- According to Tiago Forte: - “Numerous studies (Bergman et al. 2008; Fitchett and Cockburn 2015; Teevan et al. 2004) have found that people strongly prefer to navigate their file systems manually, scanning for the file they’re looking for, as opposed to searching.” - He goes on to explain that searching for information requires *declarative* memory where you have to remember what exactly it is that you’re looking for. Manual navigation — like clicking through a series of folders to find a given file — relies on *procedural* memory, which requires less energy from our brains. - I haven’t checked the primary sources, but this does match my own experience. - There are a lot of tools coming out that don’t use [[{10} hierarchy vs network in knowledge management|a hierarchy]] in their organization, like MyMind. It’s really neat that you don’t have to spend time organizing the data you’re collecting, but it also feels impossible (to me) to query effectively. - Hierarchies are unambiguous. I can trust, for example, that all of my notes are in my “Notes” folder; there aren’t any other places those files might be, and I know I haven’t forgotten to put anything there because my “inbox” is empty. If I relied entirely on tags or other networked structures, however, I wouldn’t be able to easily tell which files I forgot to tag or tagged incorrectly. (Which is not to say that there isn’t a way to do this, just that I don’t know what it is.) - Maybe a generational thing? Maybe paranoia about future-proofing? Maybe just a preference in how / when I process files… Either way — I agree; I prefer to navigate my file systems manually or by direct search. [[folders do not make my brain itch]] - And, as Tiago says in the same article: **“…hierarchies aren’t going away, even as our search tools become ever more sophisticated.”**