March 30, 2023 • 54 mins
Hi Friends!
We talk a lot about Physical Clutter, Emotional Clutter, and Calendar Clutter, but Digital Clutter is a very real type of clutter where many folks struggle. From photos to files, not to mention endless email-there is no shortage of information and content that floods our lives on a daily basis. Knowing what to do, or how to do it, can be overwhelming, but today’s guest is going to break it down for us.
Joining me today is Kate Hufnagel (aka The Digital Wrangler.) After spending 2 decades working in the High Tech industry, Kate decided to join the entrepreneurial world and now helps individuals and businesses across the country clean up, secure, and streamline their digital lives.
I invited her on the show to talk about things like:
Take a listen! Want to learn more about Kate and all she has to offer, check out the links below👇
XO-Laurie
P.S. Our new *TIP OF THE WEEK starts on Monday April 3, 2023. Now you’ll have 2 weekly episodes of TOL to listen or watch!
CONNECT WITH KATE
WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | LINKEDIN | YOUTUBE
KATE’S BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
THE BOOK OF BOUNDARIES | MEASURE WHAT MATTERS
We talk a lot about Physical Clutter, Emotional Clutter, and Calendar Clutter, but Digital Clutter is a very real type of clutter where many folks struggle. From photos to files, not to mention endless email-there is no shortage of information and content that floods our lives on a daily basis. Knowing what to do, or how to do it, can be overwhelming, but today’s guest is going to break it down for us.
Joining me today is Kate Hufnagel (aka The Digital Wrangler.) After spending 2 decades working in the High Tech industry, Kate decided to join the entrepreneurial world and now helps individuals and businesses across the country clean up, secure, and streamline their digital lives.
I invited her on the show to talk about things like:
- Easy retrieval of files
- Password Do's + Don’ts
- Storage tips for your phones
Take a listen! Want to learn more about Kate and all she has to offer, check out the links below👇
XO-Laurie
P.S. Our new *TIP OF THE WEEK starts on Monday April 3, 2023. Now you’ll have 2 weekly episodes of TOL to listen or watch!
CONNECT WITH KATE
WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | INSTAGRAM | LINKEDIN | YOUTUBE
KATE’S BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
THE BOOK OF BOUNDARIES | MEASURE WHAT MATTERS
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to This Organized Life. Ifyou're a mom, wife, or coffee
lovers seeking advice on how to reduceclutter and reclaim time, look no further
than your host, Laurie Palau,Founder Simply Be Organized, an author of
hot Mess, a practical guide togetting organized. For a lot of people,
clutter is their dirty little secret,but it doesn't have to be.
Each week, we will share practicaltips, chat with experts, and provide
(00:23):
strategies on how to keep you organized. I hope that by sharing our stories
you feel a little less alone andmore empowered to tackle the areas that are
holding you back. So let's getstarted. Hide everybody, and welcome to
today's episode of This Organized Life podcast. I am your host, Laurie Palau,
(00:45):
and you guys, I see thisevery week, but I'm really excited
for today's episode because the topic thatwe are talking about today is one of
my most requested flicks that I get. I kid you, not most requested
in my real life. It ismy most requested like when I'm talking to
people about different types of clutter,and if you have a listener, show
(01:10):
for any length of time. Withthe end of each episode, we do
what's called our hot Mess minute wherewe ask people where they feel the most
organize it, where they feel likea little bit of a hot mess,
and by like overwhelming landslide. Idon't know the exact numbers. This particular
topic, which is digital clutter,is one of the top leading like hot
(01:34):
mess areas for most people. Andso I wanted to bring somebody on who
really specialized in digital clutter. Andwe've done episodes like this before. We
had had younger on. I forgetwhat episode I can link to it.
She did a whole great thing aboutemail, and that's the thing with digital
clutter is it's like really banked.There's so many different areas. There's your
(01:59):
digital files, there's emails, there'sphotos, there's so many different things.
But today's guest is an organizer whospecializes specifically with helping people with digital clutter.
As a matter of found her companies. She goes by Kate Hufnagel,
aka the Digital Wrangler. So talkabout smart branding right there, and we
(02:22):
were introduced personally, like not toolong ago. Apparently she knew who I
was well before I knew who shewas. But I am so glad to
have her here because We're going tobe diving into this area that a lot
of professional organizers don't want to touch, and a lot of the reason why
(02:42):
is because that's not an area thatthey feel organized in. And So,
whether you're a fellow organizer listening tothis or you're somebody that's out there that
says, hey, I am drowningin digital, this is the episode that
you're going to want to listen to. So, without further ado, I'm
going to welcome my new friend Kateto the show. Welcome Kate, Lorie.
Thank you so much for having meon your pod today. I just
(03:06):
have to say when I left CorporateAmerica almost two years ago, I spent
hours and hours listening to this organizedlife to help me figure out what I
wanted my organizing business to be.So to be here talking with you today,
not only am I fangirling, butlike I am, also just trying
to just breathe and just soak thisin. So thank you. For those
(03:30):
of you who don't know me,I'm Kate Huffnagel. I actually have two
degrees in engineering. I spent twentyfive years working in a variety of high
tech fields. I worked at NASAin wind tunnels. For a couple of
summers, I managed recall programs fora company known for their green tractors,
and I spent the majority of mycareer working in the intelligence community, with
(03:53):
an emphasis on delivering IT solutions andsoftware solutions to those working in that area.
As a digital organizer today, Ireally view myself on a mission.
I am here to help make itfun and hip to talk about all things
digital. So whether that means helpingpeople best use their devices and how to
(04:17):
manage their data, coaching solopreneurs andsmall business owners on their digital tools,
and like today, encouraging people todevelop good digital hygiain practices. So I'm
taking all my digital technical know howand putting it to you so that everyone
can benefit. I love this.Now I'm gonna before we dive into this
(04:38):
because as as somebody who made acomplete caivotal life career transition, what made
you? For anybody that's listening outthere that might be at a crossroads,
And I'm sure that could be awhole other episode. Well, we're going
to give it a really top line, but I would be remiss not to
say what made you decide that you'regoing to leave this really big career,
(05:02):
doing a lot of really important thingsto do other meaningful work. But like
it was a complete shift. Socan you just unpack that for us a
little bit. I think at theend of the day, Laurie and I
love that question, and like yousaid, this could be a whole episode,
but I think at the end ofthe day, it came down to
(05:24):
I needed to eat my own dogfood. Right. I have been coaching
all of my friends, even coachingthose who had been working for me,
Go chase your dreams, right,Go go do what's going to make you
happy, And despite making a veryhealthy six figure salary, I just wasn't
happy. And my now husband wasjust like, why do you keep doing
(05:47):
this? So he gave me thatlittle nudge. But so it at a
very short concise that I love it. I love it, and you are
living proof that you can, scaryas it is, make those transitions.
And so if you're someone out therelistening and you might be at that crossroads,
if you're in a position and willingand able to do it, we
(06:09):
say go for it. You haveour blessing. Okay, So now to
the topic at hand, digital hygiene, which is really again what we're titling
this episode before we get into thetactical things. Why do you think that
the whole topic of digital clutter isjust a pain quiver for people? Like?
(06:29):
Why is it so overwhelming? Okay, this and the itself I think
can also be a town episode.Is all we could talk. We could
write a whole book about this.We absolutely we think about our modern world
today, Laurie, Right, likewe bombarded with information left and right,
So we have this world that welive in of information overload. On top
(06:54):
of that, everything related to digitalhas become more affordable in recent years.
And another challenge is that we don'tsee it. It's not like someone's going
to walk into my house and seethat my computer files or my phone is
full of digital clutter. Right,It's not like walking into somebody's garage or
(07:17):
pantry where in front of you.And because our devices are so personal to
us, right, we hold ontothose like we treasure those. Oh no,
you're not going to see my phone, or like when I go to
use my husband's phone, I'm like, I can't find anything on this because
it's not organized for me. AndI think another contributor to the digital space
(07:42):
being so overwhelming is that we don'ttalk about it. There's no trendy show
on Netflix or HDTV, right,there's no pretty Pinterest photos. Oh look
at my beautifully organized email or another. I'm just trying to think of another
example, right, Like, wejust don't. That conversation isn't happening.
(08:03):
And I think another contributor to it, as weird as it may sound,
is that there's no training classes.Right, there's nothing in school about managing
our digital lives. Right. Wedidn't even take a training class on how
to buy something off of Amazon orhow to use Facebook. We just figured
(08:24):
it out. And so I thinksociety just assumes that we're going to figure
it out. And like you weresaying at the top, people struggle with
this, we haven't. The majorityof people haven't figured it out. And
I think when you take all thoseelements and combine them, it's super easy
(08:46):
to accumulate digital clutter. It's somewhataffordable, it's invisible to those around us,
whether it's people we live with orpeople that we work with. And
so I am just so grateful tobe here with you, Laurie, to
shine a light on this topic that, in my opinion, isn't talked about
(09:07):
enough. I love it, andI wrote down the first thing I wrote
down is and I talked about thisis. It's what I call invisible clutter
because you don't see it right.It's it's like most things, it's not
a pain point till it is.It's not a problem until you need that
power point and you can't find itbecause or you need that email because it
(09:28):
has that confirmation code that you neededfor whatever, and things get lost,
and it is. I love alsobecause I never really thought about the whole
training part of it, Like allof a sudden, we just all of
these things were accessible to us onlinedigitally. But then like, what do
you do with it? What amI supposed to do When I get okay,
(09:50):
I'm booking a trip and I haveall these confirmations? Okay? Am
I supposed to let them sit inmy inbox? Them in a fulder?
