Working with files › From the window to the file · 4 min read

Three habits, no scares

Franco Lobos|www.francolobos.com

These are not computer security rules, and nothing here prevents a technical disaster. They are three habits that make working this way comfortable instead of tense.

Looked at closely, all three do the same thing: they turn a moment you cannot undo into one you can.

  1. Ask for the plan before the action «Show me what you are going to do first, do not do it yet.» You read the plan and only then tell it to go ahead. It is the cheapest filter there is: ten seconds to read, and it catches the misunderstanding before a single file is touched.
  2. Never delete: move The standing instruction is that instead of deleting, it sends whatever is left over to a separate folder and tells you. Then you look and delete by hand. You will never lose something to a misunderstanding, because the misunderstanding stays there to be reviewed.
  3. New subject, new conversation When you go from tidying invoices to writing a proposal, you start fresh. The old ones stay in the history. A conversation with too many things mixed into it starts giving odd answers, and that is the number one cause of «but it was working before».
Three habits you will use constantly at first, and less and less after that.

You ask it to tidy a folder and it hands back something you did not expect. Which of the three habits would have spared you the scare?

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