Digital organizing

[iris lilies]

"Getting organized digitally" is a real issue for me. I wonder if it's the same for others?

i always have a long "to do" list of digital tasks. I was waiting for retirement to start these. Yesterday I accomplished these:

1. fixed the dashboard readout on my car, changing from kilometers to miles (after DH had changed it in error)

2. figured out how to delete all phone numbers for incoming calls on my cell phone (I seldom use this phone and I hardly know its features)--ok, DH helped with that

3. Figured out why my iPad isn't picking up email

4. figured out why I couldn't load a PDF from the web

I truly find digital clutter and digital tasks to be a sizeable factor in my life. I have little patience with making stuff work. I will have to be more zen in retirement, working on the digital stuff.

[JaneV2.0]

I'd love to know the secret to getting rid of incoming calls--I got a misdialed (?) call the other day, and kept re-calling it when I tried to delete it. I can usually figure these things out.

I usually just keep flailing away until I accomplish some digital task. Then I forgot what I did. I'm not a linear thinker, unfortunately.

[Chicken lady]

Why does one delete phone numbers for incoming calls? What does that even mean?

I want to know how to flip my e-mail over so I can see the oldest ones at the top - then I could delete those.

I also want to be able to put pictures on my website.

[JaneV2.0]

I think all cell phones keep a record of incoming calls. In my case, I wanted to delete the number to avoid calling it accidentally--which is easy to do--and because it was an unknown number. On my flip phone, it's an easy option.

[Kestra]

My digital clutter is out of control, mostly because almost all my personal stuff, past and present business ideas are on my computer and it's so much easier to generate documents than it is to sort them. I wish I had a better system. The only thing to do I think is devote actual chunks of time to dealing with it. Which I guess is a failing of mine to ignore mundane tasks in order to do the fun stuff. Same as why my house isn't clean - cause I just don't take the time to do anything about it.

[pinkytoe]

This is embarrassing but I think I have more than 3000 emails on my work email. I am trying to go through a couple of months worth every week so as not to be overwhelmed.
With technology, everything comes at you so fast that it's hard for the brain to keep up.
We switched to VOIP phones at work so everything there is a mystery too.
I remember trying to do the Getting Things Done system but just couldn't gather all that cyber info fast enough.

[kib]

My hard drive chuckled weakly and died the other day and I'd failed to back it up for probably two years. I know, Digital Catastrophe!!! Actually, it's been awesome. Sometimes there's nothing like a good fire, metaphorically speaking, to make you realize how much of the digital (and paper) clutter in your life isn't actually important at all. I went through some of my older storage and realized I must have over 30,000 lists, charts, diaries, website suggestions from 2001, address pages, tracking sheets and other associated and mostly useless digital pages in my "collection". Jokes about George H Bush in there, for cripes sake.

I've decided (being retired definitely makes this easier) to take it one day at a time with my new computer. The rumplestiltskin-like mountain of old flashdrives, photos in my phone, miscellaneous cds and other bits of technological mystery, marvel and crap can just sit there til it all rots or I'm so bored and under-busy I take the time to dig in, otherwise to hell with it.

What I am doing is making sure that going forward, I figure out how to deal with things as they come up. If I need to figure out how to turn my phone into an oven timer, I will do that right then and there, not "someday" "on a list". I had a (digital) list of (digital) tasks and organization projects that would have lasted longer than my lifetime that went up in flames, and all I can say is HURRAH, I'M FREE!

[SteveinMN]

Digital organizing was one of the few projects I took on just after I left Corporate America because I finally had the time to juggle all of the predecessor steps and decisions that needed to be made. And I did a lot of it. I don't like digital stuff just hanging around so I've taken to using tagging software for image files, music, and the like; organizing Web bookmarks (and syncing them when it made sense to do so); and paring down the one-trick software ponies (e.g., I have three programs which can watermark images; I don't need the one that can't do anything else).

I find it easier to clean my digital life than my real life. At least I find it more satisfying to work on.... :~)