Am I supposed to download them?Am I supposed to print them? What
am I supposed to do? What'sthe right way to do this? Do
I do lead it? How longdo I hold off for all of these
things that are going through my mind? Of and you just kind of okay,
Like most things, a lot oftimes pupils with any type of clutter,
(10:11):
they'll do nothing. When you don'tknow what to do, you just
do nothing, and then that,in and of itself accumulates. So I
really love that perspective that you broughtin. And then again, I know
I touched on it, but well, we're talking about digital clutter. It's
also, in and of itself isa broad spectrum. How are you defining
(10:31):
And I know we're not going totouch on all of them today because each
one is its own episode in andof itself, but how are you defining
digital clutter? So simply put inKate's world, my definition of digital clutter
is the disorganization of data, files, end or devices. And it can
(10:54):
look like a bazillion different things.So let me give you, I don't
know, half a dozen examples.Right, you are on your phone,
you're getting those notifications that you're runningout of storage. Right, that is
a form of digital clutter. Right, like you touched on, Laurie,
you can't find an email, whetherit's from the school, You can't find
(11:16):
an email from a client, andyour email is out of control digital clutter
right on your files? Right,your accountant is asking you for a statement
or an invoice. You can't findthat. You can't find that permission slip
that you signed electronically but you forgotto send to the school. You can't
(11:37):
find the password because you have passwordseither of stored in your keychain, stored
in your browser, stored in apassword manager. And believe it or not,
so many people would have three differentAmazon passwords further Amazon account because they're
stored in different locations and they're notupdating. The updating, like every time
(12:01):
you have to change it, doyou go back into your original file and
update it. And then you're like, that has happened to me? Where
I'm like, oh wait, itdidn't remember me. I have to go
in and the password that I hadsaved in my file I didn't update to.
It was like five passwords to goand I'm like, this isn't even
relevant anymore, exactly exactly. Andthen like for those of us who are
(12:24):
business owners, I've gotten some emailsfrom Laurie, I know that you believe
in this. Right. We loveto send personalized emails to those on our
list. You want the email tosay hello, Kate. And if you
don't have your data organized right,I could be getting an email that says
hello Colorado and not even know it. And other ways that digital clutter can
(12:46):
show up in our lives is wecan be paying month after month, whether
it's an app that we paid adollar ninety nine four because right, digital
things have gotten more affordable. Butif you add those up, you could
without really knowing or realizing, youcould be spending one hundred dollars or more
a month on digital things that maybeyou have even abandoned. So that's like
(13:13):
just a multitude of different ways thatdigital clutter can manifest itself in our everyday
lives. I love it, CanI tell it? Can I actually share
a little digital win that I hadnot that long ago? And I think
so. We recently just switched overaccountants, and so he needed some work
(13:33):
for my business. So we weredoing like all the personal stuff and he's
can you send me You're like,he needed a copy of like my original
like we'll see from back when Ifirst incorporated, which was like two thousand
and eight, two thousand and nine, and he says, i'd need your
yeah, yeah, and I needthe whole thing whatever, And I was
like okay, and I was runningout to go do something but I knew
(13:56):
that I was the bottleneck for himto be able to get stuff done.
So in two seconds, I literallyjust pulled up the file because I knew
exactly where it was. I haveon Dropbox. I have a folder that
has spo like documents and it's gotall the like important like whatever stuff like
that. And I just said him, I replied to his email and I
(14:18):
said here you go, and hewas like And the whole exchange took like
under five minutes, and he immediatelywas like, oh my gosh, like
you really are so organized, andI started laughing and there was like occupational
pnswards. But my point of mystory isn't the CBOK at you are the
amount of time that that saved,the amount of anxiety could have been producing.
(14:43):
If I didn't have that in aplace that I knew, I could
have spent all afternoon looking for this, he would have had to wait.
It could have been a whole Iwould have gotten anxious and annoyed and frustrated,
and that would have affected all thesethings. But something that could have
gotten sideways took me literally two secondsbecause I happen to be organized there,
(15:07):
so oh my gosh, I'm fangirlingand what I mean. But that's the
perfect story, right because you said, like that documents, how many at
twelve fourteen years old? Lay?And so even the fact that you had
it digital right, because back then, no, I stand it, and
that's true, I had the actualthing is scanned. It is not.
(15:28):
It didn't even originate as a digitaldocument. That's I'm dating myself your people.
But I think again, it talksabout when I talk about anything,
and I know you're a long timelistener, and for anybody who might be
new to our show, whenever Italk about organization or anything, and I
think this is so important when itcomes to digital in particular, is I
(15:48):
talk about the ease of retrieval.The whole point of organizing something isn't that
of putting it away. It's abouthow quickly can I access this when I
want it? And that could meanthe spices in your cannabinant, the sweater
in your closet, or the filesand for me digital And that's where I
say digital isn't a problem until itis. It's that ease of retrieval when
(16:11):
people are like, where is thatphoto? Or where is that email?
Or where is that document? Andyou're staring down the barrel of thousands of
stuff and it's like finding a needlein a Haysta absolutely couldn't have said it
better. So where do people ifthey're like, yeah, okay, so
where do you start? So again, you've got all these things, and
to make the analogy of his house, you're just organized all over the place.
(16:34):
Every room's amass. Where do youstart? Because you got to pick
somewhere. You do have to picksomewhere. Absolutely, So for me,
when I work with clients, itboils down to the individual, right and
meeting the individual where they are,which I think, even from a physical
organizing perspective, right, that's whatall organizers do, right, knowing that
(16:56):
we every person uses devices differently,we have different personalities, our brains work
differently. So when I work withclients, I try to figure out,
whether it's observed through observation or havinga direct conversation, what is most important
to them? So what's most importantto you? Listener? Right? Do
(17:19):
you want to be able to senda correct email to your distro list?
Do you want to be able tofind your children's medical information or school information
without its stressing you out? Doyou want to be able to save the
(17:40):
videos and photos of your kids oryour grandkids with ease and be able to
find them. So I would encouragepeople to think about what's most important,
and I guess another way to lookat it, it's like, what's your
biggest pain point? But I liketo think more more optimistically, right,
what's of importance? What's going tobe most valuable to you? And then
(18:06):
use that as a north star toguide you in terms of figuring out Okay,
then what are going to be mysteps? If it's most important to
me to have all my passwords inone location, I love it. And
again, you can do all ofyou could do all of them, it's
just you're not going to do allof them at once. You're going to
start with one area. Let's justwalk through a couple of different things,
(18:30):
don't recommendations, and I'll let youdrive the bus on this because again,
this whole episode we wanted to beabout digital hygiene. Are there certain things
that we should be doing or thatare just like best practices when it comes
to any type of digital organization?Okay, why don't we Why don't we
(18:52):
start with files? Right? Prettygeneric? And what I love about talking
about electronic files. Is that thewhere does it really matter? Right?
It doesn't matter to me if youare storing files on your computer or un
dropbox, or you use Google Drive, or you're using Microsoft three sixty five.
(19:14):
Right, The where does it isn'tas important as what it is.
And so for this example, we'retalking about files. So if you are,
let's say, a small business owner, what types of files might you
have? We're talking you're tracking yourfinancials. You have those formation documents Laury
(19:36):
that you just mentioned, right,You've got contracts with vendors. You have
files related to your clients right invoices, project details, maybe before and after
photos. Right. So that's alot of files and a lot of different
types of files. So the firstthing that I would ask a small business
(19:57):
owner is, Okay, let's comeup with a file structure or a folder
structure that makes sense for you.And what I've learned is that most business
owners like to have two different models. One for files that for like client
facing. So that might look likeliterally the folders called client work, and
(20:18):
then they've got a folder with everyclient or project name in there, or
they may flip it around and theymay have under client work the year,
and then within the year have afolder for each client so that if they
happen to have a CPA who wantsthem to go find an invoice, they
(20:38):
can find it. And some businessowners then will take a different file structure
for what I would categorize as liketheir internal business operations. Right, they
might have a folder for employees orsubcontractors, a folder for contracts, the
legal documents, their financial state mints. So I would encourage like small business
(21:02):
owners to almost look at those twodifferent categories. For adults, right,
Leaving in our personal lives, we'reprobably having files like utility bills that we
get electronically, bank statements. Savethose, do you. I'm like,
I don't say any of those,like a utility bill. I'm like,
(21:22):
okay, I actually do save thembecause if I get I'm a home based
business. Oh, but you're doingit from a business person, right,
Okay, so you want to soI keep them for three four years,
right, But some people do liketo have a history of their like financial
statements, right, insurance policies,medical information, and a tax related documents.
(21:48):
And then parents might have school file. I don't know, Isaac had
surgeries, so I've got some digitalinformation about that, right, So when
it comes to our personal lives,having a file structure that mimics your life,
right, maybe a folder that's utilities, house, finance, medical,
(22:10):
and then maybe having a folder dedicatedfor each child. That might make sense
depending on how your brain works.Ultimately, regardless of whether we're talking personal
or business, the most important pieceof advice that I can give when it
comes to electronic files is have asbest you can a common folder structure and
(22:37):
use a consistent naming convention. Ohthat's a good one, because again,
yeah, I like I'm writing notespeople, so I can if anybody's watching
this on YouTube when you see myhead damage because I'm taking notes as gate
stocking, and because let's face it, like when was the last time you
looked at like your downloads folder?And oftentimes those file names are either going
(22:59):
to be a bunch of gobbleegook orit's going to be download one, download
two, download three four. Andif you come up with a consistent naming
convention. So I know a lotof people in the finance world have figured
out for them like they'll have theyear, two months for the month,
(23:21):
and then the day. So forinstance, twenty twenty three dash O three
dash seventeen right, and they usethe two months for or the two digits
for the month, because then whenthey sort by title, it is literally
automatically sorted by date. And alot of those things people just don't realize.
(23:42):
They're like, I'm going to dojust don't think about it. They
don't think about it. Yes,if you type out January and type out
February and you sort by title name, they're not going to be in chronological
order. And that's yet. Itmight just take a couple of seconds,
but it's still it's taking a littlebit more time to go pull what you
(24:03):
need from that ease of retrieval perspective. I love it. I love it.
I do the same even with ourpodcast stuff, like I title everything
starting with EP and then I dowhatever than that, and everything is so
they're all they all come up,and I just I do I have that
consistency in how I filing or brandingit. And I back in the day
(24:26):
when I started my business, Idid a lot of home office organizing and
I would help people set up traditionalfiling. Now like you there's like a
then if you were to get meto do it, like it would have
to. I'd charge a high premiumfor that because it's like my least favorite
thing. But it was this similarconversation when it came to I don't care
(24:48):
if you want to say we're goingto do by year or we're going to
do your files by category. It'sthe key is it's got to be considered
stint and it's got to be somethingthat you and the people that are assist
it will all be able to identify. So as you were talking about it,
(25:10):
it really was the same. It'sthe same basic principles. It's just
doing it in the interrebs as opposedto doing it in a brick and mortar,
old school filing cabinet. Absolutely,so many principles and philosophies in the
physical organizing world can easily be appliedto the digital world. Now do you
(25:33):
I'm curious about this one is doyou spend a lot of time and I'm
saying the words spend not waste,which is what I wanted to say.
