The Digital Cleanse Archives - Page 7 of 10

Get Over FOMO and Embrace JOMO

03.11.2016 by Angela Crocker // Leave a Comment

The Digital Cleanse Day 11:

Get Over FOMO and Embrace JOMO

The fear of missing out (FOMO) grips many digital citizens. Are you afraid of what you’ll miss if you’re not online? Are you compelled to read every status update on Facebook? Are you constantly on Snapchat to stay abreast of the latest gossip? The compulsion to stay online may, in fact, disconnect you from the people, passions and projects that fuel your soul. Rather than worry about what you’re missing online, I encourage you to embrace the joy of missing out (JOMO).

For me, the joy of missing out means I spend time with my family. Just this morning, I spent an hour with my son engaged in an epic battle of LEGO versus TinkerToy. When I’m offline, I connect with my grandmother. She’s fast approaching 90 and has no interest in digital anything. We talk about flowers and clothes and world events and family history. Each conversation joyful in its own way. Perfect moments come when I can simply sit and hold my husband’s hand. Just be. Who do you want to spend time with?

The joy of missing out also means I do more things I love. I write my best project outlines with sharpies and sticky notes. I love to go cycling, swimming and beach-combing. I doodle with fine art supplies and browse bookstores. And so much more. What do you love to do?

While I do document lots of my life with Instagram photos, I often leave the camera alone. Its very freeing to just enjoy the moment. No need to freeze frame your kids in action to take a photo. Nor do you need to recreate those perfect moments. Just commit them to memory. My dear friend, Moira Bridgman, gave me an amazing piece of advice for my wedding day. She told me “you won’t remember what you saw but you will remember how you feel.” I’ve lived that truth as much as possible.

While undertaking a digital cleanse, I encourage you to plan time away from your technology. Spend time with the people you love. Do the things you enjoy.

For a more academic look at JOMO, I highly recommend The Joy of Missing Out: Finding Balance in a Wired World. In her book, Christina Crook writes:

By understanding our online habits, we can form new ones – as we seek to be fully human in a smartphone world.”

I’m looking forward to meeting Christina at Social Media Camp in May. As long as our sessions don’t overlap, I plan to watch her presentation. With her permission, I will write more about her work.

More on the 30 day #digitalcleanse tomorrow. Hope to see you then!

(If you missed yesterday’s installment, take a couple extra minutes to explore Pick a Cloud. For links to the complete Digital Cleanse series, click here.)

Pick a Cloud – What’s your storage solution?

03.10.2016 by Angela Crocker // Leave a Comment

The Digital Cleanse Day 10:

Pick a Cloud

Cloud storage is an amazing invention! I love that I can access any of my files, any time from anywhere. All I need is an Internet connection and a web browser (or a mobile app). I especially love that I can reliably work on the current version of my document no matter the hardware. Synchronized files are a joy. I also love that hardware failure no longer means a catastrophe. Yes, it’s very sad when you shatter your phone but at least your data can be resurrected.

That said, I don’t recommend my original ad hoc approach. With accounts on Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud and OneDrive, I fractured my cloud storage across several platforms. Partly, I have a mixed bagged because of the workflow preferences of the people and projects I’ve worked on. Maybe you can relate?

After a few years, it gets tricky to remember where to find the files you need. Nothing kills productivity like the frustration of searching for files across multiple platforms. Its been a painful experience. I’m still reorganizing my files onto one cloud.

So, learn from my mistake and pick a cloud. Here are some of the available services:

Dropbox *
- 2 GB – free
- 1TB – CDN$11.99 / month
- Unlimited – CDN $17 / user / month
iCloud *
- 5 GB – free
- 50 GB – CDN $1.29 / month
- 200 GB – CDN $3.99 / month
- 1 TB – CDN $12.99 / month
Google Drive *
- 15GB – free
- 100 GB – US$1.99 / month
- 1 TB – US$9.99 / month
- 10 TB – US $99.99 / month
One Drive *
- 5 GB – free
- 50 GB – US$1.99 / month

* Rate packages noted were current in March 2016. Subject to change without notice.

I strongly recommend choosing a single cloud. Of course, if your client, ACME, works via Dropbox then you join them on Dropbox. If you keep accounts on more than one cloud storage service, use that storage as a back-up location. For example, I keep a back-up of our family photos, one of my most treasured possessions, on two clouds, just in case.

More on the 30 day #digitalcleanse tomorrow. Hope to see you then!

(If you missed yesterday’s installment, take a couple extra minutes to explore Curate Your Photos. For links to the complete Digital Cleanse series, click here.)

Curate Your Photos (and videos)

03.08.2016 by Angela Crocker // 1 Comment

The Digital Cleanse Day 8:

Curate Your Photos (and videos)

More than ever, you need to curate your photos. With the arrival of digital cameras and mobile phone cameras, it’s very, very easy to take thousands of photos a year.

But think for a moment, who needs 40,000 photos of their six year old? A generation ago, when film reigned, it was unusual and expense for a family to take more than a few hundred photos a decade. Go back two generations and you’ll find a couple dozen photos, at most, for a lifetime. Three generations back and their might be one or two images of each person.

So, back to our digital cleanse. How can you curate your photos? I recommend a two prong attack.

Starting today, follow these best practices for new images.

Review photos taken daily.
Delete out of focus photos.
Delete unflattering photos.
Delete near-duplicate photos.

In addition, schedule time to deal with your backlog of photos. You’ll drive yourself crazy looking at thousands of photos at a time so narrow your approach for older photographs.

Pick a particular date range – a week, month or year that makes sense to you.
Pick a specific event – a wedding, the birth of a child, a grand opening.
Pick a central person – yourself, the CEO, a grandchild, a celebrity.

Once you’ve selected a manageable batch of photos to review, apply the same best practices you use for your daily photographs.

The same strategies apply to curate your videos. Lather, rinse, repeat.

More on the 30 day #digitalcleanse tomorrow. Hope to see you then!

(If you missed yesterday’s installment, take a couple extra minutes to explore Consolidate Your Data. For links to the complete Digital Cleanse series, click here.)