In a typical week, I accumulate around ten to twenty new digital items in my inbox. They might include notes from a team meeting, highlights from a book I’m reading, a useful screenshot from a website, or a voice memo I recorded about a new idea, for example.
When they are initially created, these kinds of files normally have a useless title like “Untitled document” or “New note.” I find that it aids future retrieval tremendously if I take a few seconds to look at each item I’ve saved and change its title or name to something more informative and clear.
For example:
There’s nothing fancy or technical about these names. Sometimes I include a date, and sometimes I don’t. All I’m doing is giving each item the shortest, simplest, easiest-to-understand title I can think of within a few seconds.
Note that you likely have several inboxes you’ll need to do this for, such as: