Folders have been a critical part of my note-taking setup for the longest time.
Meticulously named and obsessively structured folders were at the heart of how I stored ideas, story drafts, links, receipts, to-do lists, and anything else that needed to be filed away for later.
I had a folder for work, another for personal projects, further divided into nested folders for ongoing articles, a separate folder for invoices, one for interviews and transcripts, and a special one for all the things I still had to get to.
In theory, it was organized. In practice, I spent more time figuring out where to put something than actually writing it down. A few years in, the system simply didn’t work.
Since then, I’ve completely overhauled my note-taking process.
If I wasn’t at my desk or on a device synced to my local file system, accessing the correct folder became a chore.
Even when I was on the correct device, I often forgot what I named the file or which subfolder it was hiding in.
So, I made the switch to labels. These labels make search, tagging, and automation much easier than anything I’ve used previously, and have become the nerve center of my note-taking process. Here’s how.
Less organization, more flow
Everything goes into one flat space
The foundation of my workflow is Google Drive. But not in the traditional folder-heavy, structured way. I no longer create nested hierarchies based on folders or mimic desktop structures.
Everything now goes into a single location. Be it a rough draft of an article, a grocery list, or a transcript, everything is dropped into Google Drive, but not necessarily sorted into separate folders.
This system can feel a bit chaotic at first, but Google’s powerful search functions make it possible to find files with ease, assuming you’ve named them properly. More so now that AI is deeply entrenched in Google’s search function.
You now effectively ask Google Drive’s search to find your documents in natural language.
It’s saved me a significant amount of time that I used to spend organizing documents. I ask search for what I need, and it gives me the correct documents. As easy as that.
Letting labels do the heavy lifting
All the organization, none of the clutter
As good as search is, sometimes I need access to the files. For this, instead of folders, I now rely on labels.
Google Drive supports custom labels that can be applied to any file, and this small feature makes a big difference. A single document can now carry multiple contexts.
For example, while writing a draft for this article, I tagged it as “Productivity” and “Android Police” at once. So if I need to look up all the productivity articles I’ve written, it shows up right there.
Labels make it possible to organize without restricting files into specific folders.
A file doesn’t need to belong to one place anymore. It can live across categories without duplication, and that flexibility means I don’t need to obsess over where a file should go, nor do I feel the need to duplicate files in multiple folders and waste space.
Using AI summaries
Gemini’s AI summaries surface what actually matters
One of the most frustrating parts of note-taking is writing something down, but then going back through long documents searching for the information you were looking for.
That’s where Gemini’s AI summaries inside Google Drive come into their own.
Even when I can’t remember the filename or keywords, I can ask Gemini to summarize everything related to a topic and get a clean overview that catches me up with everything I need.
It’s not just catch-ups. You can also use Gemini to interact with topics and documents.
This has brought new life to all my short meeting notes and random brain dumps.
In the past, they would be dumped into the archive, never to be touched again. Now, even half-finished ideas are useful because Gemini can scan and summarize them with surprising accuracy.
It’s not quite an Obsidian-style personal knowledge management system, but Gemini AI makes the files in my drive much more actionable.
Better file-naming
A simple trick that makes a big difference
While the other changes to my workflow require a bit of work and a change in habits, the simplest change I made is also the easiest.
I also started prefixing every file with a timestamp using the year, month, and date format. This gives me a simple, consistent way to track documents over time.
Even without folders, this structure lets me build a timeline stretching across all my documents. When I’m reviewing progress over a few weeks or revisiting an idea, having those timestamps makes everything easy to track down.
A system that just works without the overhead
What began as a quick fix to full-fledged file management has turned into a full-blown system that I now rely on every day. It’s faster, smarter, and more flexible than anything I’ve used before.
There are no folders to maintain. Just files, labels, timestamps, and AI smarts that can pull everything together.
This new approach also aligns with how I think. I don’t need my notes to be pristine. I just need them to be available.
By letting go of structure and trusting in search, I’ve given myself more room to create and less pressure to organize.
