Organizing my Digital Life pt 1: Overview

So the start of this project is simple, I need to identify as many areas of improvement as possible. So off the top of my head I came up with these areas:

1. Devices: For this one, I need to assess what devices I have, and give them all unique identifiers as well as “jobs”, for example have one computer completely dedicated to storing files that can be accessed on a network. For a RPI2 — have it completely dedicated to running my HomeBridge. Things like that. For the unique identifiers — give them unique names that are remembered easily to know what their purpose is.
2. Photos: For this one, I have a ton of photos taken with my iPhone over the years. At a cursory glance, there’s no rhyme or reason to what the photos actually ARE. It’d be good to get rid of the junk photos and organize the good ones.
3. Files: I have files stretched over MANY MANY devices. It’d be good to get them all in one place and then distribute them to the devices that need them accordingly. For example: Store my Tax Records on a file server then pull them to whatever device needs them.
4. Folder Structure: My folder structure is something to be desired. I mainly use MacOS which has the benefit of a pretty good tagging system, however I’m not using that to its full potential (see next point) — instead I have folder upon folder upon subfolder.
5. Tags: Like previously mentioned, I’d like to use MacOS tagging feature to really “index” my files so that I can search by all sorts of criteria that I generate.
6. Music: This isn’t as big of an issue as I maintain this quite regularly but I have decided I want to have a clean split between music I OWN (via Plex) and music I share/stream (via Apple Music).
7. Network: This kind of goes with the devices category but basically cleaning up my Network to make sure there’s no dead devices on it.
8. Emails: Find and close any unused accounts where possible. Also figure out how to consolidate the accounts that are good. The other thing is to create a system where I auto tag/move to folders certain important emails.
9. Accounts: Similar to email — find as many accounts as possible and either close them or update the password.
10. Passwords: Find a good password manager and update all relevant passwords and only use the password manager to create new passwords.
11. Backup: Figure out a method of backing up all my different devices to one place. At the moment, I’m considering building a new tower with HDDs for each device to auto back up to. This could be costly depending on how much space is needed.
12. Portfolio: Figure out the best method to store all my work that I’ve done over time.
13. Applications: Consolidate the apps that I use on a regular basis. Basically utilize one app per category. So for example: Mail — use the Postbox app. For Reddit — Use the official reddit app.

I’ll continuously add to this list as I think of more items but I think this is a pretty good start tbh.

-jg