Dave Donaldson

Getting Organized

Tuesday, September 06 2005

The last several months have been extremely busy for me, and with that I became *very* unorganized. From my home office having paperwork/receipts/software/hardware all over the place to my laptop and its hard drive in complete disarray, things have become a complete wreck. So today I started cracking down on myself.

I first got my loft (home office) in order. I had so much stuff laying around everywhere it just wasn't even comfortable to work in. I got rid of tons of stuff, including an entire archive of MSDN magazines that for some reason I thought I needed to keep (although I made sure to keep the copy that has my article in it). And it's unbelieveable how much dust accumulates over a few months. Too thick to admit. I put all my wires, cables, routers, hubs, and other miscellaneous hardware into a large container that now sits neatly on the side of my desk. I also got my bookshelf back in order, which was a huge help because it had really started to look bad. It's amazing how much space you have once you get things in order.

After clearing myself some space and getting comfortable again, I've begun to get my laptop in order. Over these last few months I've gotten very careless in regards to how I store my files and all important data. I have crap everywhere, and for no rhyme or reason. And ashamedly I can't tell you the last time I performed a backup. I know, very sad. I was telling James the other day that if my hard drive were to die right now, I would just quit this profession altogether and do something else. And I was only half serious.

So the first thing I've tackled is my email. Yet another part of my system in shambles because of a lack of organization, I'm going to reorganize things into folders that make sense and get myself to Zero Email Bounce. I admit that I'm one of those slackers who keeps his Inbox as his ToDo list. And my Deleted Items folder currently has 2,733 items in it. Why haven't I emptied it? Couldn't tell you, but I'm going to try hard to break these habits.

Once I get my email in good working order, to the file system I go. My desktop is a collection of junk gathered over time as a holding place for temporary things. I know what you're thinking: use the C:\Temp directory you idiot. Yeah, I know. Like I said, I'm a work in progress. And I've got important files split between My Documents and other various parts of the system. Makes it a little convoluted to do backups that way if you ask me (if I performed regular backups that is - getting to that). I also have tools and utilities all over the place and I need to reign those in as well.

But not having done any backups, at all, in the last 6 months is really the worry. I've been independent for a year now (upcoming 1-year anniversary post coming soon) and I'm less organized than I was when I started when in fact I need to be *more* organized. Not a good thing. So I'm making a conscious decision to get things in order and performing regularly scheduled backups is an absolute necessity. If my hard drive were to die, I'd lose all the financial data for my business, all the code I've written (in particular CodeKeep), and all the important documents such as contracts, agreements, insurances, etc, etc. Yes, those documents I could probably recover from other sources, but that would be a huge pain in the ass.

If you're wondering how I got this way, I think I do know the reason (no, it's not all laziness), but that's another post for another day (heck, maybe tonight... or maybe not). And with that, I'm outta here. Gotta get back to attaining Zero Email Bounce.