Okay, so I gotta share what happened when I tried digging into this whole ‘Thomas Diaz’ thing I kept bumping into.
Heard the name floating around, you know? Mostly tied to some specific way of organizing digital stuff, or maybe it was a design philosophy, honestly it was a bit vague at first. People online were making it sound like some kind of magic bullet. My own digital workspace? Let’s just say it was less ‘organized’ and more ‘where did I even save that file?’ So, yeah, I was curious.
Getting Started – What Was This Even About?
First thing, I tried to figure out what exactly this ‘Thomas Diaz method’ was supposed to be. It wasn’t like there was one official website yelling “DO THIS!” More like bits and pieces scattered across forums and maybe a few blog posts referencing his ideas. Seemed like it was about simplifying interfaces or maybe structuring project folders in a super minimal way. Sounded okay on paper.
I decided to just try it out on a small side project I had going. Figured it was low risk. If it blew up, no big deal. I took some notes, mostly cobbled together from different mentions I found, trying to get a sense of the core principles.
- Minimalism: Seemed key. Strip everything down. Fewer folders, simpler naming conventions.
- Action-oriented naming: Files or tasks named by what you do with them, not just what they are.
- Focus on flow: Arrange things based on the sequence of work, not just categories.
Putting it into Practice – The Actual Attempt
Alright, so I started reorganizing. Took my existing project folder – a beautiful mess of ‘Final’, ‘Final_v2’, ‘USE_THIS_ONE’ – and tried applying these Diaz ideas. First hurdle? What exactly is ‘minimal’? It’s subjective, right? His supposed followers all seemed to have slightly different takes.
I went with a super flat structure first. Very few folders. It felt weird. Like leaving all your tools scattered on the workbench instead of putting them in drawers. Finding stuff initially felt slower because I wasn’t used to it. I kept wanting to make subfolders for different types of assets, but the ‘method’ seemed to frown on that.
Then the ‘action-oriented naming’. Okay, this kinda made sense for tasks. Instead of ‘Project Proposal Draft’, maybe ‘Write Project Proposal’. But for files? ‘Image For Header Section’ became ‘Place Header Image’? Felt a bit clunky, honestly. And long.
Here’s where it got tricky: Collaboration. I looped in a colleague for feedback on a part of the project. Handed over my beautifully ‘Diaz-ified’ folder structure. He was… confused. Totally lost. He was used to standard conventions, like ‘Assets’, ‘Documents’, ‘Source’. My ‘minimalist’ setup just looked disorganized and random to him. We wasted a good half hour just figuring out where things were.
So, What’s the Verdict?
Look, I get the idea behind it. Trying to simplify, reduce clutter, focus on the workflow. Makes sense in theory. But in practice? For me, it felt like swapping one kind of complexity for another.
The rigid minimalism made quick navigation harder sometimes, especially in larger projects. The naming thing felt forced for certain file types. And the biggest issue? It didn’t play well with others unless everyone was drinking the same Kool-Aid.
Did I stick with it? Nope. Not wholesale, anyway. I did take away some inspiration. I definitely cleaned up my folder structures afterwards, got rid of some genuinely useless nesting. Maybe I use slightly more active language in my task lists now.
But the full ‘Thomas Diaz’ system, or at least my interpretation of it from the scattered info? It wasn’t the magic fix people made it out to be. Felt more like one guy’s personal preference that got hyped up. Maybe it works perfectly for him, but for me and my workflow, it was mostly a detour. Back to my own slightly-less-chaotic-than-before system.
