Back in 2012, I came across an article (probably via
Lifehacker) by Frank
Chimero that
referred to a practice that he called a "Digital Jubilee", based on
the old testament practice of the "Year of Jubilee".
I won't belabour the point here, because this isn't a new concept. I
just want to share what this looks like for me.
I've done some version of this every year since then and it's a great
way to start the year fresh in the digital world. So, in no particular
order:
Trim my follows on social networks (as of this year, that only means
Mastodon). This means keeping all the folks I regularly interact
with, maybe some of the ones I just love to read and if there are
any I'm not sure of, off they go. Sometimes I use an "archive"
list so I can see if people I end up following again were jubilee-d
but that's not critical to the process (though it might be more
likely with mutuals).
Take an axe to my RSS feeds. It doesn't always get rid of a lot
because I love keeping up to date using RSS. But it's worth asking
the question "would I really be missing out if I didn't read this
information here?"
I don't need to worry about clearing my email because I run a
pretty tight inbox-zero ship. But I will spend most of January
keeping an eye on newsletters and feeling free to "unsubscribe".
Trim my podcasts a little. I probably won't need to do much this
year because when my queued episodes got constantly over 20 hours
earlier this year I cut out most of them. But I'll take this
opportunity to see if I can do a bit more.
Have a look through my Pocket (now Wallabag)
list and see if there's anything I'm
really never going to get to. It's not stupidly long so there
won't be much but who knows what next year will look like.
Check my todo.txt (now Emacs Org mode)
list to see if there's anything on there that
should really move to someday/maybe. Perhaps if I did my weekly
reviews properly that wouldn't even be a thing. But right now, it
is.
Get rid of unused apps on my phone or tablet.
There are some things I don't feel (at least right now) the need to
"Jubilee". Email, as I said before. Culling my video or music files.
Clearing out my Downloads directory (that's another inbox-zero thing
with me anyway). I'm sure there are probably more I should be dealing
with but this lot improves things a lot for me, so will certainly do for
now.
Happy New Year to all...
Addendum for New Year 2023:
Completely wiped out my Wallabag reading list. I have barely touched
it all year (and probably longer), except to add stuff to it. This is
an excellent example to the whole “Jubilee” idea… I’ve forgiven myself
of the need to read any of it.
Completely wiped out my Bandcamp wishlist
and my Spotify New listens
folder. I’m never going to catch up on them, and I’m happy just to start
again. To be fair, I did spend $60 at Bandcamp to get the last few things
I really felt I couldn’t do without.
This is not exactly a Jubilee thing, but I restarted my
Anki deck. I’ve
hardly touched it all year and the backlog is more or less insurmountable.
I’ve not touched my language learning all year in any form either (and that’s
my Anki’s primary purpose). So I downloaded a really clever
Esperanto deck
and put it into a perfectly clean collection so I can get a good start to the year.
I did archive my old decks. I have spent a lot of time building them up,
and if I ever want to put the cards back into rotation, it’s easy enough
to just import them again.
Speaking of language learning, I’ve got a bunch of old documents (both
handwritten and digital) with notes of stuff to do further research on and
words to learn. I’m never getting to them, so they’re going too. I might
archive them deep into my Documents folder but I am giving myself permission
to not think about them again.