Declutter Your Data

Angela Crocker

Description

People are awash in too much information! Almost everyone today has some degree of excess data. At home, that might be an overflowing email inbox and a photo archive or music library bursting at the seams. Work situations are filled with surplus data, significantly increasing the volume of information for which you are responsible. Add to that social media accounts and most people in today's day and age have some form of digital clutter.
Technology makes things faster, and simpler. At the same time, with all the technology that surrounds us on a daily basis, everyone is awash in too much information. Our computers, phones, tablets, work projects, tax and other files, and various online accounts all store data. It’s a lot!
Can anything be done? Yes! 'Declutter Your Data' is for anyone who is interested in making better use of technology, cleaning up their digital clutter, and coming up with an organized and efficient way to access their data going forward.
This book guides readers step by step through the process of figuring out what data is important to them; wrestling with the information to clear out what’s not useful and organize what they want to keep; and dealing with the ongoing data maintenance aspect that is a necessity in this digital age.
Following author Angela Crocker’s advice and putting these ideas into practice will reduce your digital clutter, make you more efficient, help you save time, and give you a happier relationship with your information, clearing your mind for more important things.
Introduction
Step One: The App Diet
Step Two: Dedicated Devices
Step Three: Turn On Notifications
Step Four: Your Email Inbox is an Eyesore Step Five: Curate Your Photos (and Videos)
Step Six: Pick a Cloud
Step Seven: Schedule Tasks and Fun
Step Eight: Use the 'Idea City' Method
Step Nine: Figure Out Your 3P
Step Ten: Establish Your Response Time

Sujets

• COMPUTERS
• System administrator
• Time management

Informations

• Publié par: Self-Counsel Press
• Date de parution: 15 janvier 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781770404847
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Declutter Your Data
Take Charge of Your Data and Organize Your Digital Life
Angela Crocker
Self-Counsel Press (a division of) International Self-Counsel Press Ltd. USA Canada

