At Home with Tech

Is your digital life a bit of a disorganized mess? The best gift you can give yourself is carving out time to get it back in recognizable order.

You’ve got it all done. For your family, friends and work. Another year. Congratulations. Everyone says it’s now time to take a break and recharge. Relax!

But if you’re like me, you might be experiencing a certain unease… an uncomfortable itch. It’s like that feeling when you know you’ve forgotten something, but you can’t remember what. But this time, you do. And you’ve continued to put it off, because there’s always something else more pressing.

Now, you hear this nagging inner voice that whispers. It says, “Do it. Do it now. You’ve finally got time.”

Of course, we’re taking about handling all the digital disorganization that piles up throughout the year in the invisible but very real corners of your life. No one else can see it. But you know it’s there. Sure, you’ve been able to operate around it, but it’s ever heavy, and it weighs on you.

The Journey to Digital Zen
Do you want to feel refreshed? Recharged? Really ready for the year ahead? It’s time to invest in a little digital housecleaning. Start the journey to digital Zen.*
Now is the perfect opportunity, as you might have a little more free time in your day.

Here are five areas that I bet could really use your attention right now:

#1
Organize your Digital Photos from the Past Year
Whether your pictures live on your smartphone or computer (or both), if you haven’t yet finished going through this year’s crop and completing your photo-management process (physical albums/online albums/digital photo frames), it’s going to be too late.
Sure, you can tell yourself that you’ll eventually get to them, but they’ll likely get left behind, as your newer photos demand your attention.

#2
Delete All those Emails You Don’t Need
Can’t find that email from last week you want to refer to? It could be due to those thousands of disorganized emails that are cluttering up your inbox. It’s time to get rid of most of them and move the other ones into organized folders!
And don’t forget to also clear out your Junk Email folder (but not before you review it to confirm that real emails haven’t been errantly sucked in).

#3
Remove Old Photos and Videos from your Camera’s Memory Card
If you happen to still use a separate camera, I bet its memory card is looking mighty full. Do you often find yourself frantically trying to delete enough files at the last minute before you need to use your camera? (Yes, that’s me.) It’s time to make that problem go away. Go through that memory card and really free it up!

#4
Clear Out your Unnecessary Cloud Storage
Speaking of memory limits, I bet you’re paying more for your cloud storage these days. Sure, the cloud holds much more than a memory card, but it still has its own limits. Do you really need everything that’s currently in your Dropbox account or iCloud drive?

#5
Slim Down What’s Stored on your Computer’s Internal Drive
Not to be repetitive, but I bet your computer suffers from the same storage woes. Look, you just can’t save everything on your internal drive. And now that newer internal computer drives are the more-pricey SSDs, your current computer probably has less internal storage than your last one.

Gone are the days that you can simply upgrade to your next computer with double the capacity to keep up with your needs.

Portable Drives are Not a Permanent Solution
Yes, you can solve some of these problems by picking up reasonably priced portable drives and archiving your digital life onto them. But hoarding external drives and redirecting your disorganized digital content onto them is simply kicking the virtual can down the road.
What are you going to do a decade from now when you open your closet door, and you spot fifty drives in the back corner? That’s right. You’re going to close the door.

Game over.

The Limits of your Digital Life
Wait. Take a deep breath. Now exhale.

We’re all dealing with the same challenges. In fact, we’re really the first generation to go through this.

The reality is you can’t carry around a record of your complete digital existence throughout your life. We’re only a few decades into this challenge, and I feel we’ve already reached certain limits. Our kids are going to have to figure out how to handle three to four times as much!

But I’m getting ahead of myself. For now, let’s just do what we can. If it’s only a quick fix, that’s okay.

A digital band-aid is better than nothing to slow the hemorrhaging.

The Road to Freedom
Ongoing file organization and strategic file deletion should be part of any long-term strategy for a healthy digital life. And ultimately, as in the physical world, less is more. Clutter in any form is a real drag.

If you invest some time every few months to keep your digital life in order, you’ll likely feel more control over your entire life.

And especially during this time of year, I say why not invest in yourself and start to free yourself from the shackles of all that digital clutter?
You’ll be happy you did!

*I generated my photos for this blog post via Adobe Firefly.