Put your digital stuff in the right places

Just like the key to a clean house is making sure that all of your stuff has a proper place to go, the same is true for your digital life. Once you’ve trained yourself to put your various digital items in their respective places, keeping things organized becomes much easier.

I would argue that this is a core reason why people struggle with keeping a clean inbox; so much of what comes in there doesn’t have a proper place to live, so it just languishes. Or, people treat their inbox as a place for something else (often a to-do list), which leads to the same kind of problem.

My places

I laid out all of my systems in my Digital Efficiency Framework post from last year, but here is a quick look at where all of my “proper places” are. No matter where something comes in (often through my inbox, but it could be a phone call, a Facebook message, or just an idea that popped into my head), they all can go into one of these:

1. Events — They just go on your calendar. For me that’s Google Calendar
2. Useful reference sites — I currently use Raindrop.io for my bookmarks, but there are a lot of great options.
3. Things to read/watch — These are essentially bookmarks, but for things that you specifically want to go back and read soon. For me, I use Pocket to store…