It started innocently enough, and with good intentions … I was starting a business in the early 2000s, and as I researched and read about my area of interest and found good ideas in magazines, newspapers and other print materials, I’d rip out the page with the valuable ideas and save them for future reference or to integrate into my business plans. As one might guess, the collection of ideas via clippings often grew faster than how I used them or whether I used them at all – but they still felt valuable, as if they might come in handy later. So I eventually got a big plastic bin, as you can see above left, and the collection of clippings grew.
I did occasionally look through the bin, and was usually glad that I had saved the things I saved, as I found the ideas to still be relevant and have value – sometimes I did indeed integrate them into business activity, and it seemed like a “treasure chest” of ideas, ready at my disposal whenever I wanted to sift through it.
Fast forward to the ubiquity of digital media, and I was always finding more ideas from things I read online, from social media, visuals that I would see on my iPhone and then take screenshots to save for later, and the “idea hoarding” expanded to “digital hoarding,” and it continues to this day. Digital hoarding is especially easy when you have something like Dropbox, where the initial storage amounts of gigabytes (GB) becomes terabytes (TB) and thousands of screenshots or saved jpegs, PDFs, Word docs and the like barely make a dent in my allowed storage space.
I’m sure digital hoarding is pretty common, although it’s interesting to see that many reports of digital hoarding describe it as something that leads to increased stress and disorganization. I don’t find it stressful and actually have a strange sense of pride in how extremely organized my file and folder system has become. But what is starting to bother me is the amount of time I spend (waste?) filing away these digital assets to be used or referenced later – and will I use them later? For example, when I hear about interesting movies, it’s not always clear where they are available – theater only? Streaming, but on which service? Will the rights become available on a different streaming platform later? Almost impossible to know when you first hear about the movie, so just add it to a list, right? Except my wish list for movies to watch is currently 124, and am I getting around to watching them? Not necessarily, although one could argue that it’s good to have a list as opposed to just endlessly scrolling through options on Netflix, Amazon Prime, or other such platforms. Or is it?
A movie list seems harmless enough, but screenshots of art I like, museum shows I’d like to see, upcoming concert listings, weekend events, travel ideas from friends’ social media feeds, and so forth … it adds up. I’m still ripping things out of the paper too, which then become paper piles, which I might then add to a digital list so I can get rid of the paper, but then the digital list gets tucked into a Dropbox folder, easy enough to store in the cloud but then whatever prompts me to come back to it?
I do have a pretty good recall of things that previously grabbed my attention, and a quick search in my Dropbox will retrieve it pretty quickly. I’ll give you an example … I had long wanted to drive through the Florida Keys, from Miami down to Key West, and I remembered an article about it from the NY Times that I had save a link to long ago. I finally got around to taking that trip, and when I looked back on items saved related the Florida Keys, found the Times article and it had plenty of valuable info and ideas that I did put into play on the trip. But is this an example of the norm, or the exception of usefulness when it comes to digital hoarding?
I’d love to hear from anyone else who has thoughts or experiences in this area, feel free to share your views in the comments section below.