Clearing Out the Digital Clutter

The figure weighs heavily on me, variously swelling and contracting through the day but always seeming to end up bigger each evening: the number of emails clogging my inbox. As I write, I have 6,175 emails in my main inbox, 162 of them unread (and surely unneeded), and I continue to want to make time to get them winnowed and sorted. It’s one of the many Catch-22s of the juggle: Dealing with digital clutter takes up valuable time, but so does getting it cleared up.

It’s not just my work emails, though they’re the biggest problem. On the home front, I should spend some time getting our digital photos uploaded and organized, and sent out to far-flung family. And there’s my ongoing project of turning our big collection of music on cassette into MP3s — my wife bought a special machine for the purpose for Christmas, but it’s a relatively time-consuming and antisocial process (you have to listen to the whole album and click an onscreen button to mark each new track), so it’s hard to fit into the bustle of home life.

At least I have some hope of guidance and relief when it comes to that bulging inbox. Buzzwatch editor and sometime Juggle contributor Tom Weber suggested a book on staying organized that he’s found very helpful. Let’s see … hmm, of course. Out of 6,175 emails, none of them is the one from him with the title.

How do you stay on top of digital clutter amid the demands of your juggle?

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