Digital Spring Cleaning

Going through and removing old accounts, old items, and old workflows from my day-to-day. It's been pretty interesting to see myself get lit up again about not having to worry about certain things. Here's a sample of what I've been doing:

  • Old forums: There were two forums that I was getting pinged about but barely used. They weren't really giving me anything I'd consider useful, so I decided to delete the accounts. If I miss 'em I'll try them again but I doubt that'll be the case.
  • Gettogether.community: I was a big fan of this place, especially when Meetup was run by the douche-canoes at WeWork. Unfortunately nobody else seems to have shared my enthusiasm so I found myself updating meetings for nobody but myself. Deleted the teams and events. At some point I'll probably check out some alternatives like Mobilizon but for now it's one less place to check and one less thing to worry about.
  • Mailing lists: I've become less tolerant of low-effort mailing list letters, especially the ones where you have to go to their website to learn more. Forget that nonsense. Unsubscribe and leave me in peace. And the ones where I can't unsubscribe (hello, Ubuntu loco-contacts list!) I've decided to let Procmail have their way with it. If your note doesn't bring me joy and you're not a bill then it's getting trashed, one way or another.
  • Wishlists: I'm really bad (good?) about putting things on wishlists. Unfortunately things get stale on those lists. I'm going to work on pruning these lists (or, more likely, I'll be trashing those lists and starting fresh, like I did with my Amazon wishlist). Actually modified a plugin for my localized wishlist in todo.txt and am going to be more diligent on what is on here and what gets tossed.
  • Books: there are a lot of things that have come home with me over the years, and digital books are no exception. But I've found I don't read some of them, and others I've fond better resources that can replace them. Seven Languages in Seven Weeks? I either have actual well-written books that cover that material, so why would I need the cursory overview? And No Starch's Strange Code can fill in when I want to break my brain further. Also I'm unlikely to implement Kanban anywhere that hasn't already implemented it. Toss.
  • Cleaning out RSS feeds: Finding things that I thought were interesting at the time that aren't really doing it for me anymore. Giving those feeds the boot.
  • Someday / Maybe list: This is getting heavily cleaned out as I think about the coming months and the life-changes ahead.
  • BoardGameGeek: I used to be on this site all the time when I was heavy into board games. Now? I spend more time cleaning up old lists and figuring out if things are still current or not. Delete.
  • Exercism: I love the concept but I barely do any of the puzzles for fun. Until next time.

I'm sure there's others, but this is a sample of what's going on in my digital decluttering. What's in your life that can be tossed right this moment?


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