Tag: digital minimalism

Short update on Digital Minimalism – iPhone apps

Quick recap, digital minimalism centres around the idea of keeping digital files organsised consumes brain space, just like physical objects do. To begin this journey down the rabbit hole, I started with auditing the apps on my iPhone.

Out of all the apps I removed, I have missed exactly….none. How odd, by removing the unused, I continued to no use them, nor care about them. I managed to reduce the number of screens down. The only thing that bugs me, one app that was in the top left on the 10th screen (that’s right, I had to swipe 9 screens to get there) is now on the 2nd screen & I keep swiping past it. (O dear how sad I hear you say in a sarcastic voices).

Digital Minimalism – Q – What if files had an expiration date like food

Food has a life cycle, it starts as a seed, through food and water it becomes a living thing, then we pick/harvest/collect it and the moment it is removed from its life source it starts dying and breaking down.

What if a computer file was like that, it had a shelf life depending on what it is. There is that moment when you open the fridge and find that smelly chicken that you left their last week, what if we were to open our computer and find that file from last month that we hadn’t touched, so it removed itself.

I realise that this isn’t a popular idea. We like to keep and horde our files, after all they are just little files on a computer. They don’t weigh anything, nor cost anything. (But we discussed this earlier in the week). 

But in a sense our files are breaking down. Try using a floppy disk from 10 years ago, possibly the hardest part of the exercise is finding a drive to read the media. In a sense that is a breakdown, or a death of a file. The ones and zeros may still be their, but our ability to access them, not so much. Their is research around that shows that by not applying power to an SSD driver for extended periods of time can result in data loss.

While most people would be giving tips on how to avoid this data loss I’d like to ask the question, why do we keep so much data? And is there a lifetime that we should respect when it comes to that data? 

Am I going to keep a digital copy of every photos I’ve taken and have sitting on my laptop at the moment for the next 10 years? The next 20 years? I would think not. Which then opens a new question, should I be marking the images as the ones to keep for a lifetime when processing them?

I don’t have the answers. But hopefully I’ll work it out.

Digital Minimalism – School Work

Lets look at how we can better organize files around school work.

This comes out a conversation I had with a friend who is a ‘put all the files on the desktop so I can find them, but can’t find anything’ person.

Lesson one, never, ever only have an assignment on a USB flash drive. They will fail, and at inconvenient times. If you do use a flash drive, replace it every 6-12 months, it’s the costs of 2x coffees. It’s like health insurance for your school work.

Lesson two, look to use a cloud service with your files. If your a Microsoft Word person, use Dropbox* or Onedrive. If you always have an Internet connection you could look at using Google Drive or the web based Office 365 apps.

Structuring Files

Instead of just saving everything to the desktop as ‘assignment 1.docx’, try adding some order.
Here’s how I do it:

DM - School Files

The end product looks something like this:

000-School-Folders

By breaking it down into year folders, it allows for easy historic access when you need to go “last year I do that assignment for that subject”, bamn, easy to find. Then grouping files by subject allows you to keep things separate between subjects, the same way you might have a different note box for each class. Then we have our final layer of folders, these allows you to keep important assessment tasks out of the clutter of non assessment items.

If you ever need to backup all your school work, or archive it at the end of the year, all you need to do is copy the ‘School’ folder to a CD, DVD, Memory Stick, Cloud Storage, location and you have saved everything, nor is it mixed up with the tax return from 3 years ago, or the baby photos from last week.

*Sign up to Dropbox with this link and we both get extra space. Yay!

Let’s have a conversation around digital minimalism

Photos, files, data doesn’t take up space, does it? It doesn’t cost me anything to store 2000 family photos on my computer, does it?

Files, they are intangible ones and zeros that live on the computer, but they don’t take up space like books do on a bookcase.

I don’t hear of anyone leaving the lunch out saying “I’m just going home to tidy up the files on my computer”.

It’s not something we do. There’s no New York Times best sellers titled “digital file management secrets that will change your life”. It’s not sexy, nor cool to tidy up computer files. If anything it’s almost a bragging statement to have more  “1000 songs in your pocket”.

We either have a clean way of managing files, or let’s face it, a messy way. I’m sure some of this comes down to technical ability, but mostly it’s personality. If someone has paper all over of their desk, it’s almost guaranteed that their computers desktop is full to the brim with files and icons. There is nothing technically wrong with this approach, but I think we would be better off applying some of the minimalism principles to our files, the same way we apply it to our physical, tangible objects in our space. After all, just the same that you have to remember where you put that lovely severing bowl that you bring out on special occasions. You have to remember where you saved those photos from that holiday that you went on 2 years ago with the family.

I’m going to propose that the issue is weighing on our mental state more than we think 

I think that this problem is two fold.

  1. People don’t have systems around files. If you have been a PC person for a while you’ll know that Microsoft tired to help you out in Windows XP with the ‘My Folders’; ‘My Documents’, ‘My Pictures’, ‘My Music’. Then in Vista they dropped the ‘My’. Over in Mac land, you just have the folders, no ‘My’ about it.
  2. Files don’t have physical weight to them (technically the hard disk that holds them does). While we can look a bookcase and say “Gee that’s a lot of books” or look at a messy kitchen and say “Why so many dirty dishes?” We don’t treat files in the same way. We do the digital equivalent of shutting the door on the messy room, by just closing the folder with all the messy files.