Copyright © 2018

International Self-Counsel Press All rights reserved.
Contents

Cover

Title Page

Part I: Why Digital Decluttering Matters

Introduction

Sample 1: Preconceptions about Digital Decluttering

1. The Digital Clutter Problem

2. Benefits of Digital Decluttering

3. What to Do about It?

4. Is Digital Decluttering for you?

5. How the Process Works

6. The Commitment to the Digital Cleanse

Chapter 1: Information Overload

1. Can You Stand the Noise?

2. I Heard You but I Wasn’t Listening

3. Develop Filters

4. Fake News and Reliable Sources

5. Spam, Duplicates, and Other Evils

Chapter 2: Technology Inventory

1. Shifts in Relationships with Technology

2. Taking Technology for Granted

3. Technology Collection Inventory

Sample 2: Technology Collection Inventory

4. Repurpose, Donate, Recycle

Chapter 3: Digital Footprint

1. Seeking Data

2. Digital Footprint Checklist

Sample 3: Digital Footprint Inventory

Chapter 4: The Myth of a Perfect Life

1. In Consideration of Minimalism

2. Defending Conversation

Sample 4: Conversation Challenge Tracker

3. The Costs of Digital Living

4. The Privilege of Digital Access

5. An Integrated Digital Life

Part II: How to Declutter Your Data

Chapter 5: Your Digital Report Card

Sample 5: Digital Report Card

Chapter 6: Just Say No

1. How to Say No

2. The Value of Your Time

Sample 6: Time Tracker Worksheet

3. Habit Making

Chapter 7: Establish Your Response Time

1. How Fast Is Fast Enough?

2. What’s Your Response Time Going to Be?

Sample 7: Response Time Planner

3. Respond to Everything?

Chapter 8: Turn off Notifications

1. But I Need to Know What’s Happening

2. Exceptions to the Notification Rule

3. How to Check Notifications Efficiently

Chapter 9: Dedicated Devices

1. Divide Your Digital Activities

2. Go Analog to Decide

Sample 8: Dedicated Devices Planner

3. Sticking to the Plan

4. Devices When You Travel

Chapter 10: Digital Calendars

1. What to Include in Your Digital Calendar

2. Schedule Digital Tasks and Digital Fun

3. Put Your Digital Time in Your Calendar

Sample 9: Author’s Google Writing Calendar

4. Have a Ritual to Make the Most of Your Tech Time

Chapter 11: The App Diet

1. How to Reduce Your “App-etite”

2. Finding New Apps to Love

Chapter 12: Consolidate Your Data

1. Data Needs a Home

2. File Names and Folder Structures

3. Pick a Cloud

Chapter 13: Your Email Inbox Is an Eyesore

1. Too Many Emails

2. Chasing Inbox Zero

3. How to Tackle Your Inbox

4. Schedule Time for Email

5. Weekly Email Maintenance

6. One Big Archive

7. Declare Email Bankruptcy

8. Banish “Reply All”

9. Consolidate Your Email Addresses

10. Inbox Is Not Your To-Do List

11. Pick Subscriptions That Serve You

Sample 10: Subscriptions That Matter List

12. Create Your Own Email System

Chapter 14: Curate Your Photos and Videos

1. How Many Photos Do You Need?

2. Best Practices for New Photos

3. Best Practices for Old Photos

4. About Unflattering Photos

5. Don’t Forget Your Videos

Chapter 15: Smart Home Savvy

1. Smart Home Devices

Sample 11: Smart Home Helpers

2. Data Gathered, for Better or Worse

Chapter 16: Figure out Your Privacy

1. The 3Ps

Sample 12: Privacy Self-Assessment

2. Be Authentic

Chapter 17: Connect with People

1. Focus on True Friends

2. Don’t Forget Your Fans

3. Pick Your Experts

Sample 13: Trusted Experts List

4. Give up on Toxic People

Chapter 18: Social Networks and Online Communities

Sample 14: Social Media Snapshot

1. Take Charge of Social Media

2. Forget about Social Media

3. Social Media Invitation Etiquette

4. Delete Unused Groups

Chapter 19: Take a Digital Vacation

1. Value of Doing Nothing

2. Get over FOMO and Embrace JOMO

Sample 15: Digital Vacation Journal

3. Tech-Free Time

4. Sabbatical versus Convenience

5. Go Analog

Chapter 20: Pursue Your Passions with Abandon

Chapter 21: Fighting Fake News

1. Vetting Information

2. Technical Considerations

3. Content Creator

4. Consider Bias

5. Follow the Money

6. Research Ethics

7. Funny Pages

8. Emotional Triggers

9. Savvy Friends

Chapter 22: Capturing Ideas

1. An Effective Productivity Approach

2. Ways to Capture Your Ideas

3. Digitize Your Analog Notes

Chapter 23: Digital Parenting

Sample 16: Parenting Priorities

1. Model Best Practices

2. Cyber Dangers Are Real

3. Kids’ Digital Clutter

4. Posted with Permission

5. Location Tracking

6. School Rules

7. Family Internet Rules

Sample 17: Family Internet Rules

Chapter 24: Digital Estate Planning

1. Estate Practicalities

2. Wishes for Digital Assets

Chapter 25: Think Like a Librarian

1. Need to Know, Nice to Know

2. Fake News and Click Bait

Part III: Maintaining Your Decluttered State

Chapter 26: The Art of Digital Living

Sample 18: Reflections on Digital Decluttering

1. Digital Decluttering Maintenance

2. Quest for Digital Happiness

Download Kit

Dedication

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Self-Counsel Press thanks you for purchasing this ebook.
Part I
Why Digital Decluttering Matters

Digital decluttering is the process of organizing your data and technology in ways that support your lifestyle. To get started, you need to be clear on what digital clutter is and why decluttering is important to you. In this part, we’ll explore the digital clutter problem, the benefits of digital decluttering, and how the process works.
Introduction

Welcome to Declutter Your Data . Simply by reading this book you’ll be better equipped to take charge of your digital life. Read on and you’ll have a plan with concrete action steps to organize your information and declutter your data. You’ll also figure out why data decluttering is important to you.
I’m Angela Crocker, your guide to take charge of your data and organize your digital life. I’ve been living with computers since 1979 and have been on the Internet for more than 25 years. I’ve watched online technologies evolve and observed how this evolution has changed our lives at home and in the office. The pace of change is extraordinary! The rate at which we’ve adopted new technologies and improvements to Internet upload and download speeds are impressive. Add to that the evolution from pagers to smartphones and the increased power of the computer for even more change.
However, all that change has created a problem: Digital clutter.
Before we dive in, it may be helpful to pause a moment and consider what digital cluttering means to you. How do you define it? How does digital clutter make you feel? How does it impact your life? What prompted you to pick up this book? Throughout the digital decluttering process, we’ll pause to complete short exercises to help you along your digital decluttering journey. See Sample 1: Preconceptions about Digital Decluttering, and then find the worksheet on the digital download kit included with this book, for you to complete.

Sample 1: Preconceptions about Digital Decluttering


1. The Digital Clutter Problem
Digital clutter is a fairly new problem. Our ancestors may have lived with too many objects but they didn’t live with the same volume of information. By ancestors I mean our parents just one generation back. Some grew up with analog information and have had to adapt to digital living while others were born into the digital life. For both groups, digital clutter is an artifact of the Internet, personal computers, social networking, and smart devices. We now consciously create and unconsciously contribute to terabytes of data every year.
Our personal collection of data started slowly. With home and office computers, work previously done by hand