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Digital Hoarding Can Make Us Feel Just as Stressed and Overwhelmed as Physical Clutter, Research Suggests (bbc.com)
Emerging research on digital hoarding -- a reluctance to get rid of the digital clutter we accumulate through our work and personal lives -- suggests that it can make us feel just as stressed and overwhelmed as physical clutter. From a report: Not to mention the cybersecurity problems it can cause for individuals and businesses and the way it makes finding that one email you need sometimes seem impossible. The term digital hoarding was first used in 2015 in a paper about a man in the Netherlands who took several thousand digital photos each day and spent hours processing them. "He never used or looked at the pictures he had saved, but was convinced that they would be of use in the future," wrote the authors.
In a study published earlier this year Neave and his colleagues asked 45 people about how they deal with emails, photos, and other files. The reasons people gave for hanging on to their digital effects varied -- including pure laziness, thinking something might come in handy, anxiety over the idea of deleting anything and even wanting "ammunition" against someone. The team has used those responses to develop a questionnaire to assess digital hoarding behaviours in the workplace, and have tested it with 203 people who use computers as part of their job. Their findings show that email appears to be a particular problem: among participants, the average inbox had 102 unread and 331 read emails.
In a study published earlier this year Neave and his colleagues asked 45 people about how they deal with emails, photos, and other files. The reasons people gave for hanging on to their digital effects varied -- including pure laziness, thinking something might come in handy, anxiety over the idea of deleting anything and even wanting "ammunition" against someone. The team has used those responses to develop a questionnaire to assess digital hoarding behaviours in the workplace, and have tested it with 203 people who use computers as part of their job. Their findings show that email appears to be a particular problem: among participants, the average inbox had 102 unread and 331 read emails.
Are they missing few decimal places with the emails? Those 92000 emails I have in just one of my inboxes are for just a couple of last few years. Do I have a problem? :)
It's not the fall that kills you. It's the sudden stop at the end. -Douglas Adams
...the average inbox had 102 unread and 331 read emails.
That's adorable.
My main inbox has about 1200 emails, almost all read. My archive has about 50,000, with about 600 unread.
Archiving email is important. Many times, I've had to go pull an email from a few years prior to prove that management did actually say that thing, or that a particular job did in fact run, or even just to find information that was long-since forgotten.
Storage is cheap. Missing information is not.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
My old yahoo e-mail has over 100k unread e-mail that I couldn't care less about. At work I simply read the five or so e-mails I get each day when they come in as it has minimal impact on my job. Any detailed discussions are usually via chat, phone or in person as real time conversations tend to work best.
As to read e-mail, work dictates that we archive all e-mail with our customers in case of contract disputes. With my personal e-mail, none of the providers are telling me I'm running out of space and searching for old e-mails takes far less time than sorting through all of the half legit/spam e-mails each day. Keeping everything is the most efficient use of my time.
My email archive does come in handy from time to time, and most of the time it's just stowed away in a folder not taking up much space. How in the world is that supposed to stress me? Physical clutter gets in the way, I get that, but emails?
>> Emerging research on digital hoarding -- a reluctance to get rid of the digital clutter we accumulate through our work and personal lives -- suggests that it can make us feel just as stressed and overwhelmed as physical clutter.
Nice try Windows 10 Disk Cleanup. I saw your other article about needing 7GB on my machines today.
For me the winning move is just to change jobs every few years. "All those emails I never answered? F' 'em. Clean inbox and a raise here I come!"
There's no way 2015 was the first time the term "digital hoarding" was used. It shows up in Google Trends as far back as 2008 and the Wikipedia entry for the topic was created in early 2014.
Yes, I still play. It's interesting to see other players who get trapped in a sort of hoarding mentality with extra toons that don't actually have any meta-game practicality. I think the publisher actually relies on this to sell coins so that players will buy more bag space.
With physical hoarding, the burden is often eventually shifted onto family or friends. They are stuck with the expense and effort of a major clean-out if the hoarder ever dies or becomes incapacitated.
With digital hoarding, everything that was accumulated often fits into a shirt pocket. While it may stress out the actual hoarder, those who inherit it could easily dispose of it if they choose.
1.) Digital space is cheaper than physical space.
2.) The cost of digital space is decreasing with time because it's practically infinite.
3.) The cost of physical space is increasing with time because it's finite.
4.) Search functions are excellent, if you tag things correctly and/or use the right search terms, finding one email in millions takes seconds. Much easier than searching for things in physical space (which is why warehouses have digital records of where everything is).
Therefore no need to worry about digital hoarding. Everyone stop stressing. Problem solved, go home, get off my lawn.
Having thousands to millions of emails isn't about digital hoarding. It is being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of unimportant, irrelevant, expired, and useless spam, and simply being unable to manage it.
Say you get a bill in your email. That bill needs to be retained for a certain period of time in order to retain the latest contact/support information, balance the checkbook, and account for any errors with the billing agency or bank. Simply deleting that bill assumes perfection and/or inerrancy on the part of third parties.
Let those bills grow for some time, and suddenly you've got an entire folder of bills, intermingled with data breach notifications and administrative emails, etc. There may be an email or two which you need to "Pin" to the folder to prevent its deletion. And then do a "Sweep" or automated cleanup of other items to prevent clutter. Mail hasn't been that advanced until recently, and most mail services are still not that advanced. (Is GMail capable of all of those things?)
Later you buy one thing online, and suddenly you have inadvertently subscribed to 50 publications which email frequently. (Plus paper catalogs by snail mail apparently,...) Which you then have to manage which ones you have unsubscribed to while sorting and deleting them to prevent deletion of legitimate mail in your Inbox (like a first warranty renewal notification for a product, or an insurance bill from a new provider, or account theft alerts/purchase notifications you weren't expecting etc...).
Let that cycle repeat itself for all online activity, which is intertwined with a significant portion of our daily lives, and email becomes a task which requires a full time secretary position to maintain. Training email is now possible, but it is not a simple task. Then put all of that on the general populace who can't even change their Facebook diary postings from "Everyone/Public" to Friends or a private group, etc,...
It ain't hoarding, its giving up!