Few tips from my experience with this organization/productivity problem:
- try some formalized productivity methodologies, eg. GTD (getting things done), ZTD (zen to done), Priacta TRO. Most of them will address the problem of information-data organization and will at least provide you with some interesting guiding principles you can borrow and adapt for your needs.
- have a written list of everything you want to accomplish... all lifelong goals, short-term goals, dreams, wishes, everything. It will help you evaluate the new information and clutter you bring into your life. Whenever you come across a piece of information, book, thread, link, ask yourself ? what is the reason why you want to check it out? What do you expect to get from it? Will it bring you any closer to any of your major goals? Sometimes, it will only be a way to alleviate few minutes of boredom... and you know it... and you still click the link, and waste some time... and that's ok, but the important thing is to be aware of it. Be aware that you just decided to waste XX minutes of your life. Next step ? watch the patterns arise through your awareness, see how often you make decisions that do nothing to help you achieve your goals, but only appeal to your needs for instant-gratification. Just be aware of the passage of time, of the ticking clock, and the way you use that time.
- related to the above paragraph, and in answer to your question about organizing bookmarks... here's how I do it.
Instead of organizing bookmarks thematically (liked I used to do in the start, the way most people intuitively start doing), I organize bookmarks into 'goal folders'.
Here's a small example hierarchy.
Bookmarks Menu
--|Goals
----|3. ...
----|4. ...
----|5. Learn Spanish (the number represents the goal priority, how important it is compared to other goals, in whatever vision of life you had in mind in the life-planning/goal-setting phase)
------|Daily (folder; sites that are basically tasks to be done on a daily basis, in allotted time... common subfolder in my goal trees)
--------|I. Complete 2 Duolingo sessions (= link; short, custom, goal-oriented name aids in readability and overall long-term vision and productivity)
--------|II. Watch an episode of Destinos (=link)
------|Sites in local language (folder; mass of links that agree with my learning method, available here for easy access in random time intervals when I need them)
--------|news:lavozdegalicia.es
--------|...
------|Resources (anything useful that would be referred to on daily basis, or valuable resource stored for later use... eg. here, I'd have a subfolder for academic/idiomatic/etymological dictionaries, folder for grammatical references... in "Be more healthy" tree, under "Exercise" subtree, I have BBcom references, nutrition tables, etc.)
----|6. Have lucid dreams
------| ...
--------| ...
etc.
CBA with formatting, but you get the idea.
Know your goals, know what it would take to achieve them, and use your web browser to organize only the internet resources that are to be used in achieving your goals (anything else would be impractical).
If you don't have a list of goals, take a look at your existing, unorganized bookmarks, I'm sure you'll be able to make some deductions from all that data.
This might seem to be needlessly time intensive at first sight, but viewed in the long-term perspective, it is obviously much needed in order to organize all these resources into somewhat coherent, predictable and prioritized structure, and in the long run, it will save you much time, effort and frustration.
- keep a journal. There are countless benefits to be had from journaling (just ask Jim Rohn), but I'll focus on the one that pertains to this topic ? how did keeping a journal help me become more organized (and productive, and everything else). And the answer is... I used it as an extension of my limited mental workspace and, more importantly, a tool for self-exploration and critical self-inquiry. I'd feed it all my fears, worries, desires, plans, thoughts, ideas, actions. I'd put my self on an observation table, and like a scientist with pen and note pad in hand, describe and analyze everything I see. Where am I right now? Why? Where I should be? (Why?) What am I doing (and why)? What I should be doing? What have I done today? Why? Why not? What are my goals, was I aware of them all the time, did I work towards them, in cluster, on an individual basis, how did I do, what got me sidetracked, etc...
I'd write about anything that crosses my mind. At least I did when I started. Now I don't need that level of detail (I identified my weak points and I'm more conscious about them), but in the start, it's an useful practice to get better insight into your thoughts, habits, and your self in general.
Anyway, once I'm done with all the observations and analyses, or better -- once I have a week's worth of journal entries done in this style, I have an invaluable depiction of my personality traits, strengths, weaknesses, reasons why I fail or succeed at certain things, I get an accurate, detailed and intimate level of insight into my whole life that no psychologist could ever dream of getting, regardless of methods and competence.
This is also how I thought of that bookmark organization method outlined above, one time when I caught myself procrastinating with tons of tabs open in firefox. I opened my journal in TreeDBNotes, and started thinking about how I got to open all that crap, how I could logically group them, and what I was trying to achieve with each group / link stream. That's when I realized how every signal I react to and follow (signal being a link here) actually resonates with some of my desires (often even on Maslow level), and how my browsing could be streamlined and segmented for better productivity.
- also, one useful software: Voidtools Everything. It indexes all files on your HDD, and you can just call it with a hotkey, start typing, and you'll have your file read in a second. Eg. CTRL+ALT+S, amazon .pdf, and in 2 seconds, I have a list of ALL .pdf files on all of my hard disks that have amazon in their name. I use it more as a faster way to find and launch files, it shouldn't be a substitute for a proper file/folder/data organization system.
I could write much more about all of this, but it's already becoming messy with my unstructured way of writing, so I'll just end it here. Hopefully some of this made sense, and wasn't encoded with too stronk Engrish.
Keywords: Productivity methodology, GTD, ZTD, Pomodoro, dreams-goals-projects-tasks, logical-physical-virtual organization, (self)awareness, self-inquiry, common patterns, ruts, ticking clock, goal folders, journal, TheJournal, TreeDBNotes, TiddlyWiki, Voidtools.
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