You’ve been there. A co-worker asks you to find a document on the shared drive. Despite some searches, you’re unable to find exactly what was requested. Frustrated (and perhaps a bit embarrassed), you confess you can’t find the file, only to have the original requestor cue it up, leaving you feeling slightly inadequate, but also curious as to why it’s so difficult to bring order to your team’s data.

This happens frequently in office settings. In our attempts to organize information we typically just hoard it all in one place, applying a loose structure, and as the months and years go by, the oft-feared shared drive becomes an untenable beast—a hydra incapable of being vanquished.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. With a few tweaks and changed mindset, getting data organized is a lot more accessible than most professionals realize. Here are three common misconceptions about information repositories that are keeping you from getting organized: