Virtual Organization
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The other day, I spent a good amount of time trimming my Amazon.com wish list down from 800 items to about 70. And today, I spent about an hour at work just going through and cleaning up my email inbox. How do you manage your digital life? Do you have algorithms you follow (like my strategy of allowing the data to build up and fragment, then doing occassional defrags and disk clean ups, metaphorically speaking); do you just let your files fester forever; or do you go without all that cruft and keep things minimal?
In the office (where I am not allowed private emails) I don't give a crap, I get included in so many that I simply read all at the end of the day. For private email my inbox is always empty, it gets cleaned up daily by both of us (the wife uses the same email) and filed or deleted. Hot/G mail gets the same treatment, daily. If I go offline for any time this can be a pain but then I'm willing to just trash an inbox, if it is important I'll get another email.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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The other day, I spent a good amount of time trimming my Amazon.com wish list down from 800 items to about 70. And today, I spent about an hour at work just going through and cleaning up my email inbox. How do you manage your digital life? Do you have algorithms you follow (like my strategy of allowing the data to build up and fragment, then doing occassional defrags and disk clean ups, metaphorically speaking); do you just let your files fester forever; or do you go without all that cruft and keep things minimal?
I never delete personal text or image files, storage is too cheap to worry about that. My EverNote notes are getting to the point of unmanageable though, not sure what to do there. I make rules to manage my e-mails into folders, which makes them easier for me to deal with as they arrive. I have 1600 unread in my main folder and 5000+ in my "shopping" folder. As far as wishlists, my Amazon one scares me. It's mostly books, of which I won't be able to get through all before I die (too many). Actually after looking at its contents, I'm sure I'm on a watchlist. My Netflix queue has about 200, but it has been decreasing more than in increasing in size (months of unemployment helped with that). Gamefly, I hardly add to it, just get the fitness games for the fiancee. Then there is Cabelas (camping and shooting wishlists) and UrbanOutfitters (clothes). I'm getting married in the fall, I wish I could put some of this stuff on the registry (especially books), I don't want a new toaster, blender, microwave, or cutlery set (though I do actually need them).
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson
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The other day, I spent a good amount of time trimming my Amazon.com wish list down from 800 items to about 70. And today, I spent about an hour at work just going through and cleaning up my email inbox. How do you manage your digital life? Do you have algorithms you follow (like my strategy of allowing the data to build up and fragment, then doing occassional defrags and disk clean ups, metaphorically speaking); do you just let your files fester forever; or do you go without all that cruft and keep things minimal?
My online accounts are kept fairly tidy (I generally don't let my inboxes get larger than a page, I only make wishlists while deciding what to buy and delete them afterwards, etc). Local organization is a whole different beast though, I bought a 2 TB drive a while back because my 1 TB filled up (luckily I got it from a store that didn't seem to be aware there had been a recent jump in mechanical hard drive prices). Sure it would have been cheaper to just delete all the anime I had already watched, my collection of various Linux installation CDs, install files for VS, etc, etc, etc...but what if I needed them again and the internet stopped existing so I couldn't just re-download them?! (Really it's more about if I want to use them again I don't want to have to wait...)
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I have 360 emails from my mom with jokes/vids/powerpoints which I don;t even have the time to go through and read/delete and this number is as of this morning and I get 10-20 more every day.... :(
Alberto Bar-Noy --------------- “The city’s central computer told you? R2D2, you know better than to trust a strange computer!” (C3PO)
I had a relative who did that. I then replied to each of his emails with a link to this video: Stop Forwarding That Crap To Me. He didn't seem to get the hint to I replied all and spelled out a few things to him. :doh:
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In the "Olden Days" it was easy - just buy a new computer. :) Nowadays, I use the out of sight, out of mind approach, and keep my email down to the first page (on gmail), and put everything else in folders (labels). My main problem is my browser bookmarks - it's like highlighting every sentence in a book - useless.
- S 50 cups of coffee and you know it's on! Code, follow, or get out of the way.
I spent a good time organizing my favorites bar until I realized I could just open the folder and move all the favorites to another favorites folder. :-D
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I never delete personal text or image files, storage is too cheap to worry about that. My EverNote notes are getting to the point of unmanageable though, not sure what to do there. I make rules to manage my e-mails into folders, which makes them easier for me to deal with as they arrive. I have 1600 unread in my main folder and 5000+ in my "shopping" folder. As far as wishlists, my Amazon one scares me. It's mostly books, of which I won't be able to get through all before I die (too many). Actually after looking at its contents, I'm sure I'm on a watchlist. My Netflix queue has about 200, but it has been decreasing more than in increasing in size (months of unemployment helped with that). Gamefly, I hardly add to it, just get the fitness games for the fiancee. Then there is Cabelas (camping and shooting wishlists) and UrbanOutfitters (clothes). I'm getting married in the fall, I wish I could put some of this stuff on the registry (especially books), I don't want a new toaster, blender, microwave, or cutlery set (though I do actually need them).
