Electronic Entropy has reached an all time high for Mike D. Every once in awhile I’ll go through an organizing fervor cleaning up my desktop and inbox of all things unnecessary. Last time I did this was probably a month ago. Now? Complete disarray.
As we are all aware, it’s tough to stay on top of electronic data organization. A few of my friends are insanely good at it (Cara and probably Ryan Schenk as examples), but I am the opposite. I am extraordinarily bad at it.
Let’s take a quick count of the biggest indicators of electronic chaos:
Unread Work e-mails: 15
Unorganized work e-mails: 482
Unread home e-mails: 8
Unorganized home e-mails: 1,421
Computer Desktop: 140 items/15 folders
GROSS. How’s your U.U.U.U.C.# compare?
HEY! BY THE WAY! Tomorrow is going to be a mighty sweater thursday. Wear your best and send in a picture!
Unread Work e-mails: 0
Unorganized work e-mails: 3
Unread home e-mails: 0
Unorganized home e-mails: 10
Computer Desktop: 1 items/7 folders
This is probably one of the few areas that I cannot help organize. However, I am pretty good at staying on top of my own:
Unread Work e-mails: 0
Unorganized work e-mails: 2
Unread home e-mails: 0
Unorganized home e-mails: 5
Work Computer Desktop: 4 items, 1 folder
Home Computer Desktop: 0 items/folders
Why are you organizing emails?
Even at work, using Outlook, i don’t organize anything anymore.
Granted, i have some rules in place to move automated notifications and then archive periodically to keep inbox size under control.
In general, search > folders for me.
Unread Work e-mails: 0
Unorganized work e-mails: 32
Unread home e-mails: 2
Unorganized home e-mails: 25
Work Computer Desktop: 2 folders
Home Computer Desktop: 5 items 5 folders
not too bad. my computer tends to be cleaner than just about everything else of mine….
I agree with Jon Abad…I don’t organize emails, I just search. But my desktop is my downfall. Here are my numbers…
Unread Work e-mails: 4
Unorganized work e-mails: N/A
Unread home e-mails: 1
Unorganized home e-mails: N/A
Computer Desktop: 91 items/4 folders
And sometimes…when my desktop gets to be too much, I create a folder named something like ‘Desktop Cleanup 11-30’ and just move everything not already in a folder into the new folder. So.bad.
I agree with Jon, leave it all alone and search. works in outlook. For gmail, I turned on priority inbox and bulk sorting, after a couple days of saying, no this isn’t or yes this is important google learned pretty well.
My desktop is a disaster I don’t want to talk about it.