If you're like me, you are constantly going back to the same few directories to retrieve files to reference or work on.
Some people put shortcuts on their desktop to these directories, and that works fine. One method I've seen that you can also do is to add an underscore "_" to the beginning of your important directory's names so that they always bubble up to the top of your list when sorted alphabetically.
For example, "Research" and "Teaching" are two folders on my work machine that I am accessing constantly. Instead of having to scroll through a bunch of directories to find them, I renamed them to "_Research" and "_Teaching" so that, when I sort the list alphabetically, they appear right at the top every time.
