In the physical world, every piece of paper, manila file folder, and object takes up precious space. Therefore, you have to make a decision about what to do with each and every one of them, even if that decision is simply to throw it away.
But the digital world is different. Digital objects don’t take up any physical space; they take up digital space, which these days is essentially unlimited. This means you never really have to throw anything away. You can keep it all.
This may seem like a blessing, but in fact it’s a curse.
The problem with keeping everything is that it quickly starts to consume a resource even more scarce than physical space: your attention. Every time you see all those random files strewn across your computer desktop, Documents folder, cloud drive, or notes app, some of your mental energy gets drained away.
You may think you can close your laptop and just ignore it, but a small part of your brain will continue worrying about the chaotic state of your digital environment until you put it in order. From the perspective of your brain, your information environment is just as important as your physical one, and it won’t let you rest as long as it feels uncertain and threatening.
You can keep everything, but you can’t keep it front and center in your attention. It needs a place to go for safekeeping—one that is secure but completely “out of sight, out of mind” until you need it.
That place is the Archives. Think of it like “cold storage” for your digital life. By placing something there, it gets “frozen” in time in exactly the state you left it, ensuring you can access it again in the future without having to worry about it in the meantime.
Here’s what I want you to do: select all the existing files, documents, folders, notes, etc. in your Documents folder (which may number in the hundreds or even thousands or more) and move them all at once into a new folder called “Archive [Today’s date].”
Think of this folder as a time capsule preserving everything you had going on at this moment in time, while separating what was saved before today’s date from what will be saved from this point forward.
Then, place this new dated archive folder inside another, larger folder titled simply “Archives,” which will be the official home of all your archives going forward.