Imagine you had a single folder with 10,000 documents, or 10,000 folders with a single file? How about 100 folders with 100 files, which is more preferable? And what if you had structure dictating some top level folders, and some lower level folders? Say categories, then clients, and then projects?
If you have a nested set of things, storing them all horizontally makes it an endless list of things to sort through. Storing them strictly vertical doesn’t help either by nesting them under endless subcategories and folders.
What this means is that an optimal shape of information organization is essentially pyramid in shape. Especially when managing any kind of sufficiently complex structure. You want a couple folders at the top, and progressively more folders as you drill down, but never reaching a level of single layer structure where it’s too spread out.
This is what folder structures do for PC’s, is that they make it much more reasonable to find and use information quickly.
A place where this is very helpful is Trello, where you might have a multitude of Boards for things like client projects, and the only meta organization system you have is a Team.
So the solution I’ve found for adding a bit more “height” to organization structures on Trello is what I call a “Dashboard” (yes, it’s clever).
It’s a simple Trello Board that has Cards representing Boards. This gives you an additional layer of organization in your structure to account for a wide “base” of the pyramid.
An example of this here:
https://trello.com/b/n3CEqhGC/dashboard-example
Bonus:
Add Zapier zaps to change a label color on your Dashboard’s card, based on activity on the board the card represents. Which creates an “indicator light” if you will for the underlying board.