Organizing Genealogy Without Creating a Second Full-Time Job
My early research taught me that keeping everything is not the same as organizing everything. I had duplicate scans, inconsistent filenames, printed copies I forgot I owned, and records separated from the context that made them useful.
Choose a system you will actually maintain
Paper, digital, or a combination can work. The goal is retrieval: can you find the record again, identify whose record it is, understand where it came from, and know whether it is an original, scan, transcription, or working copy?
Name files when you save them
A descriptive filename can include the date, surname, given name, record type, and location. Consistency is more important than perfection.
Back up deliberately
Digital files should not live in only one place. Originals also deserve storage appropriate to their physical condition and importance. Your working copies and preservation copies do not have to be the same thing.