Ask HN: How do you organise your workspace?

Minimal is the best way. Get rid of all the clutter. Even if it means going wireless with your physical workspace. Don't annoy your eyes with portraits or quotes. You are all the motivation you need. You need to focus. The same goes for virtual workspace. Do not keep too many tabs open; too much CPU; too much Ctrl+Tab. Try to keep the workspace as free as possible and you'll find that it works incredibly well in keeping you focused. This works well for me. For e.g., if I am working on an app, it's only vi, stackoverflow, github and windows with related docs. Everything else like FB, twitter, mail remains closed.

I have been trying to figure out how to organize my files recently. I'm moving around between multiple computers a lot, so I put a lot of my files into Dropbox.

It's a mess in there though. I try to separate out my work into "purpose", so I have folders for work, for fun, for learning. I'm ending up with a lot of 6-7 folder deep hierarchies,except for my experimentation folder. In there, I have about 40 different folders all named a bit arbitrarily, all with little snippets that I look at infrequently.

My desk is usually just my computer, 1 or 2 screens, and a lot of paper (both printed papers and scratch paper). I make it a point to always have a writing tool within arms length at all times, this has resulted in me having about 5 or 6 pens lying about on every desk, and 1 or 2 in every jacket I own.