Do you spend a lot of timeencouraging people to delete old files that are
just taking up space? And I'mnot even necessarily talking from like a storage
Oh you're running out of space,but just because it's like fluttering it up
(25:56):
a little bit, because I probablyhave stuff on my computer in the spirit
of transparency that are like old blogposts or something like, things that I
don't need out of just there.But take the time to do it.
That's the thing, right, itdoes take time. I even over the
Christmas holidays went through my digital photosbecause I had quite a lot. And
(26:22):
even okay, so today, theaverage American takes like over twenty photos a
day on their phone. Okay,you do the math. That then turns
into six hundred a month and overseven thousand photos a year. Do we
need to keep every single one ofthose photos? I'm going to bet you
(26:45):
a dollar that the answer is no. And here is where, even for
me, where I have a prettyroutine practice of going through my photos.
Okay, I go to go throughmy photos today. Oh last week,
Oh look at that. There's acouple of memes I sent my bestie.
Okay, I don't need them,right, so I delete them. But
(27:08):
I see a photo last week thatI took with a friend of mine,
and I'm like, no, I'mgoing to hold on to that. But
guess what in six months, ayear from now that photo really may not
be that important to me, andI'm it's going to be a little bit
easier for me to let go ofthat photo. So the same applies when
it comes to like our five ourdigital files too. Right. We may
(27:30):
think today that file is worth holdingon to. Six months from now,
six years from now, we're likelygoing to have a different answer. So
going back and reviewing your files,whether that's your electronic files, or your
photos, or your videos, oryour music collection or your book collection that
(27:55):
you have digitally, there is somevalue in doing that because our values change,
we have all these human beings,our interest change. Yeah, I
can't get enough of it. Now, what about And I know you said
that you don't necessarily have a personalpreference right whether you use Google, Dropbox,
Microsoft three sixty. Do you Iknow you said it's fine if you
(28:15):
leave it on your computer, butdo you feel like that there should be
someplace that it's like not taking upstorage space on your computer, you should
be having it on the third partything. Do you have a school of
thought relating to that or no?I think when it comes to the important
documents, quite frankly, I thinkit's more important that you have a backup
(28:37):
somewhere, right, So if you'reif you have them on your computer,
do you have them backed up eitherto a cloud or do a Google drive
or something? Gotcha? Right?Just because things happen, Yeah, for
sure. And I know we're nottalking about photos, but we're going to
move on to passwords. But Ijust have a question on photos, since
you did mention it you keep yourphotos? Do you keep on your phone
(29:02):
and in the cloud or do youbelieve do you have like a third party?
Do you put them into the shutterflyor a drop box or some other
thing. For me, personally,I hoard my photos. I do not
use a third party simply because one, I don't want to pay for it
and to and this could just belike my former corporate person coming out by
(29:25):
putting them into a third party,the third party is responsible for them,
right. What if shutterfly or adrop box goes bankrupt tomorrow or goes out
of business, then what happens tomy data? So I'm a little bit
of a control freak when it comesto that. But for your audience,
like I do not organize photos,that is a whole other genre of expertise
(29:48):
that I quite frankly, I don'twant to touch at all, Like I'll
organize my own, but that's it, and it's a word thing I think
to organize for other people because youI don't know all the players, so
you don't know who's important and whatmemory is important. There are certain things
that are really Yes, you couldlook at something and say, okay,
(30:10):
you've got six different photos of basicallythe same so let's just pick the best
one, and there's but there areso many things that are really truly because
photos are such a personal identity.But I was just since you mentioned it,
I just I had to go therebecause I know for us we've streamlined
and I still in again full disclosure, I don't always delete them off my
(30:33):
phone, even though we do useshutterfly. Again, free ad for Shutterfly,
because it allows everybody in our familyto have access and it frees up
and I'll just we have one byyear and then we just have if we
have a big event, like wewent to Hawaii. I created a Hawaii
folder. Everybody can just upload yourphotos into Hawaii and then if you want
to see it, you can goand grab them. And it just takes
(30:56):
the ownership off of me or whomever to have to be the keeper of
all the secrets or the keeper ofall this stuff. Absolutely, Apple has
the same thing. So like,can I go on my annual girls trip?
Right, we create a shared album, each of us are contributing our
photos through it, and then itdoesn't count towards the storage on our phones.
(31:18):
Yes, that's we do that asYeah. So again I think all
the problem is there's oftentimes too manythings, Like you could do it on
Apple, you could do a Google. Well, you could do it on
So now you have pixtures all overthe place, and right again, now
you can I feel like digital cluttercan almost be like a gremlin. It
can just multiply really fast. Oh, absolutely, hands down, no question.
(31:41):
But again, like I have probablythree or four versions of my book
on my computer, like the drafts, like here was draft one, here
was again, or different things thatyou've just you've saved it and it's like
the one, the two, six, and we don't always go back and
(32:02):
delete again. I'm this is likeme preaching to the choir that I think
it just becomes okay, wait asecond, we need to put wrangle this
in. I want to pivot alittle bit and talk about passwords your favorite
and you're a data you're a datasafety intelligence person. So there's a whole
(32:24):
lot of layers when it comes topasswords security, like cybersecurity and all that.
So I'm just going to open thefloor up to you to talk about
them. Thank you for giving mean opportunity to talk. And there may
be some eye rolling as people listento this episode as I talk, But
like you mentioned, I am comingfrom the intelligence community, right, I
(32:46):
was in charge of making sure thatsystems were impenetrable and or untraceable. Right,
So I have a few dues whenit comes to passwords. So the
first one is, please do uselong passwords. Most websites usually want a
(33:08):
password of eight characters, I personallyand towards more towards the twelve fourteen characters.
And I actually just worked with aclient last week out of New England
who had characters of twenty and Iwas like, wow, that's really impressive.
So the longer the better, andthe reason is the longer the password,
(33:28):
the harder it's going to be fora hacker to crack it. Okay,
okay, So in addition to thelength of the password, you also
want to make sure that your passwordis complex. And what do I mean
by that? You want to haveuppercase lowercase special characters, numbers, and
(33:50):
yes, that means things can becomea little bit gobbleygook. But having all
of those characters at your disposal makesthat password complex and adds even more time
for a bad actor to figure itout. BATCHA. The third tip I
(34:12):
have is to use unique passwords,no more fluffy one, two, three
for everything. Okay, and Iknow that it's super trendy right now to
recycle and thrift clothing, passwords isnot the place to recycle or reuse.
(34:32):
Okay. If you think about thisas humans, right, it's our behaviors.
It's easy. I'm just going toI'm going to use these same passwords
over and over. But if abad actor gets into one of your accounts,
they're then going to go to allthe other popular accounts right like Amazon,
Facebook, Hulu, whatever, andthey're going to try that password right
(34:57):
and more than likely it's going towork on a couple full of them.
And the next thing to talk aboutit mushrooming. That's mushrooming in a really
bad and potentially nefarious way. Sothe other thing and we touched on this
earlier that I recommend is that youhave one authoritative source for your passwords.
(35:19):
If you are keeping them in multipleplaces, it's work to have them all
updated and have the correct password.So I encourage people to have the password
stored in one place. Now,if you are like my eighty year old
parents and believe that writing your passwordsdown in a little black book is best,
(35:46):
Okay, I'm going to meet youwhere you are. That's going to
work for you. But just knowthat I'm going to ask questions like,
okay, so what happens if you'reat targe and that book falls out of
your bag and you don't know it. What happens? So I do encourage
people to consider using a password manager, keep all of those passwords in one
(36:12):
location and keep them secure. Andon my resources page on my website,
I have a link to a toolwhere you can punch in your password and
it will tell you, oh,it's going to take fourteen seconds for it
to be cracked, or it takestwo million years. No way, I'm
totally doing that. I'm I'm goingto try that because I'm a little I'm
(36:37):
a little skeptical about the I'm alittle better than a one, two,
three, but I'm right not ata twenty character I'll tell you that much.
Okay, Yeah, that tool isvery eye opening. And so when
it comes to all of these suggestionsthat I offer, if I were going
to say, let's prioritize right tome, and I don't know about you,
(37:00):
Laurie, but my favorite hobbies ishoarding my cash. I don't want
anyone ever getting into my bank accounts, sure, right, so I am
making sure that every bank account hasa long password, that it's complex and
it is unique right now. Funfact, the number one targeted type of
(37:22):
systems from by hackers are actually healthcaresystems. So after you improve let's say
the strength of the passwords on yourfinancial accounts, if your medical information is
important, that would be where Isuggest you tackle backs insisting, right,
(37:44):
I don't care if people know Ihad an appendeck to me, but there's
other things about my personal medical historythat I don't want like floating around out
there. But again that's a personalis it because you have like your social
security? Not like why I'm like, I'm why is that such a hot
thing? Because again, I thinkit depends on the person, right,
people may not want the world toknow what medications they're on or what their
(38:08):
blood pressure is, So that isagain it's a personal decision, but I
wanted to mention it since it issuch a targeted yeah, for sure area.
And then the third bucket is anywebsite And this might cause some overwhelm
or anxiety, but any website thatyou have your credit card information stored on,
(38:30):
and I know these days that couldbe a lot of different websites.
So that's why if I were toprioritize them, like, start with your
bank accounts. You don't want anyonegetting access to your money. Yeah,
maybe medical if that's important to you. And then anything else that has a
credit card. And then can Ijust add all the like two factor authentication
(38:52):
stuff, like we should always havethat on, even though it's annoying,
don't you agree? Oh? Completely, it is annoying, But that is
from a digital hygiene digital safety perspective. Yeah, yes, that just adds
a whole other layer of things ofprotection from the bad actors out there.
And I can say as a businessowner who I have a team of people
(39:16):
who help me do different things,and some of it is financial, it's
annoying. Not annoying for me,but like for them more than it is
for me. Like a lot oftimes they want to access I trust them,
and they have access to PayPal orStripe or whatever it is, and
they need and they have to textme, hey, can you send me
(39:37):
the code? And it's worth itbecause obviously and they know it, and
it's that extra step where you knowwhat, you just want to protect your
stuff. And so whether it's abusiness thing or personal thing, it's really
wise to be able to happen tojust say, hey, wait, I
just got to log in on Amazonat somebody from Clearwater, Florida? Is
(40:01):
that you? And absolutely I sawmy doctor a couple months ago and I
was telling him about what I'm doing, and we had a whole other conversation.
