Sorting my Digital Life

As a continuation of my decision to move my life away from the Google Cloud I have finally started to take action.

I oftentimes watch a youtube video or two while eating lunch, and two days ago I got very inspired by Matt D'Avellas eposide on "I learned a productivity system for organizing life".
It is very much based on ideas from Tiago Forte, and ideas from his book "Building a Second Brain".

To me, building a Second Brain sounds too esoteric, but the core ideas of generally getting systems in place and organizing your digital life really appeals to me.

So now I have organized all my Apple Notes into the folders "Projects", "Areas", "Resources" and "Archives", and work on giving all kinds of information a clear home. Already two days in I feel it is working wonders. It both makes me want to write more (now that I know where to sort my thoughts), and also makes it way easier to find the information I look for.

Furthermore I also got inspired by the latest podcast discussions between Tim Ferriss and Derek Sivers called "Derek Sivers — The Joys of an Un-Optimized Life, Finding Paths Less Traveled, Creating Tech Independence (and Risks of the Cloud), Taking Giant Leaps, and Picking the Right “Game of Life” (#668)"
Here Derek Sivers goes at length about how one can create a more robust, tech independent direction with all your digital content. They talked a lot about contact and calenders, but for me photos and email are definitely most important.

Therefore I have finally started to take action now, and have done a full Takeout of my data at Google, and go through it piece by piece now, starting with my Photos and emails.

I do however not intend to go "cloudless" with my data. But I am making more intentional decisions this time around. So for Photos I add everything to iCloud. There are so many benefits to be able to have them easily available at my phone at all times, and it gives me great joy to look back at photos. I also share with my family often, and need a good solution for that.

I do have the plan to make a full backup-system of my photos on a yearly basis, and store that in a physical HD at least at one location.

As for email, I have already made the switch to Hey, and will continue that gradual change at all digital plattforms.