I can't agree with a heavy emphasis on text search and having a minimal or even no organizational structure, as several folks here have suggested. Text search and an organizational structure each have their own advantages and disadvantages, and they complement each other. This because extremely clear to me when I worked as a patent examiner. If an examiner did only text searches (or only patent classification searches, the equivalent of an organizational structure), their search would not be considered complete because it almost certainly would miss relevant documents.
In my own files I have an organizational structure. It's not perfect, but I usually can quickly find what I'm looking for with it by simply browsing. Finding what I'm looking for quickly is what matters. And I can find things that would be quite difficult to find with a text search, like documents that use inconsistent terminology. Yes, I have to put those files in an appropriate location, but that's not a lot of work in my experience when "onboarding" a file. Even when I add a bunch of symlinks to the file in other locations, it's still worthwhile in my experience.
Sometimes, however, I can't remember where something was filed, and I turn to text search (usually via grep or pdfgrep, though I'll be trying Recoll in the near future). In that case it's not uncommon at all to be unable to find what I'm looking for, even for my own notes where I'm trying to be more careful about using consistent terminology! I frequently don't remember the terminology I used, just like I might not remember where something was filed.
Text search is convenient as it often doesn't require any additional effort like organizing files does, but it has limitations that a good organizational structure would try to compensate for. However, text search should have additional effort to apply SEO techniques to help you find a file again. I will often add keywords to my own notes to help me later.
My organizational structure is not arbitrary, for instance, putting files into folders for each letter of the alphabet. Even if automated, that's fairly pointless because anyone can jump to a particular letter anyway. I organizing things based on actual scenarios.
> ...I will often add keywords to my own notes to help me later...
I do this too! I learned it from my web dev days (back in early 2000s), where adding keywords helped search engines, etc. Half the time i just list out some synonyms in a "reference" area of any document/text file that i am drafting...the other 50% of the time i actually try and use synyonms inline, in the context of my writing...this helps for SEO sure, but also for my own writing it keeps things fresh, and (though small gain) helps me improve the extent of my writing vocabulary. The result being that it helps generally with searchability for my own material later on, even years later.
In my own files I have an organizational structure. It's not perfect, but I usually can quickly find what I'm looking for with it by simply browsing. Finding what I'm looking for quickly is what matters. And I can find things that would be quite difficult to find with a text search, like documents that use inconsistent terminology. Yes, I have to put those files in an appropriate location, but that's not a lot of work in my experience when "onboarding" a file. Even when I add a bunch of symlinks to the file in other locations, it's still worthwhile in my experience.
Sometimes, however, I can't remember where something was filed, and I turn to text search (usually via grep or pdfgrep, though I'll be trying Recoll in the near future). In that case it's not uncommon at all to be unable to find what I'm looking for, even for my own notes where I'm trying to be more careful about using consistent terminology! I frequently don't remember the terminology I used, just like I might not remember where something was filed.
Text search is convenient as it often doesn't require any additional effort like organizing files does, but it has limitations that a good organizational structure would try to compensate for. However, text search should have additional effort to apply SEO techniques to help you find a file again. I will often add keywords to my own notes to help me later.
My organizational structure is not arbitrary, for instance, putting files into folders for each letter of the alphabet. Even if automated, that's fairly pointless because anyone can jump to a particular letter anyway. I organizing things based on actual scenarios.