I signed up for the second brain introductory tutorials and quickly felt like I needed a third brain to process and make sense of it. My worst digital hoarding space is my apple mail, where I've created more than a thousands folders over the last 20 years in an attempt to organize communications I might need to retrieve one day.
Mar 8, 2023·edited Mar 8, 2023Liked by Melissa Menke
This is a pretty bold hypothesis that I'm going to hide in your comments section
I think BASB can be problematic if one ends up recording too much from our "reactive" operating system instead of our "emergent" operating system, which doesn't serve us in the long run
I wrote about the difference between the two modes here:
To your point about uncertainty, I find it difficult and time-consuming to wrestle with whether each item will be useful in the future. As a result, I only delete things if it's an instant/obvious decision, and most of the rest goes into a "Graveyard" folder in Dropbox.
Thanks Karena! There was something you wrote a while back about tabs containing threads of future ideas that really stuck with me too.
I'm realising that digital hoarding is deceptive, easily disguised as productive. And I'm trying to push back on that, even though I couldn't for the life of me clear my downloads last night and do still have over a dozen tabs open :) Thanks for reading!
I'm looking forward to meeting Fei-Ling in person soon and learning more of what she has learned.
I thought it was just old remnants of the Industrial Era like me, who were into information hoarding due to our scarcity mindframe. It is taking significant brain re-wiring to counter this mindset.
Wow, I identified with a lot of this, thanks for sharing! The paralyzing decision of "which photo to delete?" is real.
As I've been going through my various tabs (my equivalent of your "read later" folder), I've been either discarding them or matching them with tags I've identified as important in my database (which I have another mechanism for resurfacing later when needed). It takes time, but it's definitely helped me better understand what important vs. forgettable.
My goal in all of this is to get better at anticipating and predicting the future, which, as you mentioned, will hopefully make me less likely to hoard again.
The fact that I somehow missed this essay is a signal about my own digital hording. I flagged it in my inbox, but it's taken me this long to work through all the flagged stuff to get back here 🤣
I have a lot of work to do in this department and it's so helpful to be reminded that, basically, none of it's worthwhile if it doesn't spark joy. Thank you!
I signed up for the second brain introductory tutorials and quickly felt like I needed a third brain to process and make sense of it. My worst digital hoarding space is my apple mail, where I've created more than a thousands folders over the last 20 years in an attempt to organize communications I might need to retrieve one day.
This is a pretty bold hypothesis that I'm going to hide in your comments section
I think BASB can be problematic if one ends up recording too much from our "reactive" operating system instead of our "emergent" operating system, which doesn't serve us in the long run
I wrote about the difference between the two modes here:
https://christin.substack.com/p/reactive-versus-emergent-operating
This is a distinction I've intuited in my own personal exercise of eliminating or filing away tabs-- what a concise way of explaining it!
So glad to hear this resonates! Also subscribed to your substack :D
To your point about uncertainty, I find it difficult and time-consuming to wrestle with whether each item will be useful in the future. As a result, I only delete things if it's an instant/obvious decision, and most of the rest goes into a "Graveyard" folder in Dropbox.
This is exactly the essay I needed to read, Melissa. Equally guilty. Your point about the tiger photos brings the point home.
I have to flex this muscle.
Thanks Karena! There was something you wrote a while back about tabs containing threads of future ideas that really stuck with me too.
I'm realising that digital hoarding is deceptive, easily disguised as productive. And I'm trying to push back on that, even though I couldn't for the life of me clear my downloads last night and do still have over a dozen tabs open :) Thanks for reading!
I'm looking forward to meeting Fei-Ling in person soon and learning more of what she has learned.
I thought it was just old remnants of the Industrial Era like me, who were into information hoarding due to our scarcity mindframe. It is taking significant brain re-wiring to counter this mindset.
Wow, I identified with a lot of this, thanks for sharing! The paralyzing decision of "which photo to delete?" is real.
As I've been going through my various tabs (my equivalent of your "read later" folder), I've been either discarding them or matching them with tags I've identified as important in my database (which I have another mechanism for resurfacing later when needed). It takes time, but it's definitely helped me better understand what important vs. forgettable.
My goal in all of this is to get better at anticipating and predicting the future, which, as you mentioned, will hopefully make me less likely to hoard again.
The fact that I somehow missed this essay is a signal about my own digital hording. I flagged it in my inbox, but it's taken me this long to work through all the flagged stuff to get back here 🤣
I have a lot of work to do in this department and it's so helpful to be reminded that, basically, none of it's worthwhile if it doesn't spark joy. Thank you!