Open Thread: Are You a Filer or a Piler?
June 27th, 2007 (5:56am) Anne Zelenka 23 Comments
“A filer is a person who organizes information using a rigid structure, and a piler is someone who maintains a mostly unstructured information organization.” [From Surviving the Information Explosion: How People Find Their Electronic Information (pdf)]
Google Docs & Spreadsheets now offer folders for those people who want to explicitly organize their online files rather than relying on search. Duncan Riley of TechCrunch calls for Gmail to include folders too. He’s a filer.
Simplified, filers rely on folders to find things they want while pilers rely on search. Actually, according to the study referenced above, people of both types often use an “orienteering” strategy to find what they need, using little bits of context and what they remember about where the desired information is to guide them step by step towards their target.
As I’ve gotten better at using search and as search has itself gotten better, I find myself relying less and less on folders or on Gmail’s labels. Filing just takes too much thought and work without a payoff later for me. Besides, it seems a holdover from our physical desktops. Maybe we won’t need folders once our computers do a better job of keeping track of what we’ve done, sorting out what’s relevant from what’s not, and paying attention to what sort of things we look for.
So I’m turning into a piler as search gets better and as I get better at using it. What about you?
23 Comments Post your own comment
COD says: June 27th, 2007 6:37am
I used to be a filer, but Gmail has taught me to rely much more on search to find stuff. I barely keep an address book anymore. If I need a phone number I search Gmail for an email from that person, so that I can get the phone number from their signature.
Michael says: June 27th, 2007 7:40am
Digital: Filer (google apps excluded)
Hard Copies: I’m a Piler, wannabe filer… 20 inch stack on my desk(iler)
I am definitely a recall vs recognition when it comes to things like google vs yahoo, and that works well for email, google docs etc. But when it comes to storing a file I reference once a month or less, I need the structured logical system to come back to it much later. — sounds sorta backwards, I know… but I have a pretty good balance going on.
afongen » Piler. No question. says: June 27th, 2007 8:05am
[...] Zelenka asks: are you a filer or a piler? As I’ve gotten better at using search and as search has itself gotten better, I find myself [...]
James Ward says: June 27th, 2007 8:17am
I also used to be a filer, but now I just pile. I never really thought about why until now. But it does make sense that better search causes less filing since filing is just a manual indexing method. Strangely I don’t pile or file browser bookmarks much anymore since Google works so well.
-James
wiredgonzo says: June 27th, 2007 8:50am
Personally I’m a “piler” when it comes to email and documents, a “filer” when it comes to images. This is partly because out past laziness I tended to use folders for organizing image files instead of descriptive file names.
Tina P says: June 27th, 2007 10:07am
Um, both?
I’m a pile to file kinda gal, especially when it comes to real world paper. My statements and bills come in the mail and they go into a pile right by my chair, and once every month or two I file them all away in a box by month. Ditto my virtual desktop: I save stuff to my desktop left and right, and then will parse it out based on project and type once the clutter gets to be too much.
I like doing it this way because I tend to evaluate whether I need to keep something or not: chances are, it can just go in the trash. When I used a system of immediately filing items, they would sit in their little cubby and waste my space because I’d never go back and review whether I needed to keep them or not.
Khurt says: June 27th, 2007 10:12am
In the real world I am a filer but in the electronic world I am a piler. I no longer bookmark sites into categories but just bookmark (Google Bookmark) them and then use search to find then. I no longer memorize URLs for sites, I just Google and click what I recognize.
Gmail makes it easy to find that email from my mom from last month.
James says: June 27th, 2007 10:29am
You can set up filters on Gmail and use them as a pseudo-directory structure. For example, label all incoming mails containing the subject line [LAA] as “laa” and then set the filter to archive those mails. Then, in your labels box, you’ll see “laa” and once clicked on you’ll see all the mails that are labeled as such. This works basically the same as directories, but is much more flexible.
