I’ve always thought of myself as a devout declutterer; I regularly prune away old books and clothes, I throw junk away the moment I get it and I like to keep my desks empty and clean. I even tend to err too much on the side of decluttering by throwing away stuff that I regret later.
But I realized something about myself today. While I may be a physical declutter bug, I’m a hoarder in another realm, the one with ones and zeroes. Just a quick glance at my iTunes library tells me that I have a grand total of 2765 songs, most of which have not been listened to, and which iTunes helpfully tells me will take 9.3 days of non-stop 24-hour listening to finish.
That doesn’t include the other media I have, like podcasts (306 unwatched TED talks), ebooks (that I bought even!) and the articles (Instapaper Pro rocks!) I saved on my iPhone.
And you know what the best part is? The collection keeps growing.
Good God.
Why this incessant need to keep collecting media? There’s no way that I could ever consume all of it. And while the illusion is that digital media is free (yea right, tell that to the $300 external HDD I just bought), it consumes the only nonrefundable resource of all: time.
We’re smart animals right? We’ve solved the Information Age. Now we need to get to the Information Management Age and make sense of all this info-junk. I’d declutter it all but then I’d get really recursive; spending extra time managing stuff that consumes my time so I’d spend less time on it.
I could delete it all, but strangely enough, while throwing away old clothes is easy for me, throwing away old media is not. What the frak is up with this double-standard?
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I know your problem. I had the same but I focused not on all the junk I have, but on all the goods that are hidden in there. So what steps did I take?
#1st: I deleted my whole iTunes library (stuff remains on my pc)
#2nd: I choose very wisely which songs I want to have on my iPod
#3rd: I use my iPod more than 30 days and add songs that I’ve missed
#4rd: I delete every song that isn’t in my iTunes library from my HDD.
the end.
Your ever growing collection of unread / unlistened to media reminds me of Umberto Eco’s Antilibrary as dicussed in Nassim Talebs book “The Black Swan”. Read books are far less valuable than unread ones. Our collection of unused media should be constantly growing to remind us of what we don’t know.
Out of sight, out of mind Alvin. That’s why we keep growing out list of digital items and eventually it grows so big that doing housekeeping is an equal nightmare as doing that once-a-year spring cleaning!!!!
Good luck friend haha