My addition to this: I add “Destroy after {reasonable future date}” to documents that I need to “keep”. I know, for example, that I need to keep my medical receipts for 12 months, but will never reference them after that.
When I go through old documents, I don’t even skim through the contents. I just check the date and remove them if necessary.
My addition to this: I add “Destroy after {reasonable future date}” to documents that I need to “keep”. I know, for example, that I need to keep my medical receipts for 12 months, but will never reference them after that.
When I go through old documents, I don’t even skim through the contents. I just check the date and remove them if necessary.
... “Destroy after {reasonable future date}” ...
A whole book on this is "Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age" by Viktor Mayer-Schönberger (2011).
A longer piece with the author in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/jun/30/remember-...
And the book: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt7t09g
This one sparks joy.