But as I and I was itwas a sick appointment. And as
I was leaving, I walked pasthis office and he waves at me and
he's like, hey, look,I can't even send the prescription to the
(40:22):
pharmacy until because he had gotten atext message confirming him. And so even
doctors can't send a prescription to Walgreenswithout getting a text in a secret coat.
Yeah yeah, Now, Again,we're not trying to give like necessarily
free advertising or we're not trying tobe product pushers. However, if we
(40:45):
have people that are like, okay, what where should I be? Story,
Let's say they're not your parents thatwanted to save in their little black
book. Obviously there's running the spectrumof things. I've had people say I
can't use last pass or everything,and this is no shame to that because
I can't remember my password to thatpeople say that to make So is there
(41:07):
a recommendation of where these things shouldbe where you recommend people store their passwords.
I'm not going to repeat the companythat you just mentioned because I actually
just moved away from them again,but there are some tricks. And so
there's several password managers out there,and on my research, they're doing an
(41:27):
exceptional job. Right, that istheir specialty. Right. Yes, we
can store passwords in Chrome or Firefox, but those are browsers, right,
password management is not going to betheir forte right, So do you want
a password manager? And in termsof wearing that master password, there are
some tricks. Right. You cancome up with a favorite phrase Kate loves
(41:51):
wine, and then I can takethose words, right, I could substitute
the L and maybe make it anexclamation. Okay, yeah, I can
take the letter A and substitute itand make it the ampers either what we're
the at side, right yep?So you can some maybe write out your
(42:14):
phrase and then ask yourself, Okay, can I substitute symbols? Can I
substitute a number? And then overtime you'll just build up muscle memory and
it will become gotcha automatic. Ilove it. I love it. I'm
like looking at my list, there'sso much. Okay, so let me
see if I can go through acouple other quick things, Like we're going
(42:35):
to almost do the rapid fire justbecause in the spirit of time, So
any storageships for the phones in termsof like deleting acts, organizing. I
have folders on my phone. Ilike everything on one page. I don't
like the whole scrolling. But arethere any specific things or best practices that
you think with regard to Okay,I'll give you three try and rapid fire.
(43:00):
Delete your deleteds right, like onyour camera roll when you delete a
photo or when you delete a voicemailmessage, they're actually not deleted. So
just take that extra step, deleteyour deleteds, review your storage utilization.
I like to encourage people to dothat, Like when we either change the
clocks or we start a new season, I go in there check your storage
(43:22):
utilization. You might be surprised tolearn, like I did last summer when
I suddenly was getting these messages likerunning out of storage, I'm like,
why am I running out of storage? I had, unbeknownst to me,
over one hundred fifty Oprah's podcast saveto my phone. I didn't realize that
my phone had downloaded like one hundredand fifty of them. But until you
(43:45):
examine your storage utilization, you don'tknow what you don't know. And that's
just in settings people, Right,it's just in settings. You just go
in there. And then the thirdtip I have is be careful about double
saving the same thing. Right.If you get a text message on your
family thread, right, and it'soh, look, Grandma's visiting the grandkids
(44:09):
and she sent a video, right, if you then save that video to
your camera roll, you now haveit saved in your camera roll and in
your text messages. There's no needto be saving them multiple times. Okay,
So what do you do? BecauseI do that all the time.
It'll send me a picture my nephewsin the Navy, so I'll get a
(44:30):
picture of him and I'm like,oh, say that. Now it's still
in my text thread, but it'sthere, but i want the ease of
retrieval and I'm not going to gothrough ten thousand. So what do you
do in that situation? So youcan do a couple of things. So
after you save it to your cameraroll, you can just delete it then
(44:51):
delete it from the text message,okay. Or if you're like most people
and you forget to do that right, at some point, you're gonna want
to delete that whole text thread andthen I'll just start a new one,
right, Okay, So you've gotyou've got options, got it, got
it, Kate. There's so manythings I would have just first of all,
(45:13):
you were definitely, we'll have youback, we'll figure out we're going
to put a pull out to everybodyafter this drops. Is it? What
did you love most? What doyou want to hear more of? Well,
definitely, because this is such animportant topic from like you said,
from an intelligence safety data perspective aswell as from an organizational perspective, and
just all the things, and thenagain the financial hearts of like why are
(45:34):
you paying for apps that you're notusing and things like that. So there's
so many different reasons why this issuch a relevant topic. Where can people
go to find you learn more?Connect up? The easiest way is to
go to my website, that's theDigital Wrangler dot com. I have got
lots of resources on my website.I have a free ebook on tips on
(45:57):
how to Wrangle your Phone, whichincludes tips on how to extend the battery
life of your phone, and it'sall about how can you take control of
your phone as opposed to letting yourphone control you? And I've got links
to books and apps, basically allthings digital are also on my website.
I love it. And of coursewe will link to all of this or
(46:19):
all things Kate in our show noteson our podcast page, So don't worry
about that. If you're out andabout, we'll make sure that you have
easy access to all of your information. We're going to take one more quick
break or one and when we comeback, we're going to just put you
in the hot seat for our rapidfire questions. So sit tight. Have
(46:40):
you ever thought to yourself, youknow what I love organizing and if I
could get paid to help other peopleorganize their spaces, that would be a
dream job. That's you, butmaybe you're unsure of the business side of
things, of how to set itup, or how do I charge people,
or how do I go about marketingmyself. Don't let that stop you.
(47:00):
We would love to talk to youabout our SPO Partner community, which
is a community of professional organizers fromall around the globe where we coach,
mentor and help training you to runyour own professional organizing business. To learn
more, visit simply be organized dotcom and click on the work with Me
(47:22):
tab and from there just connect upwith me hop on my calendar. We
would love to talk to you aboutall the different ways to help you grow
and establish your own professional organizing business. All right, Kate, this has
been such a great conversation. Again, I literally I have notes all over
left and right. Things I'm goingto do, things I can't wait to
(47:44):
share with people. This this isso incredible. Now I'm going to turn
the tables and talk to you aboutour end of the rap up questions that
we ask all of our guests,which are in We'll start with the book
which is what book or books areyou reading that either are transformational for you
or something that you're currently reading thathas been like really like eye opening for
(48:07):
you that you want to share withthe listeners. I've got two books,
so the first one is more fromKate the Human Being. Melissa Urban last
year launched a book called The Bookof Boundaries. Now, I have always
struggled with boundaries, hence why Ibecame such a workaholic. And I have
always put others before me as well, and in recent years, I became
(48:31):
a bonus mom. So I've workedwith and I've worked with book coaches,
and I've had some therapists over theyears. Her book is just awesome and
she includes all sorts of different scenariosand what I love about it is that
she includes some scripts as well,and she categorizes them using a stoplight,
(48:52):
like green script is going to belike the most loving way to hold your
boundary, and then if the personis to push the boundary, you can
move to the yellow and then youcan move to the red where it's basically
I'm piece it out. Yeah,I love it. I know I'm going
to actually check that out because I'veloved book Boundaries by I Don't Know Cloud
is like one of my favorite books, so I will definitely check that out.
(49:15):
And what's your other one, soKate the Digital Wrangler. Yeah,
So from a business perspective, MeasureWhat Matters by John Douer is one of
my all time favorite business books.He talks about the importance of having objectives
and key results, and he inhis book basically is a book a collection
(49:37):
of case studies from Bill Gates andBono Bono followed his methodology with all of
his anti poverty work, and it'sjust really cool. It gives you a
different perspective on how to think aboutgoals. And if you just think about
the title of the book, you'regoing to measure what is actually important to
(49:58):
you, Right, if you wantto grow your community or if you want
it's more important for you to growrevenue, how are you going to know
that you're hitting your goals? Soit's just a really great book from a
business perspective. I'm buying both ofthem because and this is why I asked
this question for everybody out there spoileralert. I ask it for myself as
well as for you. But Ialways love to know. So these are
(50:21):
awesome books that I can't wait tocheck them out. And then the last
two questions we ask every guest everyepisode is in this particular season of your
life, where do you feel themost organized and where do you feel like
a little bit of a hot mess? Oh this is I love of this
question, where I'm so glad thatyou asked this question. So one of
the first bosses that I had satdown with me like twenty twenty two years
(50:45):
ago and it was like, Kate, you need to learn how to toot
your own horn. So I lovethis question. Right now, I am
most proud of the way that mybusiness is organized. And I don't just
mean that from having like my digitalfile is organized, but it's all about
the processes I've put in place,the tools that I'm using, the business
(51:07):
rhythms that I've established for myself.I'm just really proud of how all of
that works because I can turn itoff at night, i can sleep well,
and I'm having fun. That's agreat question. I love that.
I love that. And then again, just in the spirit of authenticity,
right we obviously I always like toend with a put up, but in
(51:29):
the spirit of authenticity, so peoplethink that just because you're in the organizational
space that your life is perfect inall areas. Where if there's an area
that needs a little additional nurturing orTLC, where would that be? Okay?
And I'm sure that YouTube watchers areseeing me like laugh in the background.
(51:49):
Okay, So it's mid March,right those of us who are adults,
it's tax season now. Fun factabout me to be fifty next year.
So I am a little bit laterin life. And I got married
about five months ago and I've neverbeen married before, and we're going to
(52:10):
be filing our taxes jointly as amarried couple. Oh you see where I'm
going with this, And yeah,that's a lot. And because my husband,
who's in the Navy, So thankyou to your nephew for his service,
to thank you your husband's brain service. Amazing. So, because my
husband is not shy about letting peopleknow that I'm way smarter than him when
(52:34):
it comes to everything related to money, taxes and finances, I'm in charge
of collecting all of this and I'mlike, babe, I don't even know
what you have. And so we'redealing with that internally. And my CPA,
who's amazing has a new support person, so there's just a lot of
turmoil. But I just keep tellingmyself, Okay, one, this is
(52:58):
going to be over soon. It'sso going to be over soon. It's
just temporary and we're going to dobetter next year. Hey, absolutely,
this is your practice run. Butoh my gosh, that's great. That's
great, Kate again, I couldtalk to you for hours. I know
our audience is gonna love this episodeand just gobble it up. As stressful
(53:19):
and anxiety producing as it could befor people, you really broke it down
into such simple, sectionable steps thatI and digestible things that people can do.
So thank you for doing that.And if you are new to our
show, please welcome. You pickeda great episode to hop in on.
