The following is the directory structure I use for organizing my files for work and projects, and life.
inbox/
notes/
|
|--inbox.md
|--todo.txt
`--done.txt
projects/
|
|--project_1
`--project_2
notes/
|
|
|--done.txt
|--home_project_1_note.md
|--work_project_2_note.md
|--inbox.md
|--todo.txt
archive/
|
`--YYYY/
|
|--notes/
| |--home_project_3_note.md
| `--work_project_4_note.md
|
`--projects/
|--project_3
`--project_4
inbox
The inbox directory is pretty self explanatory, things land here when you aren't quite sure what to do yet, or a place that a new project might start taking form.
notes
The notes directory notes are for thoughts, drafts, plans, and well notes. For my notes I mostly use plain text markdown files. There are other markup languages that are better specified and more powerful, but I appreciate the ubiquity and simplicity of markdown.
projects
A project is anything that ends up needing a requires a working space. A projects name is not abbreviated, and if it's name is more than one word they are separated by underscores e.g. some_project_name, other_project, thing
archive
So thing don't get to cluttered, every year a new archive directory with the year as its name get gets created, with a projects and notes directory inside it. When a project is finished or becomes inactive it can be moved to the projects directory in the archive. For notes I usually wait till the end of the year and move all notes that I'm done with to the archive.