I’m restless and unfocused right now, and it’s driving me bonkers. I have had some very productive weeks, and then others that have been a whole lot of nothing. Is it the end of semester blahs? Some work and personal challenges? Trying to keep track of all the minutiae that make up my days? I don’t know.
What I do know is that I am completely overwhelmed by digital file overload. I have no idea how other researchers keep up with the literature in their fields without losing their minds. (Any other academics care to weigh in???) Part of the problem is that I don’t study just one thing – there are many concepts that feed into my program of research. But my goodness. I have thousands of PDFs in my Dropbox. THOUSANDS. I have hundreds more from the past year that I need to review, to determine if they are keepers. I have others that I need for very specific projects or manuscripts. And I haven’t even mentioned the ridiculous number of drafts that I keep because I ‘might need them’. (Never mind that I rarely – if ever – use them.)
My personal files and emails are even worse. I haven’t cleaned out photos in forever and I’m drowning in screenshots. My Gmail has >10000 emails. I hesitate to delete emails because I do go back to them – see, for example, my search earlier this week for the work “wellness incentive” email from last year.
How do you all do it? Are you ruthless about deleting emails that are just regular emails? I email my parents (BOTH of them) every single day. I try to label the ones that have something in them I’d like to keep – an old photo, or a particularly sweet note from one of them – but I don’t get to all of them. Do you delete old drafts (if you are someone who drafts documents for work or home, like I do)?
Any recommendations for methods to tame the madness – particularly in my personal files – would be more than welcome. I am getting a start on deleting random screenshots that I have had for years and never looked at again. If I haven’t opened it since 2013, then it might not be important, is all I’m saying.
And I will leave you with two snapshots of my weekend adventure with Engie. We nerded out together. I am amazed at the random things we have on our campus. Behold: dinosaur, um, poop and a slide rule. (I actually figured out how to use it after reading the directions! Do I understand why it works? Heck no, but I was able to do it! Small victories, people…)
Here’s to a more organized future…maybe? (Seriously, help?)
(I looked for a quote to end this post – I do love to do that – but got overwhelmed [ha…] trying to pick one. If you have any words of wisdom to share, I will take them, thank you. <3)