ORGANIZE YOUR DIGITAL LIFE BUSINESS LIFE VERSION
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Digital space feels like it's unlimited as we can add on more and more storage space whenever we need it. However, the ease of adding things makes the tasks of retrieval so much harder. Chances are you don't even know what you have available! A cluttered digital space can overwhelm you just as much as clutter at home, and if you work on your computer with different types of files, it can make your working life unproductive too as you can never find what you're looking for. So this planner is designed to help you create a healthy uncluttered digital space and keep it that way. By clearing up your digital clutter, you are being as kind as you can be to your future self. There will be no need to wade through a mountain of disorganized files to find an important document or a picture from a birthday party two years ago. Your future self will be able to locate it in a moment or two. Decluttering will also save you money because although digital space is seemingly endless it is not free. If it's going to cost you time to declutter, however, make sure that you balance the time it will take with the benefit you will enjoy in terms of mental clarity.
GETTING STARTED
YOUR DIGITAL DEVICES Chances are you have more than one device to deal with if you have been working online for some time. You may have a new computer, but the old one is still working and may have old files on it you wish to keep. You will probably have a phone, maybe an iPad or tablet, an eReader. You may have hard drives and old phones to contend with. You may also have items on USB drives, SD cards and microSD cards. List your devices here DEVICE CONTENTS
DEVICE CONTENTS
WHAT TYPES OF DIGITAL FILES DO YOU USE? Check all that apply Emails Software Graphic Assets Fonts Other Licenses Content: Courses & Info Products Paid Subscriptions Products you create Apps Contacts
YOUR DIGITAL FILING HABITS Thinking about each category of file, how organized are you from 1 to 10 when 1 is a complete mess and 10 is I know exactly where everything is? Emails 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Software 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Graphic Assets 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Fonts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Other Licenses Content 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Courses & Info Products 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Paid Subscriptions 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Products you create 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Apps 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Contacts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
When you download files where do they go? In a particular folder (which one?) All over the place? In a folder structure (but it's not very organized?) Exactly where they need to be? How often do you look at files and remove unwanted, irrelevant, and out of date files?
COMPUTER DESKTOP Keep your desktop home page tidy and have it show backgrounds that make you smile! Create a folder called \"Wallpapers\" in your structure and add pictures that you want to enjoy in rotation. You'll need to update the settings on your device to do this. The items on your desktop are shortcuts to files and apps. When did you last check what was there? Keep only the apps that you use most frequently there and shortcuts to current working files. At the end of a project, remove the shortcuts but not the files! DESKTOP CLEARED (date)
DECLUTTER WEB BROWSERS Web browsers can become slow over time as they fill with historical data. Clean up the settings regularly, deleting downloaded files, browsing history, cookies and cached files and images from rarely used sites. However, take care not to delete data that you use such as saved passwords. BROWSERS TO DECLUTTER LAST CHECKED
DOCUMENTS
DOCUMENTS You need a good structure for the thousands of documents you have on your computer. Although you can search for anything, it's time consuming to locate a particular item among a vast sea of long files in many different formats especially if you're not quite sure what to search for. Create categories of files called folders based on the topics you deal with, for example, you might have separate folders for work files and personal files at the highest level. Then under the work folder you might have one folder for each different aspect of your work or business. Some ideas to consider for brainstorming on the next page. Marketing Ideas & Information Future Plans Banking Information Accounts & Bookkeeping Product Ideas Courses/Training Team Information Your Products
Brainstorm the folder categories you need
YOUR FOLDER STRUCTURE This is not set in stone if you find it needs changing, but start with a structure that you think will work. MAIN CATEGORY MAIN CATEGORY SUB-CATEGORIES SUB-CATEGORIES
MAIN CATEGORY MAIN CATEGORY SUB-CATEGORIES SUB-CATEGORIES
NAMING FILES The easiest way to find files is to have them in an appropriate folder with an appropriate name, and it also helps if you use a naming structure, especially if you create products of any type to sell. An example of a naming convention for product files is <product name><your company><date created><version number>. This way you can always tell which is the latest version and customers know exactly what is in it too. My naming convention is: You don't need to give every file (especially those that you downloaded from others) a new name, but if the file doesn't describe the content, it's helpful to give it a filename that does!
