On Monday, I wrote about cleaning your workspace and although you probably haven’t finished that, today I’m moving on to cleaning up that other workspace–your computer. You may have thought you were done cleaning when you went through all those files in your desk, but trust me, a tidy computer desktop is just as important as a tidy office.
I’m not technically inclined, so all I can do here is give advice about organizing your files. I won’t give any advice on how or where to back things up except to say that you absolutely must back up your work. Also, because I’m on a Mac, I won’t give any advice about firewalls or anti-virus software. If you’re running a PC, you should definitely have such things and now would be a good time to run some virus checks on your computer.
Now, let’s start with e-mail. Unless you receive a massive amount of new e-mail every night there is no reason for you to have hundreds of e-mails sitting in your inbox (or your inboxes if, like me, you have multiple e-mail accounts). I only took control of my e-mail a year ago, so I know how difficult the situation is. You open your e-mail, feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of messages, read a few new ones, mentally remind yourself to deal with them later and then leave your e-mail with all those messages sitting there. You then repeat this process whenever you open your e-mail until one day you have hundreds of messages in your inbox and just checking your e-mail makes you want to hurl your computer off a balcony.
This is not good. You shouldn’t feel overwhelmed when you check your e-mail. By now, if you do have hundreds of messages, you’re probably putting off going through them all because of how long you anticipate it will take. And you’re right, it can take hours.
But it’s worth it to have a clear inbox. Go through each and every e-mail and determine whether it should be deleted or archived and whether it requires action on your part. Then, once your e-mail is clear, promise yourself that it won’t get out of control again. Every single time you check your e-mail you must deal with the messages. If something has to stay in your inbox for a day or two, fine. But don’t let things sit there indefinitely, because the end result will be that important e-mails will be lost or information will be forgotten.
Do yourself a favour and deal with it now. Set up an archiving system so you can file important messages. Before you file each message, ask yourself if you will really need that message again. If you won’t, delete it.
Do you belong to any e-mail lists whose messages you ignore or you read but don’t really care about? Unsubscribe. It takes time out of your day to scan through them or even just delete them–time that could be better spent on billable tasks.
While you’re going through your e-mail, take the opportunity to print out any receipts you received via e-mail for tax purposes. Yet another thing you can do to be prepared for tax time while you’re cleaning.
Now to your desktop.
I’m not the most organized person and I’m certainly not going to tell you what files you should or shouldn’t have on your computer. What I will say is that if you have files, documents and other icons filling up the entire desktop, you can probably condense a bit to keep things neater. Organize your files so items that are similar are filed together in a folder. For example, you probably don’t need a separate folder for every idea you’ve come up with. Why not just have a folder marked “Query Ideas” and put all the paperwork in that one folder? Within the folder, you can then subcategorize your ideas into similar areas.
Check the folder periodically to see if you need to follow up on any of the ideas. Much like with the folders in your office, ask yourself which ideas you haven’t followed up on and why. Will you follow up on them this year? (Be honest.) Then, deal with them accordingly.
Instead of having your invoices all over the place, have a folder marked “Invoices” and, within that folder, break the invoices down by year and then further by client (while you’re dealing with this, you can print out last year’s invoices so they’re ready for tax time).
Anything you’re not sure what to do with, pop into a folder marked miscellaneous and periodically go through that folder to see if you’re keeping anything you really don’t need.
Much like your office, your computer shouldn’t have files on it that you no longer need. I think the tendency is to think that computers have unlimited space for all those little files and notes to ourselves, but in the end all those files and notes add up, use memory and sometimes overwhelm us. So treat your computer like you would your office and get rid of anything you don’t need.
And, in case anyone thinks I’m not following my own advice, I spent at least an hour yesterday on every writer’s favourite task: finding all the pens, pencils and markers in my office and systematically checking them so I could throw out those that have dried up, which I should have thrown out when they first dried up but for some reason I didn’t. In my pen holder–in addition to countless pens, pencils and markers–I found buttons from a jacket I no longer own, a tiny screwdriver (because what writer doesn’t need a tiny screwdriver?), about a bazillion thumbtacks, tiny nails, earrings, string, toothbrushes for cats and lids to soft drink bottles. All of which are obviously necessities for writers.
