Picture appears courtesy of Michael Wifall. In March of 2012, I wrote a blog titled "No Purge Routine? Are You Becoming an e-Hoarder?" Now, in June of 2016 I find myself dealing with that topic and also with a pet peeve of mine, documentation of procedures and process steps. Let me explain why all of this popped up suddenly.
I came upon an article the other day that used a term I had never heard before. The term is e-hoarding! I have watched a couple of those "Hoader" shows and I have to say, they kind of creeped me out. How could someone let themselves get into that situation?
The article sent me to my e-mail to see how old some of the documents in my mailbox are. Was I an e-hoarder? I was relieved that I have been pretty diligent in getting rid of older documents. Then I asked myself why I am so diligent with my e-mail but I am always discovering other documents on my hard drive that go years back and are no longer needed? Performance was the answer to my question! I want my e-mail to work at top speed and be able to find messages and documents quickly without having to weed through hundreds of old messages. On the hard drive I just put older documents in a "z-Old" folder within each folder and then promptly forget about them. (I use the z to put it at the bottom of an alphabetized view.) I have easy access to the newer documents as the older ones are out of the way, but they rarely get purged. Out of sight, out of mind!