This week the Institute for Business Technology sponsored 'Clean Out Your Computer Day'. A day where you can take the time to organize your computer files and delete those not needed. Why?, you might ask, is it so important to clean out our computers?

Really for the same reason, we clean out our desks.
It makes it easier to find what we are looking for.

One study by Account Temps published in the Wall Street Journal estimated that office workers spend an average of six weeks per year looking for things!

If you combine this with the fact 70% of US households have a computer, it’s not hard to see that one of the places we are looking for documents, information etc. is our computers.

Below is a three step process you can follow to clean out your computer:

Step One: Set up a logical filing system in your computer.

• Try to mirror your paper filing system on your computer. The more your main folders resemble the names and categories you use to file paper, the easier it will be for you to both find and file various documents.
  
  
• Create a ‘working file’ or ‘pending’ folder which lives on your desktop that can hold anything you are currently working on and need to access quickly and easily. While much of your computer may be used for the archiving of information, the ‘working file’ folder can hold the most relevant information and projects.
  
  
• Organize and update the bookmarks on your browser. Just as you may have random files floating around your hard drive, you more than likely have a ton of bookmarks that are not organized in any particular way. Go under bookmarks and choose the organize feature. This will allow you to make folders with logical names that you can group and move your various bookmarks into. For Example: the next time you want to find KRON’s website, rather than having to search through a long list of bookmarks, you will be able to easily and quickly find it under the folder you have created marked ‘News’.

Step Two: Clean up your hard drive

Because computer memory has increased so much over the past few years, storage on many people’s computers is not a big issue. A lot of people have a bad habit of using their computer as a storage unit or even a dumping ground for holding all kinds of information, whether it is still relevant or not. A few ways to clean up your hard drive include:

• Delete any old working drafts of documents that have since been updated or are no longer useful.
  
  
• Empty files that you created but never did anything with or have no documents in them.
  
  
• Eliminate files that have different names, but contain the same duplicate materials.
  
  
• Dump files that are so old, the information in them is outdated and never used.
  
  
• One caution: If you need to keep any files for a legal reason, either:
  • Print them out on paper and keep a hard copy
  • Create a special folder on the computer for ‘legal’
  • Transfer them to a backup disk.

Step Three: Get control over your email

There are two issues that relate to this step. One is cleaning out and organizing the email you already have and the second is dealing with new emails that come in, including spam.

• To begin with start by going through your mailbox and deleting all old messages you no longer need and any spam hanging around. Once you have done this, remember to delete the messages in the delete file. Because most people have enough room on their computer to keep old email, they often skip this step. However, it has been our experience that the more current and up to date your email the less time spent searching for what you really need.
  
  
• Establish an email filing system. This makes it easy to find past emails. You can use various ways to archive and prioritize messages. One method that we recommend is setting up your email folders the same way you classify your work. For example if you generally reference your work by client, then set up your email folders by client name; if you generally reference by product, then set up your folders by product name and so on…
  
  
• When new emails come in don’t let them linger in your mailbox, hoping they will read themselves. For every incoming message you have, take at least one of the following four actions:
  • Reply immediately whenever possible
  • Delete the message
  • Forward when appropriate
  • File the message in the appropriate folder
    
    
• Finally, don’t fall into the trap of using ‘ignore’ as an option for dealing with incoming messages. Anything you are trying to ignore becomes a loose end and a big energy drain.

In regards to spam, one recent survey by MessageLabs stated that by July 2003, spam will surpass the amount of non-spam email people receive. So this is a definite issue for not only getting your computer organized, but keeping it clean!

The best solution for this is to put anti spam software in place. There are two types of spam software, server side and client side. Without getting too technical, server side is anti spam software that is built into your email program by either the company you work for or your Internet Service Provider.

The other type, client side, is software which you can buy or is a feature of the email program you use. In checking with some web masters two good recommendations are:

• SpamKiller for the PC and…
• SpamFire for Mac

You can tell by what these are titled that spam is a real problem.

The above article is copyrighted by Sterling Consulting Group and may not be reproduced in part or whole without written permission from Sterling Consulting Group.