As the calendar turned to a new year, I took a few steps related to my ongoing digital organization. I thought I’d just top-line those for you very quickly to give you some ideas on how you can wrangle your digital clutter and become digitally decluttered—one of my favorite phrases on the planet. What I’m about to describe is something that works well as I am going. This does not require that I hit pause and clear time to do anything dramatic. Once you organize your digital life, the steps will be very simple. It’ll be like brushing your teeth, no big deal. I just wanted to point them out to show you how great it is to get to that point of organization in your digital life. So, you know, another calendar year comes upon us and it’s all good. We can just keep our digital files completely organized.

So what were the very few steps I took? I am a big proponent of selecting a cloud data file storage solution that works for you. I am brand agnostic. Any of the big boys will work really well. I prefer—for me personally, and for my business—Dropbox. Other alternatives include Box or Google Drive. There are countless other cloud storage solutions out there, third-party solutions that go beyond what’s just on your hard drive. That is a core component of how we’ll stay digitally decluttered if you end up following my system that I share with you.

So—at the beginning of this year… actually right before the beginning of the year…I hopped on to Dropbox, which is, again, my preferred service. And I created a folder for the various things that I like to track by year.

So for my personal life, um, I have a file folder that goes “the year” and it says “memories.” I have “2017 memories,” “2018 memories, “2019, 2020. I created my “2021 memories” folder so that it’s there and ready for me, so that as I’m collecting memories for this year, I already know where I’m moving them to on in my cloud storage. I also created 2021 taxes, time to start tracking anything that’s going to be related to this year’s taxes. So again, that folder is there and waiting for me. Ditto that for anything related to clients that need to be specific for this year.
And again, I like to look at it as the calendar year because that is a very intuitive way to search should I need documents of any kind again, personal or professional. There are some (folders) that are broad and topical that cross from year to year, and that is absolutely fine to maintain some of those folders. But again, it helps me to go by year. I am my own search engine, and my brain is very used to honing in on the content or the documents that I need based on the year in which they were created. So that is what I do.

A few other folders that I create that are very handy year to year: professional photos and selfies of me for my business and my online platform. I keep a 20,21 file folder on Dropbox so that I can reference those very quickly, as I like them to be current. By delineating what year a photo was taken in the appropriate folder, that helps me stay very current. I also track business ideas and screenshots that I may have grabbed off of Instagram, and I have a “2021 business ideas, and inspiration folder” that gets used all the time in my world.

And as I’m saving—the reason I’m talking about the cloud solution—is because so much happens on our phones; that is the epicenter of activity. So having a great cloud solution that is a reputable solution means that you’re going to have that connectivity from phone to mobile storage. So as I’m taking a screenshot, as I’m grabbing a selfie, as I’m taking a picture of a document that I can then shred and get rid of, ‘cause I don’t like the physicaldocument hanging around the digital will serve me just fine—all that gets transferred immediately from my phone to my cloud solution. And it’s important as you’re making your selection to choose one (cloud storage solution) that has a very good mobile platform that you can work well with. And then obviously those files are then accessible if I’m on my laptop, on my iPad or another, um, computing device.

So…I got those file folders ready and already. We’re just a few days into this new year, and it’s all systems go, nothing is lingering on my phone awaiting the creation of a new 2021 file folder in my cloud solution. It’s all there and I am rocking.

So that is just one tip again here at the start of the year.

For me, this is incredibly simple because it is something I’m doing as I am going. Once you conquer the digital decluttering, which it can be—and it was for me—a massive task. Once you get to that place of organization, the system that I bring you to is very simple to maintain. You know, it’s kind of that whole concept of why wait till you have a month’s worth of laundry and then have to conquer it. It’s kind of a nightmare. To deal with it as you are going, it’s really not a big deal. But I know many of you listening to this may have the digital equivalent of many months’ loads of laundry, and we’ll have to do the hard work to get you to the place of organization. But once you’re there, you’re good to go. This will not be an issue in your life. I assure you.

So thanks for hanging in with me. Happy new year, let’s go!