Thursday, November 11, 2010

Ongoing Minimalism & a Mini-Fail

My minimalist philosophy follows the thinking, "Don't own stuff you don't like." I've done pretty well with stuff, but read a blog entry a while back about digital clutter (sorry, don't remember the blog so no link). Digital clutter can take the form of either programs or data we don't like or need.

A few weeks ago, I tried cleaning up the programs on my netbook. It went extremely well until I accidentally deleted my audio drivers (yeah, and they let me write code & access servers at work, mini-FAIL for me, but I fixed it).

My first data step was getting over denial that I have data clutter: I know I have a lot of data around, but it's all on the external hard drive, so out of sight out of mind? It's kind of like that "drawer" or that "closet" where we continually throw stuff and shut the door to forget about it. But it's still there. However, uncluttering digital stuff is just like uncluttering stuff stuff. Start small & do it in increments.

My first step was music since I could easily approach it with the philosophy, "What songs do I always hit NEXT when my iPod is on shuffle?" I deleted roughly 10% of my collection, not too shabby!

Next battle: pictures. Then: papers I wrote in high school & college. After that: personal email and I'm working on a new email philosophy in the process- email is not data storage, it's temporary, disposable correspondence.

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