Digital organisation

05 Oct, 2026

I've been kind of sick over the last week and it's killed any productivity I've managed to eke out recently. It sucks because I've been surprisingly motivated lately but I've had to rest or have just felt like complete garbage. I wanted to write about what I have managed to get done, though!

I have a serious problem with organisation, which is not uncommon with people who have ADHD. I think people who know me would be rather surprised by this admission because I have a planner and a bullet journal that I stick pretty close to, so on the surface, I appear quite put-together. My main problem is all my digital junk.

I've got thumb drives and hard disks aplenty ♪
I've got CDs and G-Drives galore ♪
You want cloud storage folders? I've got twenty!¹ ♪
But — oh no — where's that thing? ♪
Where's it stooooooored? ♪

I promise I don't have a fever. What I've got is a serious issue with knowing where any of my stuff is, if I've already backed it up, how old it is, etc. I started to run into this earlier this year when we cancelled our Disney Plus and Netflix subscriptions. Do I actually have Parks and Recreation² somewhere? Where is it? Am I going to have to go out and find it again? I ended up putting together a spreadsheet of all the shows, movies, and anime I have and where it's located. I started to do this with my books, e-books, and manga too because I could never remember what I owned or what I'd borrowed from the library.

As a writer, I've got scraps of fiction and half-formed ideas littered across my external drives, multiple laptops, tablets, desktops, and even on some old floppy disks.³ My stuff is everywhere and with the advent of cloud storage, I have multiple Google Drives and a Dropbox with an assortment of crap. I really need a different system.

Thus, I'm doing a new "Super Task" — Get All My Stuff Sorted. Okay, so that's not a snappy title. I'm going through all my devices and figuring out where everything should live. I'll create one folder synced with cloud storage that all my devices can access, with scheduled backups on external drives. I'm going to draft up a master list of where important items live so that if I forget, I can look at that document and know exactly where to find something.

I'm in Phase One right now: auditing my cloud storage and deciding what to do with everything. I also read through Google Drive and Dropbox's terms of service and privacy policies. It had been ages since I'd even glanced at them and with the scourge of generative AI descending upon us, I figured it would be worth a review. (Did you know Dropbox can delete your account if you don't access your storage for six consecutive months? They say they'll make a "reasonable effort" to reach out to let you know, but who knows! Google Drive at least gives you three years.)

While this will take a lot of work, I'm actually pretty pumped! It's already been a relief to shed some of my old junk and revisit files I'd completely forgotten about. I have a computer boxed up in my laundry room that I haven't touched in probably eight years. I wonder what's on it?

#personal