Getting organized

If you've ever tried to organize your home library, or your garage, or anything, you know there are always choices.

• Do I put my East Asian fiction with my East Asian nonfiction, or should I separate fiction and nonfiction entirely?

• Does this Japanese cookbook go in the East Asian section or in the cookbook section?

You have to organize your CRM data too.

• is this person's meal preference part of his individual contact record, or just his participation at this event?

• We're asking personal interest questions on this contribution page, but should that be stored as part of the contribution or the contact?

Here's the thing:

Whether it's books or data, there is no One Right Answer.

It totally depends on how you plan to use the thing later.

Where will it be easiest to find? Where will it make the most sense a month from now?

Of course it's hard to predict the future, so you make your best guess now.

It's also hard to reorganize the whole thing later, so it's worth putting some thought into it at the beginning.

Either way, with a little experience you can get it right in the beginning most of the time.

And with a little more experience, you'll understand that sometimes you guessed wrong and need to reorganize.

That's the way it goes.

All the best,
A.