3 steps toward mastering your digital clutter
Sometimes I don’t understand myself. I get mad at myself for having three long sleeved t-shirts (all a different color and style, mind you), I keep almost no paper in my life, I own one pair of casual shoes (TOMS, which are really comfy by the way) and yet, what do I see when I open my Evernote “Archive” notebook? Over 400 articles I’ve saved for God knows what reason. Seriously? Come on Sam, what were you actually going to do with 400 articles? Read them all again?
Digital clutter is still clutter. I think sometimes I forget that, especially as I move the majority of my life to digital media and the “cloud”. I think originally my plan was to have a vast library of personal development articles I thought were noteworthy so that at any time I could search for “motivation” or “inspiration” and suddenly be hit with a deluge of reading material to lift me out of any creative slumps. It’s a good idea, but can you think of anything else that does something very, very similar to this but with a much more vast library? Google. Or, Delicious. Or any of the other multitude of social bookmarking sites. I wasn’t doing anything I couldn’t get somewhere else, better, and without having to host my own data.
Over the next few weeks I’m going through my Evernote files and trashing anything that isn’t user-generated or has a very impressive reason to remain in my archive. There is no reason for me to keep all the Zen Habits articles I’ve really enjoyed on my hard drive whenI can easily hop on the internet and find them with 3 keystrokes.
What about you? How is your digital clutter situation? What are you saving that could easily be found somewhere else? Do you really need all those hilarious animal videos you downloaded a couple years ago? What about that really bad techno album you downloaded (legally, right?). I challenge you to try to get your digital clutter under control. Here are a few tips that have worked for me.
1. Utilize the “cloud”: The cloud is just fancy terminology for saving your data to online services that host your data on their servers, not your computer. For example, if you use Google Docs or Zoho you are utilizing the cloud by having them store your documents. Another example of the power of the cloud is streaming audio and video like Pandora, Last.fm, or Hulu. Think about your watching or listening habits– could you possibly replace the actual files on your computer with a streaming service? These websites have improved like crazy over the past couple years; if you haven’t checked them out lately you might be surprised.
2. Simplify your digital filing system: Drastically reducing the number of files that you save to your hard drive (because you’re utilizing the power of the cloud) is the first step to simplifying your filing system. I used to use an extensive system involving alphabetization and dates. Now, every file that resides on my computer (other than system files and applications) go to either the “Archive” or “In Progress” folder. It doesn’t take much more than that because I can easily use Spotlight (or Google Desktop) to find any file. You don’t need an extensive filing system if you don’t have a lot of files and can easily search what you do have with a few keystrokes. Also, pro-tip, don’t let your Desktop be the default landing zone for files you download. Set up a dedicated Downloads folder (or even your In Progress folder) and clean it out regularly.
3. Ask yourself a couple questions: Before you save anything, ask yourself a couple questions. “How often am I going to use this file? Can I save it somewhere on the cloud instead? Can I stream it instead? Can I easily download this again if I end up needing it?” The answers to these questions should shed some light on whether or not you actually need to save something on your computer.
All you minimalists out there, would I be able to tell you were a minimalist if I sat down in front of your computer?
Image by saaby.
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