“A What?” Why Naming Conventions Might Change Your Life
Last week, a client asked me to help her organize a shared Google Drive and some paper documents.
Specifically, she was in charge of an annual fundraiser last year and before she turns over all the information to this year’s team, she wants to organize her notes and the Google Drive to set this new team up to succeed, which is a kind and noble intention.
Having been on the receiving end of disorganized notes from others over time, I respect her choice to set up the new group on solid footing. And, as I expressed to my Finish Line Friday group, I LOVE this type of project!
The client had a lot of information, both digital and in paper form and she asked if I could help it make sense. Could it be organized logically to make sense and also be easy to use and easy to find information from past years.
I replied quickly, offhandedly, Yes, of course. Since all of your [client] information is for 2025, I’ll start every digital document title with 2025, plus the tabs in the binder for papers. I'll look at what other teams have named things in earlier years and try to stick with that, if that's what people have come to expect because that will make the transition easier. Without looking at the info, I imagine there is a list of guests from every year, promotional materials, a menu and budget and expenses from every year, etc. So, I’ll start with naming conventions.
She said, “A What?”
“A naming convention. A rule of thumb for organizing and titling data, digital or paper, so we can quickly and consistently find things again.”
I gave her an example - there are 4 years of files in her Google Drive. Sometimes we can use their “last opened date” or “created date” to organize them, but those were all reset sometime last year in her drive. So, I planned to open each file, read a few lines and determine which year the info was from and name it accordingly, 2022, 2023, 2024, etc. and then add the topic of the document to the file name. Promo materials are easy to date as they include the event date.
She said, “How do you know this?!” As in, HOW DID YOU LEARN THIS?
She is brilliant, so it is not a lack of knowledge on her part.
Honestly, I don’t know how or where I learned this but it is a strategy employed oh, I don’t know - everywhere! Consider scientific names for plants. Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. (yes, I had to look that up.)
Consider how cars are named. I drive a 2022 Toyota Rav4 Hybrid. Just those 4 details tell you a lot about my car. And the leap we can take, once we realize that naming conventions occur all around us, is that we can use the idea too.
Many years ago now, I took training through the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals, NAPO, called NAPO in the Schools. I became a facilitator for this service project through NAPO and we would go in and talk to 3rd, 4th and 5th graders about organizing. In the 45 minute presentation we talked about what organized means, we considered learning styles - it was a great program. And the point of the presentation was to answer the question with these students, “Can You Find What You Need When You Need It?”
Naming conventions help us find what we need when we need it.
As I explained the idea to the Google Doc client, she commented that this sounds like a podcast and newsletter topic! And here we are.
Let’s get tangible, and consider an actual file cabinet with files and papers and how we can use naming conventions to organize our information.
I’ve discussed Focus Areas in the past, so let's say the themes for my files are my Company (POM), Family (usually by initials, like MCK), Home, Personal, Wellness / Medical, Music Ministry, Baptismal Prep Ministry and other volunteering.
Each of my files might start with POM or PERS. Or maybe I use the drawers of a file cabinet as part of the naming convention, like the top drawer of the file cabinet is for personal information, the middle drawer is for business, and the bottom is for music and ministries.
One past client used file folder colors as part of her naming convention. Her house was yellow, so anything to do with her house (bills, repair records) was in a yellow folder. She worked for a local fire department, so all of her information for work, like training notes, professional development, memos, etc., were in red folders. Her naming conventions were color specific because that helped her to find what she needed when she needed it.
In talking with yet another client recently, she mentioned a family member who was likely a hoarder, but this family member knew exactly where everything in their house was. The example she gave was if the family member had saved an article for you from 4 years ago and you stopped by, the family member would go and find it, amidst the hoard. And that is a skill, but it is also a burden. It requires a lot of brain space, a lot of energy, to retain all that information when there are better and easier ways to store and retrieve information.
Spending some time and effort creating naming conventions saves time and effort later. Maybe, just maybe, saving and then retrieving information can be a little easier. We can spend our brainpower and energy in other ways instead of juggling all of that information. We can invite others in to help us when we don’t have to rely on our memory and be the only person who knows everything. We can decrease our anxiety by having a reliable system that we trust.
Now that I have introduced the idea, shared many instances where it helps, and encouraged you with reasons why you should give it a try - let’s look at how we do this!
We consider the different types of information we need to organize, either digital or physical information. I will say we need to organize it logically, but logic means different things to different people and different situations.
Two logical and objective ways of organizing information are chronological and categorial. Chronological, like my client and her Google Doc example.
Categorical, like my Focus Area example and my client’s Color File example.
Identify what is important to you, and HOW you tend to retrieve information. Do you retrieve a file on your computer by date or by the topic of the file? I am a topic / categorial person, so my CDrive uses naming conventions for personal correspondence or business correspondence. My calendar (already chronological) has events coded by color per category so I can focus in on types of events, POM / work specific (blue), MNSTRY - ministry specific (red), D124 - Board of Education specific (green) when I was still on the Board.
Decide on a short nick name for your various Focus areas of interest. As I said, mine are
POM (for Peace of Mind, the name of my company)
MCK (that’s me!), plus three letter initials for my other family members, too
HOME (home, obvi)
WLNS (Wellness, for medical information, supplements, fitness ideas)
MNSTRY (Ministry), and this is further clarified by MHR (my parish), FG (the choir I run), SGM or CK, other parishes where I sing and play, etc.
Logical. Consistent. Duplicatable.
Use these EVERYWHERE. I use them for file names in my computer, of course, but also as file names in my file cabinet, coding on my google calendar, tasks on my to-do list, etc. Same naming conventions used anywhere in my life that I need to find what I need with I need it (which is all of them.)
Here’s the success story, using the client’s fundraiser binder, papers and Google Drive to illustrate:
This event has been going on for at least 5 years now, and each year a different volunteer committee is in charge. The information changes hands every year and having a logical name for the different types of documents that need to be generated every year sets the next people up to succeed.
Each year’s committee can look through the Google Drive and the paper binder and see that every year, they need a budget and expense tracker, committee meeting notes, address lists for invitees, communication with the event venue, promotional materials and checklists for the event day. Here’s the list of people to invite. The event is always in June. The committee meetings always start in March.
This is what I learned when I reorganized the information, and this is how I named the different files. Looking at what came before helps us to see what we need to do now. All of that is facilitated by having consistent, logical naming conventions. Can we find what we need when we need it, right?
Give the idea some thought this week! Start with awareness - just how many instances of Naming Conventions already exist in your day-to-day life! And then, consider how you can use the idea to make life a little easier for yourself!
