Folders, Files, and 404s: A Digital Decluttering Story
A long, long time ago in a galaxy much like this one, an elder millennial longed to be free of digital overwhelm. Luckily a message of hope appeared in her dreams one night: Keep it simple, stupid.
That’s the mantra that began my quest; except I removed the word stupid because I spent most of my life eroding my self-confidence due to the harsh inner critic that lives inside my brain.
Over the years, I’ve dipped in and out of the world of minimalism, spent hours reflecting on my relationship with my stuff, and explored both ends of the spectrum from Marie Kondo to the hoarding subreddit. As a Taurus Sun and Rising (yeah, I went there), I love my stuff, I love beautiful objects, I love thrifting and antiques, and my apartment décor has always been a means of self-expression. When Cal Newport’s book Digital Minimalism came across my desk, my decluttering journey expanded to include my digital world and ever since then I’ve been iterating how I spend my time online and reassessing my relationship with technology.
This wasn’t a quest to "hack" my productivity, or to make my life so efficient and friction-less that I lost touch with the messiness of being human (although, I’m not sure that’s even possible?) I wanted to spend less time online, and the time I did spend looking at a screen had to be intentional.
I also know that life happens, PMS happens, devastating world news happens, and there wasn’t some utopia where I never had to look at a screen again. Mindlessly scrolling Pinterest (does that age me?) is my Kryptonite (does THAT age me?) but I wanted to try and have some semblance of control.
Step One: Define objectives and what "done" will look like.
🎯 Objectives:
- Create a standardized organizational system across my digital spaces.
- Minimize distractions (shiny new object syndrome) for a calmer online experience.
- Establish a "catch-all" system to capture ideas and information for a later time.
When I’m done, I will be able to:
- Easily find files and know where to save them.
- Back up my PC to an external hard drive on a regular basis.
- Know what tools I’m using and for what purpose.
- Have a dedicated digital and analogue space to capture ideas.
- "Soft-quit" social media and instead spend time within a few values-aligned communities.
Step Two: Reflect + Experiment
🤔 What’s not working:
- Folders within folders within folders syndrome.
- Resisting the impulse to click the star icon and let things collect dust in my bookmarks folder (going through bookmarks = inevitably falling down a 4-hour rabbit hole.)
- Files with mysterious names that force me to open them to know what they are.
- A gazillion accounts because I just had to know what my leadership alter ego personality type was.
💡 What is working:
- One folder structure to rule them all.
- Using bookmarks only as a "quick links" system to access key accounts (ahem, to pay my bills.)
- Keeping my phone’s app game tight. Leaning into my tendency to prefer using my laptop because as every elder millennial knows, you can’t make important purchases using your phone. Plus, a little friction goes a long way.
- Taking some time to think things through before adding a new app, tool, or subscription to my list, however tempting.
With the above in mind, I doubled down on what was working and started building a more intentional system.