Click the subscribe button wherever you're it'sa plus whatever wherever you're listening or if
(53:42):
you're watching us on YouTube. Andif you liked this episode, share it
with a friend, because the bestway that we can grow the show and
allow other people to hear great guestslike Kate, it's just through word of
mouth. And if you guys likethis, we really appreciate you. Give
it our show a nod that wayand we're here each week. We've been
here for a long lop in time, and so feel free to go back
(54:05):
and check out our back catalog,where you can find, as Kate said
at the top of the episode,hours and hours of content, anything that
we can do to help you livea more organized life. And until next
week, I am Laurie Palau,peace out. Thanks for tuning in.
If you like this episode, pleasespread them and share it with your friends.
If this is your first time joiningus, make sure to click the
subscribe button wherever you're real listing soyou never miss an episode. And while
(54:27):
you're there, please leave us areview so other people knew that our show
is worth to listen. You canalso find us on YouTube and Instagram at
This Organized Life Podcast, and ifyou'd like to connect with us, you
can head on over to our websiteat simply the letter, b like boy
organized dot com, which is filledwith tons of resources, including free download
checklists, links to our amazing organizingpartners, and all of our digital offerings.
(54:51):
I'll see you next week for anotherepisode of This Organized Life
Welcome to This Organized Life. Ifyou're a mom, wife, or coffee
lovers seeking advice on how to reduceclutter and reclaim time, look no further
than your host, Laurie Palau,Founder Simply Be Organized, an author of
hot Mess, a practical guide togetting organized. For a lot of people,
clutter is their dirty little secret,but it doesn't have to be.
Each week, we will share practicaltips, chat with experts, and provide
(00:23):
strategies on how to keep you organized. I hope that by sharing our stories
you feel a little less alone andmore empowered to tackle the areas that are
holding you back. So let's getstarted. Hide everybody, and welcome to
today's episode of This Organized Life podcast. I am your host, Laurie Palau,
(00:45):
and you guys, I see thisevery week, but I'm really excited
for today's episode because the topic thatwe are talking about today is one of
my most requested flicks that I get. I kid you, not most requested
in my real life. It ismy most requested like when I'm talking to
people about different types of clutter,and if you have a listener, show
(01:10):
for any length of time. Withthe end of each episode, we do
what's called our hot Mess minute wherewe ask people where they feel the most
organize it, where they feel likea little bit of a hot mess,
and by like overwhelming landslide. Idon't know the exact numbers. This particular
topic, which is digital clutter,is one of the top leading like hot
(01:34):
mess areas for most people. Andso I wanted to bring somebody on who
really specialized in digital clutter. Andwe've done episodes like this before. We
had had younger on. I forgetwhat episode I can link to it.
She did a whole great thing aboutemail, and that's the thing with digital
clutter is it's like really banked.There's so many different areas. There's your
(01:59):
digital files, there's emails, there'sphotos, there's so many different things.
But today's guest is an organizer whospecializes specifically with helping people with digital clutter.
As a matter of found her companies. She goes by Kate Hufnagel,
aka the Digital Wrangler. So talkabout smart branding right there, and we
(02:22):
were introduced personally, like not toolong ago. Apparently she knew who I
was well before I knew who shewas. But I am so glad to
have her here because We're going tobe diving into this area that a lot
of professional organizers don't want to touch, and a lot of the reason why
(02:42):
is because that's not an area thatthey feel organized in. And So,
whether you're a fellow organizer listening tothis or you're somebody that's out there that
says, hey, I am drowningin digital, this is the episode that
you're going to want to listen to. So, without further ado, I'm
going to welcome my new friend Kateto the show. Welcome Kate, Lorie.
Thank you so much for having meon your pod today. I just
(03:06):
have to say when I left CorporateAmerica almost two years ago, I spent
hours and hours listening to this organizedlife to help me figure out what I
wanted my organizing business to be.So to be here talking with you today,
not only am I fangirling, butlike I am, also just trying
to just breathe and just soak thisin. So thank you. For those
(03:30):
of you who don't know me,I'm Kate Huffnagel. I actually have two
degrees in engineering. I spent twentyfive years working in a variety of high
tech fields. I worked at NASAin wind tunnels. For a couple of
summers, I managed recall programs fora company known for their green tractors,
and I spent the majority of mycareer working in the intelligence community, with
(03:53):
an emphasis on delivering IT solutions andsoftware solutions to those working in that area.
As a digital organizer today, Ireally view myself on a mission.
I am here to help make itfun and hip to talk about all things
digital. So whether that means helpingpeople best use their devices and how to
(04:17):
manage their data, coaching solopreneurs andsmall business owners on their digital tools,
and like today, encouraging people todevelop good digital hygiain practices. So I'm
taking all my digital technical know howand putting it to you so that everyone
can benefit. I love this.Now I'm gonna before we dive into this
(04:38):
because as as somebody who made acomplete caivotal life career transition, what made
you? For anybody that's listening outthere that might be at a crossroads,
And I'm sure that could be awhole other episode. Well, we're going
to give it a really top line, but I would be remiss not to
say what made you decide that you'regoing to leave this really big career,
(05:02):
doing a lot of really important thingsto do other meaningful work. But like
it was a complete shift. Socan you just unpack that for us a
little bit. I think at theend of the day, Laurie and I
love that question, and like yousaid, this could be a whole episode,
but I think at the end ofthe day, it came down to
(05:24):
I needed to eat my own dogfood. Right. I have been coaching
all of my friends, even coachingthose who had been working for me,
Go chase your dreams, right,Go go do what's going to make you
happy, And despite making a veryhealthy six figure salary, I just wasn't
happy. And my now husband wasjust like, why do you keep doing
(05:47):
this? So he gave me thatlittle nudge. But so it at a
very short concise that I love it. I love it, and you are
living proof that you can, scaryas it is, make those transitions.
And so if you're someone out therelistening and you might be at that crossroads,
if you're in a position and willingand able to do it, we
(06:09):
say go for it. You haveour blessing. Okay, So now to
the topic at hand, digital hygiene, which is really again what we're titling
this episode before we get into thetactical things. Why do you think that
the whole topic of digital clutter isjust a pain quiver for people? Like?
(06:29):
Why is it so overwhelming? Okay, this and the itself I think
can also be a town episode.Is all we could talk. We could
write a whole book about this.We absolutely we think about our modern world
today, Laurie, Right, likewe bombarded with information left and right,
So we have this world that welive in of information overload. On top
(06:54):
of that, everything related to digitalhas become more affordable in recent years.
And another challenge is that we don'tsee it. It's not like someone's going
to walk into my house and seethat my computer files or my phone is
full of digital clutter. Right,It's not like walking into somebody's garage or
(07:17):
pantry where in front of you.And because our devices are so personal to
us, right, we hold ontothose like we treasure those. Oh no,
you're not going to see my phone, or like when I go to
use my husband's phone, I'm like, I can't find anything on this because
it's not organized for me. AndI think another contributor to the digital space
(07:42):
being so overwhelming is that we don'ttalk about it. There's no trendy show
on Netflix or HDTV, right,there's no pretty Pinterest photos. Oh look
at my beautifully organized email or another. I'm just trying to think of another
example, right, Like, wejust don't. That conversation isn't happening.
(08:03):
And I think another contributor to it, as weird as it may sound,
is that there's no training classes.Right, there's nothing in school about managing
our digital lives. Right. Wedidn't even take a training class on how
to buy something off of Amazon orhow to use Facebook. We just figured
(08:24):
it out. And so I thinksociety just assumes that we're going to figure
it out. And like you weresaying at the top, people struggle with
this, we haven't. The majorityof people haven't figured it out. And
I think when you take all thoseelements and combine them, it's super easy
(08:46):
to accumulate digital clutter. It's somewhataffordable, it's invisible to those around us,
whether it's people we live with orpeople that we work with. And
so I am just so grateful tobe here with you, Laurie, to
shine a light on this topic that, in my opinion, isn't talked about
(09:07):
enough. I love it, andI wrote down the first thing I wrote
down is and I talked about thisis. It's what I call invisible clutter
because you don't see it right.It's it's like most things, it's not
a pain point till it is.It's not a problem until you need that
power point and you can't find itbecause or you need that email because it
(09:28):
has that confirmation code that you neededfor whatever, and things get lost,
and it is. I love alsobecause I never really thought about the whole
training part of it, Like allof a sudden, we just all of
these things were accessible to us onlinedigitally. But then like, what do
you do with it? What amI supposed to do When I get okay,
(09:50):
I'm booking a trip and I haveall these confirmations? Okay? Am
I supposed to let them sit inmy inbox? Them in a fulder?
Am I supposed to download them?Am I supposed to print them? What
am I supposed to do? What'sthe right way to do this? Do
I do lead it? How longdo I hold off for all of these
things that are going through my mind? Of and you just kind of okay,
Like most things, a lot oftimes pupils with any type of clutter,
(10:11):
they'll do nothing. When you don'tknow what to do, you just
do nothing, and then that,in and of itself accumulates. So I
really love that perspective that you broughtin. And then again, I know
I touched on it, but well, we're talking about digital clutter. It's
also, in and of itself isa broad spectrum. How are you defining
(10:31):
And I know we're not going totouch on all of them today because each
one is its own episode in andof itself, but how are you defining
digital clutter? So simply put inKate's world, my definition of digital clutter
is the disorganization of data, files, end or devices. And it can
(10:54):
look like a bazillion different things.So let me give you, I don't
know, half a dozen examples.Right, you are on your phone,
you're getting those notifications that you're runningout of storage. Right, that is
a form of digital clutter. Right, like you touched on, Laurie,
you can't find an email, whetherit's from the school, You can't find
(11:16):
an email from a client, andyour email is out of control digital clutter
right on your files? Right,your accountant is asking you for a statement
or an invoice. You can't findthat. You can't find that permission slip
that you signed electronically but you forgotto send to the school. You can't
(11:37):
find the password because you have passwordseither of stored in your keychain, stored
in your browser, stored in apassword manager. And believe it or not,
so many people would have three differentAmazon passwords further Amazon account because they're
stored in different locations and they're notupdating. The updating, like every time
(12:01):
you have to change it, doyou go back into your original file and
update it. And then you're like, that has happened to me? Where
I'm like, oh wait, itdidn't remember me. I have to go
in and the password that I hadsaved in my file I didn't update to.
