Karl Vogel at ONLamp.com - Organizing Files:

"The problem: the filesystem on my Unix workstation was a mess. I couldn't find anything without grepping all over creation. About half the time, I'd actually find something useful. Usually I'd get no hits at all, or I'd match something like a compiled binary and end up hosing my display beyond belief.

[...] I went so far as to buy a copy of the Abridged Dewey Decimal Catalog, which is actually pretty nifty; if you're looking to organize your paper files, you could do a lot worse than use an existing classification scheme like this.

[...] My job as a system administrator doesn't change every day, but it's much easier to keep track of things via date rather than via subject. I tend to remember things in time order, so I finally stopped trying to change the way I work to fit some hierarchy. Instead, I made a directory structure on the machine to match my work habits."