Time to take-out the online trash!
Trash builds-up in everybodies life, now is the time to get rid of the virtual kind.
Every years, around the month of December, I start doing a cleaning-up of all the years’ activity… time to take-out the online trash!
Step 1: Delete e-mails
E-mails that are over a year old will most likely never see the light of day again so the first step in cleaning-up your online life is to delete all messages that are over a year old. If you want to further clean things up, delete all e-mails from certain businesses activities, businesses or people you no longer associate with or have an interest in.
Step 2: Delete RSS Feeds
Like shopping with a credit card without any limits, adding RSS feeds is incredibly easy and accumulating a bunch of them over a year that you rarely if ever read can begin to clutter your browser and e-mail accounts (for e-mail subscriptions). Take the time now to run through them quickly, deleting the feeds that don’t even register a hint of thought and those which you no longer wish to follow.
Step 3: Clean-up your bookmarks!
The second most easy thing to accumulate over a year are bookmarks, I honestly cannot count the number of folders, sub-folders and various other systems I use to track them. Many of my bookmark folders have well over a hundred in each… again, time to get rid of the stuff you no longer have an interest or affiliation to.
Step 4: Delete redundant software and files
Alright, you got 4 different web browsers, unless you are a web developer, it’s safe to say you use one or two regularly and forgot about the others… time to go into your control panel and free-up some disk space. Sames goes with multiple productivity softwares, old video games and even files with multiple versions.
Step 5: Delete blog drafts
If you run a blog, you probably have a bunch of versions, drafts, unfinished blogs or things laying around in your Wordpress or other blogging software. Delete them.
Step 6: Delete some “friends” from your social networks
I am always astonished by some people having hundreds and even thousands of friends in their social networking site profiles… now is a good time to drop the ones who no longer provide any value to your life in a positive manner or those you don’t even know. Time to trim the fat off your network.
Step 7: Streamline e-mail and hosting providers
If you manage a few websites or have things with multiple hosts, time to migrate everything over to one host and really cut-down on the number of e-mail accounts you have. One good e-mail account with filters does wonders compared to having things run the other way around. Be sure to make sure you are not billed the next month through your credit card from these old hosts btw.
Step 8: Review backup procedures
Alright, your computer and browser are back to their normal speed now that you cleaned-up a lot of junk off of them, now is the time to review your backup systems and procedures. This isn’t sexy nor any fun but a good backup system with your hosting provider AND your hard drives is essential if you don’t want to lose a lot of hard work. Double-check your backups, verify that they are recent and make another one RIGHT NOW.
You will now be ready to hit the ground running when things get crazy again in January!
The Bottom Line
If you haven’t used it for over a year, it probably won’t be used in the future.
