A big deal is often made about organization, sometimes too big a deal. However, sometimes without the big O you make your job far more difficult than it should be.

First, you have to look at whether the items you're trying to organize are digital or physical. I'm going to focus on digital here. In part, this means that I don't generally recommend printing out material unless you absolutely need to. Too often, people print out material that they really didn't need to, keep it for a few days, toss it in a pile, and then eventually just recycle or toss it out completely unused. Better to not print it out unless you absolutely need to. (If saying so makes me a tree hugger, I guess I should go outside and start hugging some trees.

Second, how complex is your project? For some tasks, tagging or adding labels to your email (whatever your particular email client supports) is all you need, allowing you to quickly find what you're looking for. You might also create folders for storing emails related to specific projects. If you use webmail then you might even be able to make a bookmark to the mail right inside your webmail or your browser.

The same goes for bookmarking important web pages. Make folders for your bookmarks for some basic organization. One method I used to use (and still use when I don't have any other options) is either emailing things to myself or asking people to email them to me so that they won't get forgotten or lost. I can then tag and file the mail as I need to. To find items later, you might check out Google Desktop if you don't like the search tools you already have.  

If you have a lot of printed materials, scan them in (or hire a student to do it for you, they could use the money and you can use the time doing things that will earn you more than you're paying them), and/or organize them with a product such as Levenger's Circa system of notebooks. For business cards, one clever solution is to lay them down in groups of four or so, take a digital photo of them, put and the file in a folder with notes on where and when you got the cards as part of the filename. You might also try storing your physical materials in a document storage box labeled with the projects it contains, and/or labeled manila envelopes.

When working on this blog post, I wrote some colleagues to ask how they organize their research. Since they all answered me through the email list, I was able to search my Inbox on the subject and view just their responses, and then move each piece of mail to a saved folder when I was done with it.

While this example might not sound much like organization, consider that putting things into order doesn't have to be a permanent thing. As long as it makes you able to find the information when you need it, it's organized, at least for the moment. In some cases, though, you need to be able to refer back to things later. When an editor asked me to clarify who had said something for an article, since I had put everything into a single folder in a single program, I was able to quickly search all of my interviews for that piece and tell him within just minutes. Before I started using this method, it might have taken me an hour to track down the information on my computer. 

Alas, a lot of projects aren't so straightforward with everything saved into text files dumped into a folder together. Where I started to get buried and seriously slowed down is when I have material from many different sources, meaning both many different people and in many different formats (say text files, email, PDFs, web pages, and images). I've found that for me, it's essential to get everything in one place so I don't have to flip between four different programs to find what I need, or I get bogged down and it takes me far longer than it should to collect my thoughts.

For this purpose, I use DEVONthink, an OS X program that lets me drag and drop in many different types of documents and organize them into project groups (If you're looking for Windows-specific software, check out Debrief or Treepad). Many swear by a Firefox add-on named Zotero for at least their online research needs, which I learned about when talking to colleagues about how they manage their research, and am considering switching to. I like that it's cross-platform, but first I need to try it out and see if it meets my needs as well as or better than DEVONthink does. With some of these tools you can drop in web pages as they appear right at that moment, which can be invaluable in making sure that you capture the information you needed--remember that materials on the web can change at any time.

Another popular solution is Evernote, which is a web-based service that offers free and paid options. Those who travel a lot and can't be sure they'll always have access to the same computer (or divide their work time between their smartphone and their computer) particularly like this option. You can also export an Evernote notebook to your computer, which to me is a must, as I want to be able to access my materials when I'm offline. In fact, you can sync the information across multiple machines/devices running multiple platforms. Add the Evernote browser plug-in and you can add information to this online tool even easier.

Don't have a digital way to take notes that you can carry around? Some people carry 3x5 cards for this purpose, and the more dedicated even print out a framework onto the cards that they can use as a guide to put down the information they specifically need (author, title, etc.) You can then either type in the information or scan it in. Extra points for doing an OCR scan so the computer gets the text without you having to type it.

Eventually you'll find that the information in one folder will pile up and become unwieldy. Organization is a process that's never entirely finished. When too much data piles up in one spot, split it into sub-folders/categories so that you can still quickly find things. And make smart use of search.

Organization might sound like a lot of work, but ultimately, keeping yourself organized at even a basic level pays you back in spades. You'll save tons of time when working on the project, when answering queries about it, and even later when you realize that you need to refer back for a new project to source materials from a year ago. Of course you'll also save yourself some stress and give yourself the gift of peace of mind as well. And what freelancer couldn't use a bit of both?