“How do you eat an elephant?”
One bite at a time.
I thought that it was time to revisit the topic of organizing our digi-files. If you’re anything like me, you probably take a lot of photos. Maybe even so many that you have a hard time managing them. You know that you have that photo of that special event… somewhere. Since you never got around to sorting, editing and filing it you have no clue as to where it is. And your pile of un-filed digi-pics is so overwhelming that it‘s turned into one big huge elephant. Sound familiar?
So, just how do you tackle that huge digi-mountain you‘ve created without going insane? One byte at a time. (heh heh)
Enter the Fly Lady. If you’ve never heard of her, please follow the link and see what she’s all about. In a nutshell, the FlyLady helps us learn how to “set up routines, get rid of your clutter, and put your home and life in order” since “you cannot organize clutter – you can only organize the things you love!” And the way you do it is in baby steps, a little bit at a time. My favorite FlyLady tip is the 27-fling boogie. You set aside fifteen minutes to declutter, going through your rooms and tossing 27 things that you don’t use or need anymore. And you can apply the same process to your e-pics, too.
Set aside 15 minutes a day to begin sorting through your photographs. Start by removing the card from your camera(s) and getting them into your computer. Then it’s time for a quick sort. Look through the photos, keeping the good and flinging out the bad. Remove any that are out of focus, cropped wrong, duplicates, or that you just don’t like. Don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on a single photo – look, make a decision, and move on. That means no photo editing! You can edit all you want when it’s time to use or print the photo.
Next, place each photo in the proper file(s) so you’ll know how to find it later on. Which program should to use? It’s up to you. I use Memory Manager 3.0, where I can place the same photo into as many file folders as I wish, then retrieve what I need with the click of my mouse.
If you do this every day this week you will have spent one hour 45 minutes on the project, most likely more than you had done the week before. Keep it up and it will turn into 7 hours over 4 weeks, and so on. Every little bit counts when it comes to eating that elephant, and pretty soon it will be gone. Once completed you can then move onto more detailed filing and editing. But just think of how good you will feel when it’s done. The key is to sort, toss and file. And make a promise to yourself to do this every time you upload new photos to your computer. You’ll be glad you did!
Tags: What Matters Monday
April 26th, 2010 at 11:48 am
Great post! I loved the “one byte at a time” line — and the inspiration of this whole thing. I usually don’t have a problem finding my photos (iPhoto on the Mac organizes everything chronologically, which is how I scrap) but I’d love to apply the principle to my supplies — get everything tagged so it’s even more usable! Thanks, Jan!