I’m going to start with the Apps on my iPhone.

I have a old iPhone 4S, I got it in November 2011 (a month or two after it hit the shelves) and have never wiped it. I have 102 apps to be updated (not total, these are the ones waiting for updates). I have a total of 10 screens of apps, almost all full (I could drop it down to 9).

I’m going to have a guess that all the apps fall into 1 of 6 categories:

  1. Daily Use (use 5+ times a week)
  2. Weekly Use (use 1+ time a week)
  3. Monthly Use (use 1+ times a month)
  4. Yearly Use (use 1+ times a year)
  5. Fun to show someone once in a blue moon.
  6. Never used (or worse, never opened!).

I’m going to have a beet that these apps not only take up iPhone space, but also brain space. I wonder if the same feeling you get from cleaning the build up of excess from the car, or from a room equally applies to an electronic device.

To start this process, I made a list of all the apps on my iPhone, along with how often I open them, and when I can remember last using them (the list is below).

Here are the results:

Andrew's App Usage Graph

As you can see, I use around 20 apps in a week, or 40ish in a month. I have a total of 148 extra installed apps (I didn’t count the ones Apple force upon you, like ‘Tips’, according to the phone I have 165 apps). There are 69 apps that are in the ‘Never Use’ category!

Just for kicks I had a think through the list and noted when I thought I last used an app, here are the results:

2016-05-16 21_14_12-Microsoft Excel - App Audit

I was unsure on 112 apps when I had actually last used them!

Now comes the interesting part. Can I bring myself to emotionally delete all of the 69 apps that I never use? For the sake of the blog, and myself, I think I’ll do it.

[Goes away and deletes apps].

I have done it. Now there is going to be an adjustment period, because all of the apps are now in different spots!

TM-iPhone

Update: May 18. I haven’t missed any of the deleted apps. The only slightly annoying issue is that I’m having issues locating one particular  app that I use a lot after moving it.
Here is a boring Audit of my iPhone. (Interesting only to me)

  1. Daily Use
    Podcasts
    Flipboard
    Messenger
    YouTube
    Spotify
    2x Client
    eBay
    Gmail
    Password Safe
  2. Weekly Use
    Instagram
    Net Utility
    Dropbox
    Wordpress
    Google Maps
    Bank Apps
    Pinterest
    Deputy
  3. Monthly Use
    Twitter
    Snapchat
    Audio Tools
    PolyTune
    Bible
    Runkeeper
    Services
    Wunderlist
    FileExplorer
    Evernote
    Google Analytics
    Chromecast
    LightMelb
    FireReady
    Domino’s
    Domino’s Offers App
    Headspace
    Film Set
    OpenVPN
    IMDb
    Net Master
    Fitbit
    Tetris
    Gumtree
    Serverauditor
  4. Yearly Use
    PS Express
    Backgrounds
    PennyTel
    Kindle
    Recorder
    Piano Chords
    GoPro
    ALDI
    Woolworths
    Coles
    Wallpapers
    Realestate
    Domain
    Skydrive
    QRReader
    TeamViewer
    uPackingLite
    Auspost Postcards
    TuneIn Radio
    PTV
    PalmMix
    Flickr
    Hangouts
    NSLookup
    Lift
    SignNow
    Ustream
    Breath Well
    BreatheMate
    Kickstarter
    TED
  5. Fun to show someone once in a blue moon.
    Heart Rate
    Periscope
    Vine
    Candle
    Starchart
    J. Gillards SB (‘Go down have a look, have a gawk, have a see, take a few photographs’)
  6. Never used (or worse, never opened!).
    Away Find
    LG TV Remote
    join.me
    Adobe Ideas
    Speed Box
    Skype
    Facebook Camera
    RTA Lite* (I use it’s big brother Audio Tools)
    JL Audio*
    Daytum
    Toodledo
    Wunderground*
    Beme
    Sleep Cycle*
    Air Video*
    Disposable
    Photosynth
    SwannView
    Strava
    Chess*
    Lifeline
    Homeremote*
    TasteSummer*
    Taste
    Wally
    Acorns AU
    My Measurements
    PhotoToaster*
    iBeat
    Metronome
    piaScoreAir
    Lasoo
    DomainTools
    VNC
    Go Daddy
    Sketchat
    iWHMCS
    iViewer Lite
    remoteMouse*
    Stocard
    Facebook (on purpose)
    Unifi Video*
    The Martian
    Gas Cubby
    MyStuff2 Lite
    Wallpapers
    F.Marker.HD
    photo2text
    Touchnote
    Paypal
    YNABLite*
    Drive
    Flights
    Counter+
    Pocket*
    Telstra 24×7*
    Framatic Pro
    Splitter Pro
    Fisheye Pro
    Copy
    Cyber Dust
    iMovie*
    FrameMagic
    Sudoku
    Releases
    500px
    Easybulb
    LimitlessLED
    ChordBank

Apps marked with * are old apps that I once loved for a season, but now that season has passed.