End of year digital declutter — Part Two

How’s that holiday prep going?

The days are whizzing by, and that well-earned break is almost upon us. Last week we took a look at some easy ways you can embrace an end-of-year digital declutter and set yourself up for success in returning to your desk post-January 1. Now that we’ve tackled unused app subscriptions (and the subsequent monthly drain on your bank account), it’s time to take a look at an area closer to home.

Your desktop. 🖥️

And yes, that pile of mail on your physical desktop could do with a clean-up, too, but for today’s purposes, we’re talking your digital desktop.

There are two types of people in the world. The first are no strangers to systems and processes that let them sleep easier, knowing everything is in its rightful place. When a file lands in their inbox, it’s stored where it belongs. There are file structures, naming conventions, and a desktop that’s left clear for a desktop image to greet you upon arrival.

The second type? Their desktop looks… a little different. There’s screen grabs, scanned receipts, travel itineraries, confidential contracts, folders called ‘clean me’, more folders called ‘second clean me’, and that desktop background? Well, it’s hard to see it under the plethora of random files that are yet to find their home.

While I’m not here to judge on clutter preferences, there’s one great and compelling case to be made for healthy file storage systems, and that’s the case of security.

Files that are sitting on your desktop without a permanent home may not be in the safest of permanent locations. If you’ve got cloud backups running and your desktop folder is encompassed, you’ve got a copy. However, if you rely on systemised folders within places like Google Drive or Dropbox, and your local desktop folder isn’t synced — those files are at risk of getting lost in translation in your digital world, and at worst, lost forever in the case of computer failure.

If you fall into the latter camp, spend some time today evaluating what sits on your desktop, and why. Do you have a file storage system that works every time, or is it a haphazard approach to storage and retrieval? The time you spend rifling through old digital documents adds up over the course of a year, and now’s the time to set yourself free to work smarter, not harder, in 2020.

So. Today’s declutter instructions:

1. Open up your desktop folder. One by one, walk through each file and decide — throw or keep?
2. If it’s a file that’s going to be kept, find its appropriate home (or create the appropriate folder if it’s yet to exist.)
3. Check the health of your overall backup and file management system. How regularly are you backing up your digital assets? If they’re not already sitting in the cloud, take a visit to our friends Google Drive or Dropbox. Their integrations with your local desktop mean you can set up a storage system that, within minutes, has your local computer’s assets stored safely in the crowd, automatically backing up at regular intervals.
4. Delete the contents of that bin… they’ve served their purpose, and it’s time to hit the road.
5. Refresh that desktop image, because, you know, now you can see it.

We’ll do a final roundup next week of other areas that can be decluttered before the open signs turn to closed. In the meantime, happy cleaning!