Taming Your Tech: Floppy Disks

What would we do without technology? Probably sleep a little better, look at people when we talk to them, and not have cricks in our necks from texting. But I digress. It's a necessary part of life these days, so we have to learn how to make it manageable! Introducing a new series called Taming Your Tech. Each month, we'll dive into a new bite-size assignment to help master your digital world. 

On to Step 1...

Floppy Disks. Yes, seriously. Locate every single floppy disk in your home. Don't have any? Then congrats...you've completed step one! For the rest of you, there are mysteries hiding on these little pieces of plastic that we have to solve before we can move forward. These disks might contain nothing or they might contain your master's thesis that you spent countless hours on. We don't want to risk losing the important stuff! So head right on over to Amazon and pick up one of these gems: an external floppy disk reader. There are tons of options, but this one is under $10 and can arrive at your door in two days if you have Amazon Prime (Hint: you should have Amazon Prime. Trust me). 

Fast forward a few days...Let's do this.

  1. Get comfy with your computer, your random floppy disks, your external reader, some good music, and a big ol' cup of coffee.

  2. Plug in the drive, grab your first disk, and pop it in.

  3. Open the folder that contains the disk's files and check out what's on it.

  4. If it's something unimportant, delete it.

  5. If it's something you want to keep, move or copy the document over to your computer. Go ahead and move it into a digital folder or make a generic "from floppy disks - to be filed" folder if you don't have a good organizational system yet. We'll get to that soon!

  6. After all the files have been moved, delete the files from the disk. The goal is to have an empty floppy disk by the end of this process so no confidential information remains on it.

  7. Trash the now-empty disk. If you want to be extra careful (I hear ya, I do too), dismantle the disk by prying open the plastic housing and take a pair of scissors to the magnetic disk. Totally unusable, unreadable, unworry-able.

  8. Repeat for all the disks.

  9. Celebrate! Step one is complete!

Next up...what to do with mystery CDs & DVDs.

Do you know where your voter registration card is?

Monday is February 1st, the last day to register to vote before the primaries in Texas and many other states. Do you know where your voter registration card is??? Take a few minutes (like right now) to find it. If it's lost, expired, or has an old address on it, head straight to votetexas.gov or vote.usa.gov to register. Your application must be postmarked February 1 (so seriously, do it now).

HINT: If I've created a file system for you, it will be in your vital documents file/box!

A New Year's Reading Challenge

As I did a few years ago, I'm challenging myself to read one book each month. Rather than randomly choose each month what I'll read, I like to pick them in advance. There's something about crossing a book off my to-read list that keeps me motivated! I like to read something fun before bed, but I'm trying to read something educational during breakfast instead of checking emails or social media. This year, I'm focusing on organizing and business books. If you're curious, here are my 12 books:

January: The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (my 2nd time to read it!)
February: Styled by Emily Henderson
March: Essentialism by Greg McKeown
April: The Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
May: Taming the Paper Tiger by Barbara Hemphill
June: Branded Nation by James B. Twitchell
July: Small Giants by Bo Burlingham
August: The Organized Life by Stephanie Denton
September: Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
October: First, Break All The Rules by Marcus Buckingham & Curt Coffman
November: The Starbucks Experience by Joseph A. Michelli
December: Platform by Michael Hyatt

An Alternative to New Year's Resolutions

I LOVE New Year's resolutions. I have been writing them down, sharing them, following them (and breaking them) for years. Some of my most successful resolutions have been to read one book a month (I actually read 22 that year!) and to keep my fingernails polished (have kept this one pretty consistently since 2010). Not so successful? Eating less sugar (I love Blue Bell too much) and taking my Beagle to the dog park weekly (I think we made it twice before realizing she and I were both stressed out by it).

I'd like to introduce you to a movement called #oneword365. Rather than dreaming up vague, overambitious resolutions that you forget 3 weeks in, #oneword365 challenges you to "pick one word you can focus on every day, all year long...one word that sums up who you want to be or how you want to live." You can sign up on their website for inspiration and even connect with folks who've picked your same word. If resolutions just don't seem to work for you, this might be a meaningful thing to try for 2016.

My #oneword365 for 2016 is discipline. That word embodies everything I want this year to be...personally, professionally, financially, and physically. I love the idea of keeping this word in the forefront of my mind when I want to skip a workout or sleep in late instead of working on a project. Of course, I still love a good 'ol fashioned resolution, so I've chosen three goals that support my one word. The key to resolutions is to be specific, so I've outlined what I want...and something I'll do to achieve it. Every year, I write out my resolutions and keep them in a frame on my desk. It's impossible to forget them when they're staring me in the face every day. 

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.
- Jim Rohn