Thought Stream

We are all hoarders.

Most do not appear on television, covered in filth and living amongst feces covered rodents. There are plenty of valid reasons to store things and we are not talking about that…we are talking about the aberration of that.

It dawned on me the other day that I am an information hoarder, compulsively collecting, categorizing and storing information for no other reason than pure habit.

For me, that, was email – the MS Outlook PST file storage compulsion.

I had this epiphany when I was moving from a Windows 7 laptop to a Mac Book Air. Simply put, Macs don’t support having a PST file (aside from a one time import of mailboxes).

I’ll not delve into a useless religious diatribe of why one vs the other, because both are truly suitable for use in the business world. There are some advantages and disadvantages for each one. I needed something very light, powerful and killer battery life. If you are thinking iPad, please stop reading now, close your browser and punch yourself to sleep. I love my iPad…but this is not the time for that discussion.

I had not realized how liberating it was to actually delete emails (of course nothing in the digital world is truly deleted) and focus on more productive activities versus filing and searching. I realized that I could rely on a combination of internally and externally hosted collaboration services.  Did I have every email that I sent and received at my fingertips? No I did not. Did I need to have that? Hell no!

What are you hoarding?

…make wise choices.

-sk