It was like five passwords to goand I'm like, this isn't even
relevant anymore, exactly exactly. Andthen like for those of us who are
(12:24):
business owners, I've gotten some emailsfrom Laurie, I know that you believe
in this. Right. We loveto send personalized emails to those on our
list. You want the email tosay hello, Kate. And if you
don't have your data organized right,I could be getting an email that says
hello Colorado and not even know it. And other ways that digital clutter can
(12:46):
show up in our lives is wecan be paying month after month, whether
it's an app that we paid adollar ninety nine four because right, digital
things have gotten more affordable. Butif you add those up, you could
without really knowing or realizing, youcould be spending one hundred dollars or more
a month on digital things that maybeyou have even abandoned. So that's like
(13:13):
just a multitude of different ways thatdigital clutter can manifest itself in our everyday
lives. I love it, CanI tell it? Can I actually share
a little digital win that I hadnot that long ago? And I think
so. We recently just switched overaccountants, and so he needed some work
(13:33):
for my business. So we weredoing like all the personal stuff and he's
can you send me You're like,he needed a copy of like my original
like we'll see from back when Ifirst incorporated, which was like two thousand
and eight, two thousand and nine, and he says, i'd need your
yeah, yeah, and I needthe whole thing whatever, And I was
like okay, and I was runningout to go do something but I knew
(13:56):
that I was the bottleneck for himto be able to get stuff done.
So in two seconds, I literallyjust pulled up the file because I knew
exactly where it was. I haveon Dropbox. I have a folder that
has spo like documents and it's gotall the like important like whatever stuff like
that. And I just said him, I replied to his email and I
(14:18):
said here you go, and hewas like And the whole exchange took like
under five minutes, and he immediatelywas like, oh my gosh, like
you really are so organized, andI started laughing and there was like occupational
pnswards. But my point of mystory isn't the CBOK at you are the
amount of time that that saved,the amount of anxiety could have been producing.
(14:43):
If I didn't have that in aplace that I knew, I could
have spent all afternoon looking for this, he would have had to wait.
It could have been a whole Iwould have gotten anxious and annoyed and frustrated,
and that would have affected all thesethings. But something that could have
gotten sideways took me literally two secondsbecause I happen to be organized there,
(15:07):
so oh my gosh, I'm fangirlingand what I mean. But that's the
perfect story, right because you said, like that documents, how many at
twelve fourteen years old? Lay?And so even the fact that you had
it digital right, because back then, no, I stand it, and
that's true, I had the actualthing is scanned. It is not.
(15:28):
It didn't even originate as a digitaldocument. That's I'm dating myself your people.
But I think again, it talksabout when I talk about anything,
and I know you're a long timelistener, and for anybody who might be
new to our show, whenever Italk about organization or anything, and I
think this is so important when itcomes to digital in particular, is I
(15:48):
talk about the ease of retrieval.The whole point of organizing something isn't that
of putting it away. It's abouthow quickly can I access this when I
want it? And that could meanthe spices in your cannabinant, the sweater
in your closet, or the filesand for me digital And that's where I
say digital isn't a problem until itis. It's that ease of retrieval when
(16:11):
people are like, where is thatphoto? Or where is that email?
Or where is that document? Andyou're staring down the barrel of thousands of
stuff and it's like finding a needlein a Haysta absolutely couldn't have said it
better. So where do people ifthey're like, yeah, okay, so
where do you start? So again, you've got all these things, and
to make the analogy of his house, you're just organized all over the place.
(16:34):
Every room's amass. Where do youstart? Because you got to pick
somewhere. You do have to picksomewhere. Absolutely, So for me,
when I work with clients, itboils down to the individual, right and
meeting the individual where they are,which I think, even from a physical
organizing perspective, right, that's whatall organizers do, right, knowing that
(16:56):
we every person uses devices differently,we have different personalities, our brains work
differently. So when I work withclients, I try to figure out,
whether it's observed through observation or havinga direct conversation, what is most important
to them? So what's most importantto you? Listener? Right? Do
(17:19):
you want to be able to senda correct email to your distro list?
Do you want to be able tofind your children's medical information or school information
without its stressing you out? Doyou want to be able to save the
(17:40):
videos and photos of your kids oryour grandkids with ease and be able to
find them. So I would encouragepeople to think about what's most important,
and I guess another way to lookat it, it's like, what's your
biggest pain point? But I liketo think more more optimistically, right,
what's of importance? What's going tobe most valuable to you? And then
(18:06):
use that as a north star toguide you in terms of figuring out Okay,
then what are going to be mysteps? If it's most important to
me to have all my passwords inone location, I love it. And
again, you can do all ofyou could do all of them, it's
just you're not going to do allof them at once. You're going to
start with one area. Let's justwalk through a couple of different things,
(18:30):
don't recommendations, and I'll let youdrive the bus on this because again,
this whole episode we wanted to beabout digital hygiene. Are there certain things
that we should be doing or thatare just like best practices when it comes
to any type of digital organization?Okay, why don't we Why don't we
(18:52):
start with files? Right? Prettygeneric? And what I love about talking
about electronic files. Is that thewhere does it really matter? Right?
It doesn't matter to me if youare storing files on your computer or un
dropbox, or you use Google Drive, or you're using Microsoft three sixty five.
(19:14):
Right, The where does it isn'tas important as what it is.
And so for this example, we'retalking about files. So if you are,
let's say, a small business owner, what types of files might you
have? We're talking you're tracking yourfinancials. You have those formation documents Laury
(19:36):
that you just mentioned, right,You've got contracts with vendors. You have
files related to your clients right invoices, project details, maybe before and after
photos. Right. So that's alot of files and a lot of different
types of files. So the firstthing that I would ask a small business
(19:57):
owner is, Okay, let's comeup with a file structure or a folder
structure that makes sense for you.And what I've learned is that most business
owners like to have two different models. One for files that for like client
facing. So that might look likeliterally the folders called client work, and
(20:18):
then they've got a folder with everyclient or project name in there, or
they may flip it around and theymay have under client work the year,
and then within the year have afolder for each client so that if they
happen to have a CPA who wantsthem to go find an invoice, they
(20:38):
can find it. And some businessowners then will take a different file structure
for what I would categorize as liketheir internal business operations. Right, they
might have a folder for employees orsubcontractors, a folder for contracts, the
legal documents, their financial state mints. So I would encourage like small business
(21:02):
owners to almost look at those twodifferent categories. For adults, right,
Leaving in our personal lives, we'reprobably having files like utility bills that we
get electronically, bank statements. Savethose, do you. I'm like,
I don't say any of those,like a utility bill. I'm like,
(21:22):
okay, I actually do save thembecause if I get I'm a home based
business. Oh, but you're doingit from a business person, right,
Okay, so you want to soI keep them for three four years,
right, But some people do liketo have a history of their like financial
statements, right, insurance policies,medical information, and a tax related documents.
(21:48):
And then parents might have school file. I don't know, Isaac had
surgeries, so I've got some digitalinformation about that, right, So when
it comes to our personal lives,having a file structure that mimics your life,
right, maybe a folder that's utilities, house, finance, medical,
(22:10):
and then maybe having a folder dedicatedfor each child. That might make sense
depending on how your brain works.Ultimately, regardless of whether we're talking personal
or business, the most important pieceof advice that I can give when it
comes to electronic files is have asbest you can a common folder structure and
(22:37):
use a consistent naming convention. Ohthat's a good one, because again,
yeah, I like I'm writing notespeople, so I can if anybody's watching
this on YouTube when you see myhead damage because I'm taking notes as gate
stocking, and because let's face it, like when was the last time you
looked at like your downloads folder?And oftentimes those file names are either going
(22:59):
to be a bunch of gobbleegook orit's going to be download one, download
two, download three four. Andif you come up with a consistent naming
convention. So I know a lotof people in the finance world have figured
out for them like they'll have theyear, two months for the month,
(23:21):
and then the day. So forinstance, twenty twenty three dash O three
dash seventeen right, and they usethe two months for or the two digits
for the month, because then whenthey sort by title, it is literally
automatically sorted by date. And alot of those things people just don't realize.
(23:42):
They're like, I'm going to dojust don't think about it. They
don't think about it. Yes,if you type out January and type out
February and you sort by title name, they're not going to be in chronological
order. And that's yet. Itmight just take a couple of seconds,
but it's still it's taking a littlebit more time to go pull what you
(24:03):
need from that ease of retrieval perspective. I love it. I love it.
I do the same even with ourpodcast stuff, like I title everything
starting with EP and then I dowhatever than that, and everything is so
they're all they all come up,and I just I do I have that
consistency in how I filing or brandingit. And I back in the day
(24:26):
when I started my business, Idid a lot of home office organizing and
I would help people set up traditionalfiling. Now like you there's like a
then if you were to get meto do it, like it would have
to. I'd charge a high premiumfor that because it's like my least favorite
thing. But it was this similarconversation when it came to I don't care
(24:48):
if you want to say we're goingto do by year or we're going to
do your files by category. It'sthe key is it's got to be considered
stint and it's got to be somethingthat you and the people that are assist
it will all be able to identify. So as you were talking about it,
(25:10):
it really was the same. It'sthe same basic principles. It's just
doing it in the interrebs as opposedto doing it in a brick and mortar,
old school filing cabinet. Absolutely,so many principles and philosophies in the
physical organizing world can easily be appliedto the digital world. Now do you
(25:33):
I'm curious about this one is doyou spend a lot of time and I'm
saying the words spend not waste,which is what I wanted to say.
Do you spend a lot of timeencouraging people to delete old files that are
just taking up space? And I'mnot even necessarily talking from like a storage
Oh you're running out of space,but just because it's like fluttering it up
(25:56):
a little bit, because I probablyhave stuff on my computer in the spirit
of transparency that are like old blogposts or something like, things that I
don't need out of just there.But take the time to do it.
That's the thing, right, itdoes take time. I even over the
Christmas holidays went through my digital photosbecause I had quite a lot. And
(26:22):
even okay, so today, theaverage American takes like over twenty photos a
day on their phone. Okay,you do the math. That then turns
into six hundred a month and overseven thousand photos a year. Do we
need to keep every single one ofthose photos? I'm going to bet you
(26:45):
a dollar that the answer is no. And here is where, even for
me, where I have a prettyroutine practice of going through my photos.
Okay, I go to go throughmy photos today. Oh last week,
Oh look at that. There's acouple of memes I sent my bestie.
