0.3 · Workspace Setup & Hygiene

(paid-course opener: orient → stakes → in) Okay, this video is about how you set up your workspace, and I want to kill one idea before we start: this is not about being tidy. Naming and folder structure feel cosmetic until the day somebody opens your workspace at three in the morning, finds four tables called Untitled and New Table Copy 2, and re-runs the wrong one on ten thousand rows. Hygiene is a safety system. You saw in the credit video what one unwatched table can burn. This is the fifteen minutes of setup that makes that mistake close to impossible.

Five rules. That's the whole system.

  1 · NEST everything      no table lives outside a workbook, ever
  2 · NUMBER workbooks     "01 · Inbound" sorts itself; "Inbound" doesn't
  3 · NAME descriptively   [object] + [what it does] + [status]
                           "Companies · TAM enrich · LIVE"
  4 · SEPARATE builds      one project per workbook; test tables get
                           their own sandbox workbook
  5 · ARCHIVE ruthlessly   dead table? archive it TODAY, not someday

Rule one, nest everything. A table outside a workbook is a table nobody owns. Rule two, number your workbooks, because numbered folders sort themselves and unnumbered ones become a junk drawer. Rule three, name descriptively, and use a convention: the object, what it does, and its status. "Companies, TAM enrich, LIVE" tells you everything before you open it. "Untitled table" tells you nothing after you do. Rule four, separate your builds. One project per workbook, and your experiments live in a sandbox workbook, never next to production. Rule five, archive ruthlessly. A dead table sitting in a live workbook is a loaded weapon; somebody will eventually run it.

The convention is three parts, and it borrows a rule you may already use in your CRM: lead with the object.

  [OBJECT] · [WHAT IT DOES] · [STATUS]

Companies · TAM enrich · LIVE People · CFO multithread · TEST Companies · funding signal → sequencer · LIVE People · old event list 2025 · ARCHIVED ```

Object first, so everything about companies sits together. Then the job, in plain words. Then the status in capitals: LIVE, TEST, or ARCHIVED. Anyone who opens your workspace, including you in three months, reads the whole system at a glance.

(outline only — narrate live, mistakes stay in) - Start from a messy sandbox workspace (pre-seed it with Untitled tables and a stray copy) - Create the workbook skeleton: 00 Sandbox · 01 Data Foundation · 02 Inbound · 03 Outbound - Rename two bad tables to the convention on camera, thinking out loud - Drag the stray table into its workbook; archive one dead table - End state: the before/after of the same workspace

Here's a quick recap of what we learned in this video.

One: hygiene is a safety system, not housekeeping. The 3am wrong-table re-run only happens in messy workspaces.

Two: five rules. Nest everything, number workbooks, name descriptively, separate builds, archive ruthlessly.

Three: the naming convention is object, job, status. "Companies, TAM enrich, LIVE." Read the workspace at a glance.

The Workspace Starter under this video has the full spec: the folder skeleton, the convention, and the archive protocol. Set it up once and every build in this course lands in the right place.

Your exercise: build your workspace to spec. Create the numbered workbook skeleton, rename every existing table to the convention, and archive anything dead. Then check yourself against the rubric on the Workspace Starter. It takes fifteen minutes, and it's the last time you'll ever think about it.

Next up: the Quick-Wins Bank. Fifteen builds you can ship this week, before you've mastered anything.