Declutter your digital things

There’s something we all need to do but many of us don’t - declutter the digital things in our life.?

By “digital things”, I mean everything about us that has been recorded in 1s and 0s: personal or work documents, photos, videos, purchased content (ebooks), notes, insurance policies, bank statements, and so on.

For creators, this includes our writings, drawings, ideas, and experiments.?

We need to declutter because we sometimes need to locate specific data quickly (eg. “Where’s that photo of us at the Bird Park in the mid 2010s?”).?

And in the coming years, I believe AI will work with our personal data to keep our lives better organised. Google is already doing this by integrating Gemini with Gmail and Google Docs. Yes, this raises privacy issues, but then again, Google already has all my photos...

Declutter Data Like Ian

1. Create folders on your computer and name them with broad categories: “Photos”, “Videos”, “Receipts”, “Books” and so on. These are the folders you will continuously back up to.?

2. Every time you receive or create a new piece of digital content (eg. a digital receipt for your online purchase, a bank statement, or an ebook you downloaded), save it immediately in one of these folders or a sub-folder. Make it a habit, no excuses.?

3. Back up your folders onto SEVERAL external storage drives. Do NOT trust cloud storage like Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive for storing personal data. My 4TB Samsung SSD is placed at a spot in my house where, if a fire breaks out, I can grab it quickly and run out of the house.?

4. Every year, go through the data you saved and clean it up by deleting unimportant stuff and moving data into the right folders.?

5. After the decluttering exercise, back everything up again on your multiple external drives.?

Be religious about this! Jesus saves lives but your data is your responsibility.?

Wrestling with my data

I’ve been writing and creating content since my mum bought me a computer in 1989, but I didn’t archive anything before 2000 (I think it’s because the thumb drives then had too little capacity). That said, I have 24 years of digital data hoarded away and they are stored in neatly categorised folders.?

Sounds impressive yah, but I don’t look at the old data much because I’m currently grappling with the vast amount of content I create or collect for my current life:?

1. Slides, lots of slides! I’m continuously transferring my 30+ years of knowledge and skills into slides for my teaching jobs (NTU classes, Generative AI and communication workshops for external organisations, keynote speeches and the occasional panel discussion)

2. Daily posts on LinkedIn to share my thoughts and build my brand. Psst, I keep telling myself I should write less on LinkedIn since many posts get suppressed by the algorithm. But once you have a writing momentum going, it’s hard to stop.?

3. Recording ideas, techniques, case studies, and inspirational quotes. This is critical for fueling the above two activities with good content and making myself look smart to students and business leaders.??

4. I’ve quietly set up a new Substack newsletter called “Bald Words” to build a community of communicators in Asia (sorry, it’s such a mouthful). This is an ambitious 10-year project and the content needs a lot of time to create because it has to be different from the stuff that’s already online. Please check it out but know that I’ve only written one introductory piece so far. The next piece will be published at the end of the coming week.?

I have other data-heavy projects on the backburner: An AI-voice podcast, an Udemy training course and my “Infinite Answer Machine” are some of my ideas but the need to eat, sleep and watch the incredibly well-written "The Expanse" remains in my way.??

Bringing order to chaos

To declutter and organise the ever-growing content, I’ve turned to my ThinkTan website.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been revamping my site's content structure and building new pages to house my digital outpouring.?

On ThinkTan, you can start exploring here, then read my ever-growing collection of wise sayings here, check out my guides on creating decks and losing weight, or check out my appearances in the media.?

I also had to think hard about what THIS LinkedIn newsletter is about. For now, it serves as a curated selection of my recent LinkedIn posts, so here we go:

Recent LinkedIn Posts??

How should we practice journalism in the age of Generative AI? A talk with visiting post-grad students from City, University of London.

ChatGPT 4o has been released for free use. I took a quick spin.

AI-generated laksa gets Singaporeans hot under the collar

Go deeper with translations using ChatGPT

The Mystery of Jupiter's Moons: The second Straits Times Generative AI Masterclass

I cloned my voice using ElevenLabs!

Why you need to have your own website if you are serious about personal branding

And I leave you with this quote from Dr Seuss:

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."

Thanks for reading!