the way you would look for it.

A ten-minute merge pass often shrinks an over-grown label list considerably. The items you deleted labels from are not lost — they are just relying on search and reflections instead.

Once a year, do a longer prune of old projects and inactive labels. This is a good moment to also delete saves that no longer earn their space. Once you keep things findable, the harder skill is being able to bring them back — see how to rediscover ideas you saved previously for the retrieval side.

One project (the thing you are actively working on), six labels (your long-running interests), and one Sunday-evening slot for the weekly Review. That is enough structure for most people for a long time.