SORTING FILES Where are you storing files on your computer which are not sorted into the correct folders? Either gather stray files into one place until you get a chance to sort them out or note all the places you need to get to over time. My \"To Sort\" folder will be __________________________ I need to sort the files in the following locations LOCATION NO. OF FILES DATE DONE
LOCATION NO. OF FILES DATE DONE
FOLDER BY FOLDER SORTING If you have a mess, it's not a project to complete in one day or even a month, but it can be done without taking away too much time from your life and work if you do a little each day. (As well as this page create a page that is just the challenge part without the intro as the next page. ) Where are you storing files on your computer which are not sorted into the correct folders? FOLDER NAME: I will sort ___ files a day until done. If incomplete after 30 days, repeat! As you sort, delete documents that are readily available online, duplicated, out of date, or which you do not need, and rename files if you have to examine the content to know what they are. Ifa file is not worth renaming, it's not worth keeping! 1 2 3 45 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
FOLDER NAME: I will sort ___ files a day until done. If incomplete after 30 days, repeat! As you sort, delete documents that are readily available online, duplicated, out of date, or which you do not need, and rename files if you have to examine the content to know what they are. If a file is not worth renaming, it's not worth keeping! 1 2 3 45 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
EMAIL
EMAILS How many email accounts do you have? Do you use them for different purposes? Do you need that many? Some of them can be consolidated by forwarding important email so that you have to do less checking EMAIL ACCOUNT PURPOSE HOW OFTEN COULD THIS BE CHECKED? ELIMINATED?
DAILY EMAIL LOG How many times a day are you looking at your email? Circle any hour you looked at your email. DATE AM PM 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
How much time are you spending on email? DATE TIME START TIME END DURATION
Note how many emails you have at the start and end of the day to see if you are keeping up with what you have. MONTH DAY START DAY END DAY DAY START DAY END DAY 1 17 2 18 3 19 4 20 5 21 6 22 7 23 8 24 9 25 10 26 11 27 12 28 13 29 14 30 15 31 16
OPTIMIZE YOUR EMAIL If you receive a huge amount of email that you rarely read, you will drive yourself crazy if you try to organize it in one day. You know that you need to unsubscribe from a lot of it that will never be relevant to you. But you can do it in a 30 day challenge. Decide how many you want to zap each day and go for it. Repeat as needed until you're done. I plan to unsubscribe and delete irrelevant emails from ____ email lists a day for 30 days. 1 23 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
I plan to unsubscribe and delete irrelevant emails from ____ email lists a day for 30 days. 1 23 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
EMAIL LABELS Too many labels makes dealing with your email more complicated than it needs to be. It's work to add labels. Email search is so powerful that labels are unnecessary in most cases. Use them only if you are making good use of them. If all you are doing is categorizing useless emails, or categorizing and then never looking at the emails in one category as a whole, stop trying to categorize everything. LABEL I DON'T I NEED THIS USE THIS (give reason)
ARCHIVE AND FORGET EXERCISE If there is little benefit to you in having an organized email archive, don't do it! You can get older emails out of your hair without spending time going through them, by using your email archive function. Create a folder or label with the year on it and put all emails from that year into it. Or use the month if you prefer to archive monthly for the current year. At the end of the year, amalgamate the monthly folders into an annual parent folder. You can always go back and delete emails you don't need at a later date, but it may not be the best use of your time. Note here the label system you are using for archiving.
Note here the search commands you can use to find particular emails in the email client you use. These are easy to find online but keeping them here will mean you can find them easily at any time.
