Are you a piles person or a files person?

It’s pretty easy to figure out - just look at your desk (or desktop). If things are scattered around and piled on top of each other, you’re probably a piles person. If you have boxes, folders, or a filing cabinet close to hand, you’re probably a files person.

Piles people and files people have different approaches to how they tackle things, and each have pros and cons.

Piles make it easier to think laterally and connect unrelated concepts together. It’s easier to jump from one idea to another and cross-pollinate concepts into your ideas.

Piles invite exploration. It’s a lot easier to flip through a whole bunch of papers, or to keep glancing at some cool object or inspiring design, than it is to go through files.

Files reduce distractions and make it easier to find what you are looking for. When you’re working in files mode, it’s much easier to focus on one thing at a time and dive deep into it.

Files are also essential for building a stories; you can’t tell one if you have a whole bunch of scattered concepts that aren’t tied together with a structure. Files give you the structure you need to build a story.

Files are kind of un-inviting during this discovery phase, as you it's harder to see the whole picture when you are looking at it piece-by-piece. It can be pretty hard to even know how much stuff you have in your box of content.

I’m a big fan of Scrivner, a program designed to help writers through the process of building large volumes of text. Scrivner has a card-based view, where you can enter in things and jump from one piece to another:

At any point in time, you can take all those cards and stack them together into one large document:

Files people and Piles people have their unique strengths, but just because you lean towards one doesn’t mean you can’t take advantage of both. You don’t have to be just a files person or a piles person. Although you probably do have a bit of a bias towards one, it’s totally possible to switch from one mentality to the other throughout your project.