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson
I had too many items on my Netflix queue to go through them all, so I just created a new one. :-D
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The other day, I spent a good amount of time trimming my Amazon.com wish list down from 800 items to about 70. And today, I spent about an hour at work just going through and cleaning up my email inbox. How do you manage your digital life? Do you have algorithms you follow (like my strategy of allowing the data to build up and fragment, then doing occassional defrags and disk clean ups, metaphorically speaking); do you just let your files fester forever; or do you go without all that cruft and keep things minimal?
Emails: 1) 'Boring' sounding subject lines - delete directly from InBox view (my email system keeps deleted emails for 72 hours - long enough to restore them if wanted) 2) Others - scan quickly a) if important and not a lot of work, do the work immediately (can backfire as sometimes a later email changes the task to be done) b) if important and a lot of work, leave until scan of others completed c) if unimportant, either delete or file for later action as applicable 3) If email system over 50% full (capacity: 100MB) and on 1st of the month: Go through folders. Anything that is before the previous month: a) if important, either do it or send apology, asking if still needed (response of 'yes' is a new email so timer is reset to new email arrival time) b) if unimportant, delete c) If needed for any reason (e.g. I spent a lot of effort writing it and there are sections required to prove I did something or setions that can be canabalised for other emails), save in archive mail system For the 'real world', everything is held in about a dozen box files (e.g. one for Finance, one for House [Insurance, Mortgage], one for Utility Bills + Guarantees + Instruction Books, one for 'personal' (e.g. certificates, sentimental items)], etc). When a box file gets full (or the excess overflows off the top of the wardrobe where I keep them so that papers fall on my head when getting stuff out of the wardrobe), I then plough through them - binning those no longer required, archiving those that must be retained [archive is a large cardboard box in the loft] and leaving in the box files anything less than a year old. This technique has worked for over 30 years; I've not yet needed to decide what happens if the cardboard box in the loft gets full (currently my best plan is to get a larger cardboard box).
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I am definitely a digital hoarder. I keep any file I possibly could and could have any future value. Just recently I transferred data from a bunch of old CDs circa 1998 onto DVD, the archival type. It should be good for another couple of years now. In my gmail account I only delete anything I would regard as spammy, the rest are kept for, uhm, reference purposes. :rolleyes:
Yeah, but i sense that many of us,and i mean tech people, trends to accumulate things from the past,emails,videos,letters, it's that true or is only me? every year i must depure my laptops, netbooks, workstations, and i spent many hours on it, only to make some space for future "important things" :P
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The other day, I spent a good amount of time trimming my Amazon.com wish list down from 800 items to about 70. And today, I spent about an hour at work just going through and cleaning up my email inbox. How do you manage your digital life? Do you have algorithms you follow (like my strategy of allowing the data to build up and fragment, then doing occassional defrags and disk clean ups, metaphorically speaking); do you just let your files fester forever; or do you go without all that cruft and keep things minimal?
I organize & group all my files in folders with names that describe the type of files that might be in them. As far as performance of my laptop, I usually only start defraging it if it starts getting sluggish. I like to install & try out new software, so I usually try to keep all the installations for them so I want have to download them again if I ever need to uninstall them for any reason or install them on another computer. I also try to carry a 8 GB (need more memory than this) to save a back up copy of my most important files & programs. Occasionally though I have to do a sweep & clean of the desktop & documents files & folders when things start getting cluttered up. I'm also am addicted to using MS OneNote for storing any information or ideas I find while reading articles or browsing the internet . I have over 20 notebooks each with at least 10 sections & on average 15 pages per section. Do the math & you have a ridicolous amount of information stored in the OneNote Notebooks folder. The good thing is though those notebooks don't take up alot of space on the hd because mine only takes up 60 MB.
~ Somebody left a footprint...o0=... here...
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The other day, I spent a good amount of time trimming my Amazon.com wish list down from 800 items to about 70. And today, I spent about an hour at work just going through and cleaning up my email inbox. How do you manage your digital life? Do you have algorithms you follow (like my strategy of allowing the data to build up and fragment, then doing occassional defrags and disk clean ups, metaphorically speaking); do you just let your files fester forever; or do you go without all that cruft and keep things minimal?