If you have ancient emails that you never use and never want to see again, you can choose to delete them completely. Items I will delete: DESCRIPTION DATE DELETED
CONTACTS
CONTACTS Contacts may be scattered throughout your PC, email accounts, and phone (and on paper too). Make it easy to contact people you want to get in touch with by gathering these details into one place in the cloud (for example, in Google contacts) so you always have this info on hand and know where to access it. It will save time when you need a phone number or address. As you gather your contacts together, delete old numbers and names you don't recognize. As you gather the names, addresses and numbers add as much missing data as you can including full name, landline and cellphone numbers, and addresses and if you know any other info like birthdays and family member names add that too. My primary digital contact list will be here: PLACES I KEEP CONTACTS CONSOLIDATED
SOCIAL MEDIA
SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS Review your social media accounts regularly and consider whether they are useful or just a distraction. Which ones do you have and what do you use them for? If you use them for business, all you may need in some cases is a profile directing people to your website/active accounts. ACCOUNT USED FOR / WHEN USED
If you struggled to justify using one or more of your social media accounts, you can either leave them where they are but delete them from your computer/phone or delete all traces of them so they don't have any data on you. To do this you will need to follow the instructions in each account. ACCOUNT REMOVE FROM DELETE DELETED DATE PC/PHONE (Y/N) COMPLETELY? (Y/N)
YOUTUBE/TIKTOK CHANNELS You may use video channels in your business or for work, but you might also enjoy some channels as pure entertainment. Unsubscribe from any that you don't find useful for work (or use and enjoy during your free time). List the ones you use for work here: CHANNEL WHICH SERVICE DESCRIPTION
BLOGS, GROUPS, AND SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS Which blogs and Instagram/Pinterest/Facebook, etc. accounts do you use regularly for work? Unfollow any that you don't find useful for work (or use and enjoy during your free time) URL PURPOSE
PODCASTS Which podcasts do you listen to regularly for work? Unsubscribe from any that you don't find useful for work (or enjoy during your free time). Podcasts I use for work:
APPS AND NOTIFICATIONS
APPS Review the apps on your computer, tablet and phone. Delete any that you are not using and list the ones you are keeping to review regularly. APP LAST REVIEWED
OPTIMIZE YOUR NOTIFICATIONS The more notifications you receive, the more distracted you will be, and the less notice you'll take of important ones. There is only ever a need to receive a notification if it is extremely useful to you. For example, notifications to attend a meeting or zoom call, or a notification about birthdays you might otherwise forget. There is no need to receive one every time you receive an email or someone publishes a blog post or YouTube video. APP/NOTIFICATION I DON'T USE USUALLY SOMETIMES I NEED THIS APP IGNORE USEFUL THIS
APP/NOTIFICATION I DON'T USE USUALLY SOMETIMES I NEED THIS APP IGNORE USEFUL THIS
I have deleted the apps that I don't use I have discarded the notifications that I ignore I have reviewed the notification settings for each app I'm keeping: LIST OF APPS
Useful notifications I'm keeping (to be reviewed regularly) NOTIFICATION LAST REVIEWED
YOUR PRODUCTS
YOUR PRODUCTS Keep all product files together on your computer organized by project name. I will keep all projects relating to products in this folder ______________________ Use easily identifiable file names and version control so that you always know the latest release of a product. For example, you could use a file naming system like this <PRODUCT NAME><Company Name><Date created><VERSION>.<filetype> My naming convention will be _______________________________________________ If you have had several drafts that you don't want to delete, put these in a drafts folder within the project folder away from the actual release files. It's also a good idea to store asset information within the project folder such as the graphics used and licenses. If you back up nothing else, back up these folders! My back up system for product files is
LICENSED CONTENT (PLR)
LICENSED CONTENT (PLR) If you buy PLR from other vendors, it can be difficult to remember what you own unless you catalog it, but first of all download it into folders with one folder for each vendor you have bought content from. You will generally find that each product has licensing information with it but if not screenshot the licensing information from the vendor's site and store this within the folder. Vendors I have bought from: VENDOR FOLDER NAME LICENSE INFORMATION
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