One barometer for being in the web game for too long is when one can remember a blog entry Jason Fried wrote in August 2005 that relates exactly to what one is currently writing about. The entry to which I am referring was an idea the 37s crew had about information and why you should or should not keep certain types handy:
“Why not read an email and then instantly delete it? Why do we save emails? Why do we archive them in folders for safe keeping? We don’t save phone calls. We have a conversation on the phone and then we hang up. If we need to take notes for whatever reason we do, but 99% of phone calls are completely ephemeral. And if we forget something, or we need it again, we just make another call.”
I was in the camp of people who don’t think this is a good idea, at least for me, since I have an absolutely terrible memory. Fortunately (or unfortunately) for technophiles, almost every piece of information that is now transferred between human beings is stored somewhere. For me, the most important pieces are IM conversations and email, and here are my stats for those:
- I have every IM conversation I’ve participated in since December 27, 2004 stored and fully searchable by query, date, or participants.
- I have every email I’ve received/sent since May 2, 2004, which can also be accessed in various ways.
These large data sets may not be as important for normal people, but because my memory is so poor, they’re a necessity in my life. Email search is one of the “killer apps” that I use every single day, and IM conversation search is used at least weekly.
So is memory tied to “being a pack-rat” in regards to technical storage? I’m not sure if it’s a causal relationship but if my computer can store things and keep them out of my brain, then maybe I can use my empty brain cells for other important things. Like Albert Einstein once said:
“Intelligence is not the ability to store information, but to know where to find it.” -Link
About Mike Rundle
Personally I’m of two minds on this.
First, I want my inbox empty. All the time. Whenever I see someone with thousands of items in their inbox, all I can think is “they’ve ceded total control of their lives to other people’s whims and whoever yells the loudest”.
Empty inboxes are very, very good.
That said, I don’t believe in filing. If it isn’t actionable or for a current project, it’s gone.
However, searching is incredibly important to me. Which why I use Gmail. All my emails for the last 2-3 years are saved. But they aren’t in my inbox. They aren’t even on my computer. But whenever I need to dig into something, I can in minutes (plus, the search is faster than anything local).
That said, I did recently hit Gmail’s storage limit, so I’ll need to upgrade soon enough.
That’s how I get through both the “empty inbox” and the “need to find something, like now” issues :)
I agree – I have every email I’ve sent or received since 1994 archived. A lot of that is buried on a DVD somewhere, and I’ll probably never need it, but the cost of archiving it is negligible.
I have a great memory for some things–tell me a random 16-digit number and ask me what it was a week later, no problem. Phone numbers are no problem. But I’m no good with names, or other details of conversations. I’m sure everyone’s memory lacks in one area or another.
I’ve saved myself lots of work by having an archive of email. Sure, maybe I could make a phone call or send out another email to get the information I’ve lost–but having it NOW is much more useful when you have a deadline to meet.
Give me an easy technology to do it and I’ll gladly archive every phone call too. The more information I have at my fingertips (rather than in my head) the better.