Dave says: June 27th, 2007 1:21pm
I’m definitely a piler. Filing worked better for me when I used Outlook/Exchange and searches were painfully slow and awkward.
Now that I use web-based mail exclusively, I just search and archive for the most part.
Jill says: June 27th, 2007 3:24pm
I’m definitely a piler, without desktop search I would be dead.
Leo Babauta says: June 27th, 2007 4:08pm
I just thought I’d point out that the new folders for Google Docs are really the same as the old tags, so nothing’s changed, except that you can drag and drop into the folders instead of using the drop-down tag menu. So you can still put a document in multiple folders (tags) as before.
Personally, I have completely turned into a searcher. It saves so much time — when before I’d be trying to organize my files, now I just archive and search. Labels (or tags or folders) are useful for sorting incoming emails, so that you can just look at the high-priority stuff now and the low-priority stuff later. For documents, I like to have a label (actually I use the star) for the important stuff I use on a daily or weekly basis, so I can quickly look through them. But for everything else, archive and search.
Tim Peter says: June 27th, 2007 4:19pm
Piler. Big time. del.icio.us is the greatest invention ever and I wish to no end I could get tagging on the desktop.
Duncan says: June 27th, 2007 7:23pm
My problem with piling is that even with strong search it’s still difficult sometimes find what you’re looking for particularly when you’ve got tens of thousands of emails (as I do in my gmail archive)…yes, in part that’s me not being able to refine what I’m looking for in a search query but at least with folders I can immediately narrow down emails to be searched…and you’d probably be not surprised to learn that I’ve got around 30 different folders in Outlook with a complete set of rules automatically dumping data in at least 10 of them. It also makes for easier reading, a bit like categories in Google Reader, it allows you to prioritize the topic area you need to deal with first.
Einordner oder Anhäufer? auf maol symbolisch says: June 28th, 2007 1:59pm
[...] fragt Are You a Filer or a Piler?, oder eben bist Du ein Einordner oder Anhäufer, ein Ordner oder ein Stapler? Bei mir [...]
Maureen says: June 28th, 2007 7:46pm
Tim: … I wish to no end I could get tagging on the desktop.
I’m trying out a program that some students in Austria are developing called Tag2Find http://www.tag2find.com/.
It’s early days, but it could be the killer file management app that I’ve been looking for; I do wish it had documentation though!
Onno says: June 29th, 2007 2:33am
Filers are nothing but organized pilers, they just use more piles.
Scott says: June 29th, 2007 9:17am
I am a piler with an involuntary tendancy to file the odd thing. I use Beagle to open most stuff in my Linux desktop and stick almost everything in either Documents or Data folders. Documents are stuff I’ve done and Data is everything else. Unfortunately I can’t seem to get into the habit of completely buying into this process. I’m thinking I need a couple of other boxes to stick stuff I’m working on into, and then a way to archive completed stuff like in Gmail.
A Desktop folder called Working could perhaps serve as my filesystem equivalent to the Gmail inbox. Another one that links to my Data folder and one more that links to Documents might work like the Archive button in Gmail. Then I just need desktop tagging and I would be all set.
Are You a Filer or a Piler? « -Deb- in MadCity says: June 30th, 2007 9:01am
[...] Web Worker Daily » Are You a Filer or a Piler? « “A filer is a person who organizes information using a rigid structure, and a piler is someone who maintains a mostly unstructured information organization.” [...]
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jansenma says: July 26th, 2007 7:25pm
I am absolutely a piler, I rely on search functions heavily in nearly every application I use. The exception to this seems to be when I want to browse the latest news headlines or videos. Then I like to choose a category and see what’s out there because I won’t ever be able to think of a keyword for every new concept out there.
This is a great way to identify two types of personalities and might just help bridge some gaps, keep up the great work!
Thanks, -Matt
http://metaviper.com
jessica lipnack says: August 8th, 2007 1:49pm
Great post. Apparently appeals mostly to pilers, of which I am one in both worlds.
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