Today, we’re continuing our “Clear the Clutter” series. So far, we’ve focused on cleaning your physical environment. Now we’re focusing on cleaning up your digital space, starting with your computer files.
As a writer, you don’t want to spend all your time looking for files and information. You’d rather be writing! Here are five simple tips to clear your computer clutter and help you be more productive:
- Clean your computer desktop.
Whenever I take a screenshot on my Mac, it goes onto my desktop by default. Sometimes I drop other files there as a handy reference in the short term. Move these files to their proper home in your filing system, or delete the files if you don’t need them.
- Organize your files into a few big folders.
This keeps things very simple and uncluttered instead of having a long list of more specific files you have to search through constantly. I have major folders for the following areas: Clients, Daily Writer Club, Daily Writer Podcast, Writing, Business, and Personal.
- Use numbers in your folder titles to create a hierarchy.
The folders I access most frequently are Clients and Daily Writer Club. I label these “00 Clients” and “01 Daily Writer Club” so they appear in that order. And so on for the rest of the files, in order of how often I access them. Keep your most frequently used folders on top. You can also use an asterisk in front of a folder name to move it automatically to the top of the list.
- Delete files you don’t need.
I used to have a long list of free PDFs I had downloaded from various websites and email lists over the years. I’ve deleted most of these because I’ll never get to them. Most of them aren’t relevant to what I’m doing now anyway.
- Back up your files to both a cloud drive and a physical drive.
I keep all my files both on my MacBook hard drive and Dropbox. I also use the Time Machine feature on Mac to back up all my files to an external drive every day. Backing up your computer never seems urgent… until it is!
BONUS TIP: Use a “holding space” for notes and ideas. I use the Notes app on my Mac and iPhone. It syncs instantly so it’s always updated on both devices. I use it for quick voice notes, ideas, some meeting notes, and other odds and ends. Then every month or two, I organize these notes and put them into Evernote (my digital brain), Scrivener (my main writing app), or wherever they belong.
Since we spend so much time on our computers and devices, it’s important to de-clutter occasionally. The word of the day is “simple.” When you keep your files and organization simple and clutter-free, you can spend more time on writing and building your business.
Today’s Challenge: I hope you follow through on all these tips, but the most important one is keeping your files backed up. If you don’t already do that, sign up for a cloud-based backup service like Dropbox or start using an external drive.