Getting Your Laptop Set Up to Follow Along
Okay so. Before we get into any actual organizing, we need your laptop sitting in front of you, awake, and ready to go. This lesson is short on purpose. It's just the plumbing part.
If you already know how to find your Downloads folder and you're comfortable clicking around, you can probably skim this one. But stick around anyway, because I'm going to work in a mistake I made that I don't want you making.
First, just get the laptop open and charged
Sounds dumb to even say. But bring the charger. We're going to be in these files for the next hour and a half and I don't want anyone's laptop dying at minute forty while we're mid-thought. Plug in when you sit down, don't wait for the low battery warning.
If your laptop's been sitting in a drawer for a while, give it a few extra minutes to update when you turn it on. Sometimes it wants to do that the second it wakes up. Let it. Fighting it just means it does it later, at a worse time.
Find your file explorer
This is the app that shows you all your folders and files. On Windows it's usually a little yellow folder icon in your taskbar at the bottom, or you can search for "File Explorer." On a Mac it's called Finder, and it's the smiley-face-looking icon usually already on your dock.
I'll say up front, I'm a Windows guy mostly. Where Mac folks are, I get a little lost in the newer file stuff on those machines. So if you're on a Mac, I'm going to pair you up with someone else on a Mac tonight, and you two are going to be each other's backup for this part. That's not me passing the buck, that's just me being honest about where my paygrade ends.
Does that make sense so far... Everybody found their file explorer or their Finder?
Find your Downloads folder specifically
I want you to click into Downloads and just look at it. Don't touch anything yet. Just look.
If it's got forty things in it you don't recognize, that's completely normal, that's the whole reason we're here. Downloads is where files go to die. It's the junk drawer of your whole computer, and almost nobody empties it on purpose. We're going to fix that over the next few weeks, but tonight, just find it and know where it lives.
Get logged into whatever you use for email
We'll be touching email a little later in the course, so make sure you're logged in and you remember your password well enough to get back in if it kicks you out. If you're not sure, now's the time to figure that out, not at 9pm on lesson four when we actually need it.
A word about passwords, and my forty-minute mistake
Here's the thing though. A lot of you are going to open your laptop tonight and hit a password wall somewhere. Email, maybe your laptop login itself. That's fine. But I want to tell you something before we go further, because I did this to myself and it cost me forty minutes I didn't need to lose.
I was cleaning up my accounts, feeling very organized, very on top of it. I went to change a password on something, typed the new one in, and then — before I'd actually saved it anywhere — I got pulled away. Closed the laptop. Came back an hour later and could not for the life of me remember what I'd just changed it to. I was locked out of my own account by my own hand, because I'd been "so organized" I changed the password before I'd written the new one down anywhere safe.
Forty minutes of resets and security questions and my own quiet swearing later, I got back in. And now I teach it as a rule: save first, then change. Write the new password down somewhere — even just a sticky note for the next five minutes, we'll fix that habit soon enough — before you hit save on the new one. Not after. Before.
I bring this up now because tonight, getting logged in, is exactly the moment this bites people. If your laptop asks you to reset something, don't just wing it and hope you'll remember. Get the new password written somewhere before you commit to it.
One opinion, since we're here
A password manager is safer than your brain, full stop. I know that feels backwards — writing it down feels risky, and keeping it "just in your head" feels safe because it's yours. It's not. Your brain forgets, reuses, and panics under pressure. A password manager doesn't do any of those things. We'll set one up together in a couple lessons. Tonight, just get logged in however you currently do it, sticky notes and all. No shame. We're not there yet.
Before next time
Just bring the laptop charged, know where your Downloads folder and your email login live, and if you're on a Mac, know you've got a buddy for tonight. That's it. 👍