Okay, I don't need them,right, so I delete them. But
(27:08):
I see a photo last week thatI took with a friend of mine,
and I'm like, no, I'mgoing to hold on to that. But
guess what in six months, ayear from now that photo really may not
be that important to me, andI'm it's going to be a little bit
easier for me to let go ofthat photo. So the same applies when
it comes to like our five ourdigital files too. Right. We may
(27:30):
think today that file is worth holdingon to. Six months from now,
six years from now, we're likelygoing to have a different answer. So
going back and reviewing your files,whether that's your electronic files, or your
photos, or your videos, oryour music collection or your book collection that
(27:55):
you have digitally, there is somevalue in doing that because our values change,
we have all these human beings,our interest change. Yeah, I
can't get enough of it. Now, what about And I know you said
that you don't necessarily have a personalpreference right whether you use Google, Dropbox,
Microsoft three sixty. Do you Iknow you said it's fine if you
(28:15):
leave it on your computer, butdo you feel like that there should be
someplace that it's like not taking upstorage space on your computer, you should
be having it on the third partything. Do you have a school of
thought relating to that or no?I think when it comes to the important
documents, quite frankly, I thinkit's more important that you have a backup
(28:37):
somewhere, right, So if you'reif you have them on your computer,
do you have them backed up eitherto a cloud or do a Google drive
or something? Gotcha? Right?Just because things happen, Yeah, for
sure. And I know we're nottalking about photos, but we're going to
move on to passwords. But Ijust have a question on photos, since
you did mention it you keep yourphotos? Do you keep on your phone
(29:02):
and in the cloud or do youbelieve do you have like a third party?
Do you put them into the shutterflyor a drop box or some other
thing. For me, personally,I hoard my photos. I do not
use a third party simply because one, I don't want to pay for it
and to and this could just belike my former corporate person coming out by
(29:25):
putting them into a third party,the third party is responsible for them,
right. What if shutterfly or adrop box goes bankrupt tomorrow or goes out
of business, then what happens tomy data? So I'm a little bit
of a control freak when it comesto that. But for your audience,
like I do not organize photos,that is a whole other genre of expertise
(29:48):
that I quite frankly, I don'twant to touch at all, Like I'll
organize my own, but that's it, and it's a word thing I think
to organize for other people because youI don't know all the players, so
you don't know who's important and whatmemory is important. There are certain things
that are really Yes, you couldlook at something and say, okay,
(30:10):
you've got six different photos of basicallythe same so let's just pick the best
one, and there's but there areso many things that are really truly because
photos are such a personal identity.But I was just since you mentioned it,
I just I had to go therebecause I know for us we've streamlined
and I still in again full disclosure, I don't always delete them off my
(30:33):
phone, even though we do useshutterfly. Again, free ad for Shutterfly,
because it allows everybody in our familyto have access and it frees up
and I'll just we have one byyear and then we just have if we
have a big event, like wewent to Hawaii. I created a Hawaii
folder. Everybody can just upload yourphotos into Hawaii and then if you want
to see it, you can goand grab them. And it just takes
(30:56):
the ownership off of me or whomever to have to be the keeper of
all the secrets or the keeper ofall this stuff. Absolutely, Apple has
the same thing. So like,can I go on my annual girls trip?
Right, we create a shared album, each of us are contributing our
photos through it, and then itdoesn't count towards the storage on our phones.
(31:18):
Yes, that's we do that asYeah. So again I think all
the problem is there's oftentimes too manythings, Like you could do it on
Apple, you could do a Google. Well, you could do it on
So now you have pixtures all overthe place, and right again, now
you can I feel like digital cluttercan almost be like a gremlin. It
can just multiply really fast. Oh, absolutely, hands down, no question.
(31:41):
But again, like I have probablythree or four versions of my book
on my computer, like the drafts, like here was draft one, here
was again, or different things thatyou've just you've saved it and it's like
the one, the two, six, and we don't always go back and
(32:02):
delete again. I'm this is likeme preaching to the choir that I think
it just becomes okay, wait asecond, we need to put wrangle this
in. I want to pivot alittle bit and talk about passwords your favorite
and you're a data you're a datasafety intelligence person. So there's a whole
(32:24):
lot of layers when it comes topasswords security, like cybersecurity and all that.
So I'm just going to open thefloor up to you to talk about
them. Thank you for giving mean opportunity to talk. And there may
be some eye rolling as people listento this episode as I talk, But
like you mentioned, I am comingfrom the intelligence community, right, I
(32:46):
was in charge of making sure thatsystems were impenetrable and or untraceable. Right,
So I have a few dues whenit comes to passwords. So the
first one is, please do uselong passwords. Most websites usually want a
(33:08):
password of eight characters, I personallyand towards more towards the twelve fourteen characters.
And I actually just worked with aclient last week out of New England
who had characters of twenty and Iwas like, wow, that's really impressive.
So the longer the better, andthe reason is the longer the password,
(33:28):
the harder it's going to be fora hacker to crack it. Okay,
okay, So in addition to thelength of the password, you also
want to make sure that your passwordis complex. And what do I mean
by that? You want to haveuppercase lowercase special characters, numbers, and
(33:50):
yes, that means things can becomea little bit gobbleygook. But having all
of those characters at your disposal makesthat password complex and adds even more time
for a bad actor to figure itout. BATCHA. The third tip I
(34:12):
have is to use unique passwords,no more fluffy one, two, three
for everything. Okay, and Iknow that it's super trendy right now to
recycle and thrift clothing, passwords isnot the place to recycle or reuse.
(34:32):
Okay. If you think about thisas humans, right, it's our behaviors.
It's easy. I'm just going toI'm going to use these same passwords
over and over. But if abad actor gets into one of your accounts,
they're then going to go to allthe other popular accounts right like Amazon,
Facebook, Hulu, whatever, andthey're going to try that password right
(34:57):
and more than likely it's going towork on a couple full of them.
And the next thing to talk aboutit mushrooming. That's mushrooming in a really
bad and potentially nefarious way. Sothe other thing and we touched on this
earlier that I recommend is that youhave one authoritative source for your passwords.
(35:19):
If you are keeping them in multipleplaces, it's work to have them all
updated and have the correct password.So I encourage people to have the password
stored in one place. Now,if you are like my eighty year old
parents and believe that writing your passwordsdown in a little black book is best,
(35:46):
Okay, I'm going to meet youwhere you are. That's going to
work for you. But just knowthat I'm going to ask questions like,
okay, so what happens if you'reat targe and that book falls out of
your bag and you don't know it. What happens? So I do encourage
people to consider using a password manager, keep all of those passwords in one
(36:12):
location and keep them secure. Andon my resources page on my website,
I have a link to a toolwhere you can punch in your password and
it will tell you, oh,it's going to take fourteen seconds for it
to be cracked, or it takestwo million years. No way, I'm
totally doing that. I'm I'm goingto try that because I'm a little I'm
(36:37):
a little skeptical about the I'm alittle better than a one, two,
three, but I'm right not ata twenty character I'll tell you that much.
Okay, Yeah, that tool isvery eye opening. And so when
it comes to all of these suggestionsthat I offer, if I were going
to say, let's prioritize right tome, and I don't know about you,
(37:00):
Laurie, but my favorite hobbies ishoarding my cash. I don't want
anyone ever getting into my bank accounts, sure, right, so I am
making sure that every bank account hasa long password, that it's complex and
it is unique right now. Funfact, the number one targeted type of
(37:22):
systems from by hackers are actually healthcaresystems. So after you improve let's say
the strength of the passwords on yourfinancial accounts, if your medical information is
important, that would be where Isuggest you tackle backs insisting, right,
(37:44):
I don't care if people know Ihad an appendeck to me, but there's
other things about my personal medical historythat I don't want like floating around out
there. But again that's a personalis it because you have like your social
security? Not like why I'm like, I'm why is that such a hot
thing? Because again, I thinkit depends on the person, right,
people may not want the world toknow what medications they're on or what their
(38:08):
blood pressure is, So that isagain it's a personal decision, but I
wanted to mention it since it issuch a targeted yeah, for sure area.
And then the third bucket is anywebsite And this might cause some overwhelm
or anxiety, but any website thatyou have your credit card information stored on,
(38:30):
and I know these days that couldbe a lot of different websites.
So that's why if I were toprioritize them, like, start with your
bank accounts. You don't want anyonegetting access to your money. Yeah,
maybe medical if that's important to you. And then anything else that has a
credit card. And then can Ijust add all the like two factor authentication
(38:52):
stuff, like we should always havethat on, even though it's annoying,
don't you agree? Oh? Completely, it is annoying, But that is
from a digital hygiene digital safety perspective. Yeah, yes, that just adds
a whole other layer of things ofprotection from the bad actors out there.
And I can say as a businessowner who I have a team of people
(39:16):
who help me do different things,and some of it is financial, it's
annoying. Not annoying for me,but like for them more than it is
for me. Like a lot oftimes they want to access I trust them,
and they have access to PayPal orStripe or whatever it is, and
they need and they have to textme, hey, can you send me
(39:37):
the code? And it's worth itbecause obviously and they know it, and
it's that extra step where you knowwhat, you just want to protect your
stuff. And so whether it's abusiness thing or personal thing, it's really
wise to be able to happen tojust say, hey, wait, I
just got to log in on Amazonat somebody from Clearwater, Florida? Is
(40:01):
that you? And absolutely I sawmy doctor a couple months ago and I
was telling him about what I'm doing, and we had a whole other conversation.
But as I and I was itwas a sick appointment. And as
I was leaving, I walked pasthis office and he waves at me and
he's like, hey, look,I can't even send the prescription to the
(40:22):
pharmacy until because he had gotten atext message confirming him. And so even
doctors can't send a prescription to Walgreenswithout getting a text in a secret coat.
Yeah yeah, Now, Again,we're not trying to give like necessarily
free advertising or we're not trying tobe product pushers. However, if we
(40:45):
have people that are like, okay, what where should I be? Story,
Let's say they're not your parents thatwanted to save in their little black
book. Obviously there's running the spectrumof things. I've had people say I
can't use last pass or everything,and this is no shame to that because
I can't remember my password to thatpeople say that to make So is there
(41:07):
a recommendation of where these things shouldbe where you recommend people store their passwords.
