Do You Suffer From Digital Pack Rat-itis? Here’s Your Prescription.

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Talk of the Nation had an interesting segment yesterday about pack rats. Neal Conan interviewed Mark McCluskey, products editor at Wired magazine, about how hoarding has gone digital.

Unlike analog pack rats who love collecting things, digital pack rats love collecting content. Analog pack rats love the tactile experience of holding an old vinyl album or smelling an old book. Analog pack rats generally don’t even listen to the records or read the books that they hold on to. Digital pack rats on the other hand love collecting information. They like knowing that somewhere in their computer or external hard drive lies a golden nugget of information.

I know I’m guilty of both, but more so with digital hoarding. I have emails from three years ago still on my account. I know I’ll never read them, but I just don’t have the heart to delete them. It’s like my little collection of letters tied with a digital bow that I keep in my digital attic. Instead of old drawings from kindergarten, my computer is overflowing with undergrad papers that I wrote years ago. I have no desire to read my research paper on the philosophy of language, but I don’t want to delete it.

However, analog and digital hoarding can cost people time and money. Important things or information can get lost in the clutter of stuff that you hold on to. That bill that was due yesterday is probably lost in the huge piles of paper sitting on your desk. My computer is starting to slow down because of all the crap that’s on it.

GTD: Just What the Dr. Ordered

My prescription to you is buying a copy Getting Things Done by David Allen. GTD will help you eliminate clutter and focus on the important things in your life. Below is a short list of resources about GTD and decluttering that I have used to cure myself of pack rat-itis.

• Email Zen: Clear Out Your Inbox [@ Zen Habits]
• GTD Primer [@ Black Belt Productivity]
• GTD Mastery 100 [@ GTD Mastery]
• 15 Minute Windows XP Tune up [@Tweak3d]
• Give your desktop a clean start [@ Lifehacker]
• Edit Your Life, Part 4: Your Workspace [@ Zen Habits]

Warning: Take productivity in moderation

In your quest to heal yourself of pack rat-itis, don’t replace your obsession with collecting “stuff” with an obsession of productivity. My own experience has shown me that one can get so obsessed with GTD and life hacks that you end up less productive than before. If you take productivity in moderation and you should be alright.

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[tags] GTD, life hack, productivity, NPR, Zen Habits[/tags]

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2 Comments

1. AgentSully on 19.05.2007 at 07:11 (Reply)

   I’ll clear my inbox, but I don’t want to delete those old emails.

   Digital media - now that’s where things could get expensive over the years…imagine how much disk space you might need in future years to hold all your digital photos and videos and mps’s!!!

   But probably by them storage will just be even cheaper than it is today.

   Another thing to think about is how long will a given device, (cd, dvd, hard drive, web server) be able to hold that information? I think I read that the average CD will hold information for 20 years. You can get ones that will hold info for longer.

   Man, am I a pack rat or what!!! LOL.

   I need to meditate on impermanence, I think!
   Have a good one! Thanks for stopping by my site yesterday!

2. The Frugal Law Student on 19.05.2007 at 13:47 (Reply)

   That’s a good point about the lifespan of digital storage. We should also worry about what TYPE of digital storage we keep our digital files on. Will there still be computers that can read CDs 20 years from now? We’ve already seen the floppy disk go the way of the dodo bird, I don’t see why this couldn’t happen to other types of digital storage.

   Thanks for commenting and thanks for stopping by!

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