I have a lot of digital records. Not a lot by, like, Library of Congress standards \u2013 but more than most of the folks that I know personally. I try to maintain an email INBOX without a scrollbar \u2013 such that I have perhaps at most 20 messages hanging out at any given time. The two primary mechanisms I use for this are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
* If I\u2019m saving it to reply to it \u201cwhen I have time,\u201d I go ahead and start the reply. Generally, I\u2019m done with the reply before I feel the time crunch. Seriously, I used to spend more time worrying about how long it would take to write an email than actually writing the message. The \u201cto do list\u201d school of INBOX management is pretty silly \u2013 to my eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
* I sort things that I \u2018might\u2019 need into a cunning array of folders. At the top level are things like \u201chome finances\u201d, \u201cfamily and friends,\u201d and \u201cwork.\u201d Below those we sort by individual, by project, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My observation is that I very, very rarely go back and access any of these old messages. The ones I access are almost invariably receipts or password confirmation emails from various websites. The rest are just a big dusty heap. They\u2019re indexed, yes, and electronically searchable \u2026. but why do I keep them at all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n