I'm not going to repeat the companythat you just mentioned because I actually
just moved away from them again,but there are some tricks. And so
there's several password managers out there,and on my research, they're doing an
(41:27):
exceptional job. Right, that istheir specialty. Right. Yes, we
can store passwords in Chrome or Firefox, but those are browsers, right,
password management is not going to betheir forte right, So do you want
a password manager? And in termsof wearing that master password, there are
some tricks. Right. You cancome up with a favorite phrase Kate loves
(41:51):
wine, and then I can takethose words, right, I could substitute
the L and maybe make it anexclamation. Okay, yeah, I can
take the letter A and substitute itand make it the ampers either what we're
the at side, right yep?So you can some maybe write out your
(42:14):
phrase and then ask yourself, Okay, can I substitute symbols? Can I
substitute a number? And then overtime you'll just build up muscle memory and
it will become gotcha automatic. Ilove it. I love it. I'm
like looking at my list, there'sso much. Okay, so let me
see if I can go through acouple other quick things, Like we're going
(42:35):
to almost do the rapid fire justbecause in the spirit of time, So
any storageships for the phones in termsof like deleting acts, organizing. I
have folders on my phone. Ilike everything on one page. I don't
like the whole scrolling. But arethere any specific things or best practices that
you think with regard to Okay,I'll give you three try and rapid fire.
(43:00):
Delete your deleteds right, like onyour camera roll when you delete a
photo or when you delete a voicemailmessage, they're actually not deleted. So
just take that extra step, deleteyour deleteds, review your storage utilization.
I like to encourage people to dothat, Like when we either change the
clocks or we start a new season, I go in there check your storage
(43:22):
utilization. You might be surprised tolearn, like I did last summer when
I suddenly was getting these messages likerunning out of storage, I'm like,
why am I running out of storage? I had, unbeknownst to me,
over one hundred fifty Oprah's podcast saveto my phone. I didn't realize that
my phone had downloaded like one hundredand fifty of them. But until you
(43:45):
examine your storage utilization, you don'tknow what you don't know. And that's
just in settings people, Right,it's just in settings. You just go
in there. And then the thirdtip I have is be careful about double
saving the same thing. Right.If you get a text message on your
family thread, right, and it'soh, look, Grandma's visiting the grandkids
(44:09):
and she sent a video, right, if you then save that video to
your camera roll, you now haveit saved in your camera roll and in
your text messages. There's no needto be saving them multiple times. Okay,
So what do you do? BecauseI do that all the time.
It'll send me a picture my nephewsin the Navy, so I'll get a
(44:30):
picture of him and I'm like,oh, say that. Now it's still
in my text thread, but it'sthere, but i want the ease of
retrieval and I'm not going to gothrough ten thousand. So what do you
do in that situation? So youcan do a couple of things. So
after you save it to your cameraroll, you can just delete it then
(44:51):
delete it from the text message,okay. Or if you're like most people
and you forget to do that right, at some point, you're gonna want
to delete that whole text thread andthen I'll just start a new one,
right, Okay, So you've gotyou've got options, got it, got
it, Kate. There's so manythings I would have just first of all,
(45:13):
you were definitely, we'll have youback, we'll figure out we're going
to put a pull out to everybodyafter this drops. Is it? What
did you love most? What doyou want to hear more of? Well,
definitely, because this is such animportant topic from like you said,
from an intelligence safety data perspective aswell as from an organizational perspective, and
just all the things, and thenagain the financial hearts of like why are
(45:34):
you paying for apps that you're notusing and things like that. So there's
so many different reasons why this issuch a relevant topic. Where can people
go to find you learn more?Connect up? The easiest way is to
go to my website, that's theDigital Wrangler dot com. I have got
lots of resources on my website.I have a free ebook on tips on
(45:57):
how to Wrangle your Phone, whichincludes tips on how to extend the battery
life of your phone, and it'sall about how can you take control of
your phone as opposed to letting yourphone control you? And I've got links
to books and apps, basically allthings digital are also on my website.
I love it. And of coursewe will link to all of this or
(46:19):
all things Kate in our show noteson our podcast page, So don't worry
about that. If you're out andabout, we'll make sure that you have
easy access to all of your information. We're going to take one more quick
break or one and when we comeback, we're going to just put you
in the hot seat for our rapidfire questions. So sit tight. Have
(46:40):
you ever thought to yourself, youknow what I love organizing and if I
could get paid to help other peopleorganize their spaces, that would be a
dream job. That's you, butmaybe you're unsure of the business side of
things, of how to set itup, or how do I charge people,
or how do I go about marketingmyself. Don't let that stop you.
(47:00):
We would love to talk to youabout our SPO Partner community, which
is a community of professional organizers fromall around the globe where we coach,
mentor and help training you to runyour own professional organizing business. To learn
more, visit simply be organized dotcom and click on the work with Me
(47:22):
tab and from there just connect upwith me hop on my calendar. We
would love to talk to you aboutall the different ways to help you grow
and establish your own professional organizing business. All right, Kate, this has
been such a great conversation. Again, I literally I have notes all over
left and right. Things I'm goingto do, things I can't wait to
(47:44):
share with people. This this isso incredible. Now I'm going to turn
the tables and talk to you aboutour end of the rap up questions that
we ask all of our guests,which are in We'll start with the book
which is what book or books areyou reading that either are transformational for you
or something that you're currently reading thathas been like really like eye opening for
(48:07):
you that you want to share withthe listeners. I've got two books,
so the first one is more fromKate the Human Being. Melissa Urban last
year launched a book called The Bookof Boundaries. Now, I have always
struggled with boundaries, hence why Ibecame such a workaholic. And I have
always put others before me as well, and in recent years, I became
(48:31):
a bonus mom. So I've workedwith and I've worked with book coaches,
and I've had some therapists over theyears. Her book is just awesome and
she includes all sorts of different scenariosand what I love about it is that
she includes some scripts as well,and she categorizes them using a stoplight,
(48:52):
like green script is going to belike the most loving way to hold your
boundary, and then if the personis to push the boundary, you can
move to the yellow and then youcan move to the red where it's basically
I'm piece it out. Yeah,I love it. I know I'm going
to actually check that out because I'veloved book Boundaries by I Don't Know Cloud
is like one of my favorite books, so I will definitely check that out.
(49:15):
And what's your other one, soKate the Digital Wrangler. Yeah,
So from a business perspective, MeasureWhat Matters by John Douer is one of
my all time favorite business books.He talks about the importance of having objectives
and key results, and he inhis book basically is a book a collection
(49:37):
of case studies from Bill Gates andBono Bono followed his methodology with all of
his anti poverty work, and it'sjust really cool. It gives you a
different perspective on how to think aboutgoals. And if you just think about
the title of the book, you'regoing to measure what is actually important to
(49:58):
you, Right, if you wantto grow your community or if you want
it's more important for you to growrevenue, how are you going to know
that you're hitting your goals? Soit's just a really great book from a
business perspective. I'm buying both ofthem because and this is why I asked
this question for everybody out there spoileralert. I ask it for myself as
well as for you. But Ialways love to know. So these are
(50:21):
awesome books that I can't wait tocheck them out. And then the last
two questions we ask every guest everyepisode is in this particular season of your
life, where do you feel themost organized and where do you feel like
a little bit of a hot mess? Oh this is I love of this
question, where I'm so glad thatyou asked this question. So one of
the first bosses that I had satdown with me like twenty twenty two years
(50:45):
ago and it was like, Kate, you need to learn how to toot
your own horn. So I lovethis question. Right now, I am
most proud of the way that mybusiness is organized. And I don't just
mean that from having like my digitalfile is organized, but it's all about
the processes I've put in place,the tools that I'm using, the business
(51:07):
rhythms that I've established for myself.I'm just really proud of how all of
that works because I can turn itoff at night, i can sleep well,
and I'm having fun. That's agreat question. I love that.
I love that. And then again, just in the spirit of authenticity,
right we obviously I always like toend with a put up, but in
(51:29):
the spirit of authenticity, so peoplethink that just because you're in the organizational
space that your life is perfect inall areas. Where if there's an area
that needs a little additional nurturing orTLC, where would that be? Okay?
And I'm sure that YouTube watchers areseeing me like laugh in the background.
(51:49):
Okay, So it's mid March,right those of us who are adults,
it's tax season now. Fun factabout me to be fifty next year.
So I am a little bit laterin life. And I got married
about five months ago and I've neverbeen married before, and we're going to
(52:10):
be filing our taxes jointly as amarried couple. Oh you see where I'm
going with this, And yeah,that's a lot. And because my husband,
who's in the Navy, So thankyou to your nephew for his service,
to thank you your husband's brain service. Amazing. So, because my
husband is not shy about letting peopleknow that I'm way smarter than him when
(52:34):
it comes to everything related to money, taxes and finances, I'm in charge
of collecting all of this and I'mlike, babe, I don't even know
what you have. And so we'redealing with that internally. And my CPA,
who's amazing has a new support person, so there's just a lot of
turmoil. But I just keep tellingmyself, Okay, one, this is
(52:58):
going to be over soon. It'sso going to be over soon. It's
just temporary and we're going to dobetter next year. Hey, absolutely,
this is your practice run. Butoh my gosh, that's great. That's
great, Kate again, I couldtalk to you for hours. I know
our audience is gonna love this episodeand just gobble it up. As stressful
(53:19):
and anxiety producing as it could befor people, you really broke it down
into such simple, sectionable steps thatI and digestible things that people can do.
So thank you for doing that.And if you are new to our
show, please welcome. You pickeda great episode to hop in on.
Click the subscribe button wherever you're it'sa plus whatever wherever you're listening or if
(53:42):
you're watching us on YouTube. Andif you liked this episode, share it
with a friend, because the bestway that we can grow the show and
allow other people to hear great guestslike Kate, it's just through word of
mouth. And if you guys likethis, we really appreciate you. Give
it our show a nod that wayand we're here each week. We've been
here for a long lop in time, and so feel free to go back
(54:05):
and check out our back catalog,where you can find, as Kate said
at the top of the episode,hours and hours of content, anything that
we can do to help you livea more organized life. And until next
week, I am Laurie Palau,peace out. Thanks for tuning in.
If you like this episode, pleasespread them and share it with your friends.
If this is your first time joiningus, make sure to click the
subscribe button wherever you're real listing soyou never miss an episode. And while
(54:27):
you're there, please leave us areview so other people knew that our show
is worth to listen. You canalso find us on YouTube and Instagram at
This Organized Life Podcast, and ifyou'd like to connect with us, you
can head on over to our websiteat simply the letter, b like boy
organized dot com, which is filledwith tons of resources, including free download
checklists, links to our amazing organizingpartners, and all of our digital offerings.
(54:51):
I'll see you next week for anotherepisode of This Organized Life
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