Are you a file-erasing maniac?

How do you keep your digital contents tidy, easily manageable? By filing them properly, in well-structured folders? By naming and tagging them aptly? By sorting them in a meaningful manner? All these methods are good, valid ones and should definitely be applied. But there’s an extra one that I love and find extremely efficient, it simply consists of erasing useless contents, deleting them for good. Some may say it’s simplistic. I’d say it’s not.

I know it is a risky way of dealing with digital files and that there’s always a chance of wanting to have the files back after having boldly trashed them. I still think this is often counterbalanced by the importance of having a clean place. Besides, I don’t delete contents without being careful about what I’m doing and well-focused on the job.

The low cost of data storage, be it local hard disks, optical media, USB flash drives or the cloud, often available in terabytes, is making us store data in a disorganised manner, constantly adding and seldom deleting. Not to mention mailboxes that typically hold thousands of e-mail messages, of which only a tiny fraction remains relevant and necessary after a while.

Erasing what is too old, what is not relevant anymore and what is unimportant, and doing the cleanup without waiting for mayhem to happen, is the best way to keep the place tidy. Whether e-mails, photos or documents, a huge part of what store can be erased. Though the erasable/not-erasable ratio can greatly vary from user to user, I consider that an average of 80 per cent of the digital contents we handle can be deleted without affecting our work, or our life for that matter!

If I am quick at erasing files that I consider are merely “transiting” by my computer I am even more aggressive with those that are passing by my smartphone.

Take a look at the fast chats that take place between people on Whatsapp. A two-minute chat can generate 15 or 20 short messages, a couple of more or less blurred photos and perhaps an audio message or two. Do you really need to keep a message that says “I’m fine thanks, see you tomorrow then” or a photo that looks like it was stonewashed? Except in very rare instances, I usually delete all chats that are older than 2 days, without hesitation.

Out of 100 photos taken with my phone or received through it I rarely keep more than five, and often less — the rest I gladly move to the trash bin. Again, the phenomenon is amplified by the fact that, precisely, because we can generate digital contents so easily and quickly, the quality of these contents is inversely proportional to their quantity and, therefore, the largest number can be discarded.

The benefits of having a tidy computer or smartphone are obvious. Once your digital workspace is neat the machine becomes more pleasant to operate, and everything becomes easier and faster: searching, retrieving, copying, and so forth. More particularly, keeping a device tidy will prove to be invaluable when you have to move to a new one and must copy all data and applications from the old to the new. A messy old machine can be a nightmare to transfer to a new one, just like a tidy old machine will make moving to a new one a breeze.

Whether you are over erasing or not erasing enough is a matter of personal judgement and appreciation. The vast majority, however, seems to belong to the second category. I proudly belong to the first and am willing to take the risk of accidentally deleting an important file once in a blue moon.