041: From Chaos to Clarity: How to Clean Up Your Digital Files Step by Step

Okay, [laughs] so the first 18 minutes, I set an 18-minute flat timer earlier today, and I took a look at all the different filings kind of systems that I have.

The two that popped up for me right away were my two Google Drives.

Yes, that's right.

I have two Google Drives.

So the first part that I did today was I did, I went in into w- my one Google Drive and I took a look.

And the first thing that I found was that I looked under projects and that I had only one identified project in there, which probably means that I probably could do a little bit more work about organizing and starting a few other projects of things that are really specific that I'm working on.

So that was one piece that I saw right away that I c- knew that I'd be able to, uh, focus on and be able to clean up.

Then I saw that I had nine identified folders in this drive and also 25 loose documents.

So not too bad.

I had done a little bit of cleanup work at some point.

Now, what's really important is in this first phase, in those 18 minutes that I was looking at this, don't start looking into the actual files.

'Cause once you fall down that rabbit hole, there is [laughs] not a lot else that you can do.

[laughs] It starts to get a little bit messy, and then you get lost, and then you're not actually staying on task with what we're doing.

All right, so I got through the first Google Drive.

Then I went into the next one.

Now, this one's a little bit messier.

Uh, lots of ideas.

Now, I mean, I guess we don't need to call it messy.

Maybe it's creative process.

But what I did see in this one is...

I'm just pulling up my paper here.

I had no projects in this one, 25 folders, but 125 loose documents.

And then in my shared folder, I had six folders and around 14 loose documents that all needed homes.

So that gave me an idea that I've been working and doing a lot more time in this one Google Drive, which is true.

Then from that Google Drive, I was like, took a breath.