being a digital hoarder

I’ve been obsessively watching the TV show Hoarders over the last few weeks and it’s been pretty eye-opening to see the commonalities between the different episodes.

One of the traits many of the hoarders share is the notion of keeping things incase they might need them.

This is something that got me thinking about my digital life and the idea of digital hoarding.

I’m completely guilty of keeping certain notes or files incase I need them in the future. Chances are I have no use for them and they should be trashed.

Sure, it’s different in a digital space as there’s no physical room being taken up in your house by papers, books, articles, podcasts, and videos.

However, having too much digital clutter can take up space on your computer and your mind. For instance, not being able to find that digital copy of a receipt or a particularly important work document can be frustrating.

The argument could be made that as long as your digital space is organized and easily searchable then there’s no issue with ‘hoarding’.

I’m not sure if this is true for me.

I have started to look through my vault of over 1000 notes to see what actually holds value for me. Do my notes spark joy, as Marie Kondo would say.

One of my Evergreen notes is PEEL technique for persuasive writing I captured this note when reading the article {a} Persuasive Writing Techniques - A Step-By-Step Approach and honestly haven’t looked at it since.

If the goal of a notes system is learning, idea generation, and content creation, this note isn’t really accomplishing any of those things for me. That’s not to say this information isn’t useful to someone, just not for me and my current interests.

So why not just delete it?

When I frame it like that, I feel better about deleting the note because it’s not providing me with any value.

Note deleted

The Collector’s Fallacy is something extremely relevant to this topic.

The Scarcity Effect may also tie into this somehow.

Related Topics: Knowledge Managment