Tidying is exploratory

Whilst it is important to be neat and tidy in your life, in your creative life Austin-Kleon advocates for a certain level of clutter and disorder. In this way when you tidy up, you find things that you wouldn’t always expect. You might not get what you are looking for, but you’ll get what you need.

A Zettlekasten like this one works in a similar way. The point is to not have everything ordered, but to stumble across things while you explore the links between the files. embrace-friction-in-your-systems.