Podcast

2: Digital Space vs. Physical Space Organizing

Do you ever feel overwhelmed with the digital organizing solution that is supposed to make life easier, but now you are doing double work to keep it organized digitally and physically? If so, you are not alone! This episode will introduce you to why you may be feeling this way and what to do to avoid the double work.

The Organized & Productive podcast is brought to you by The Organized Flamingo and hosted by Stephanie Y. Deininger! For those of you who love the thought of organizing & being more productive, but don’t know where to start or constantly up against hurdles that don’t let you advance the way you want to, this podcast is for you!

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Digital Space vs. Physical Space Organizing

It's important to understand the difference in digital organizing and physical organizing in order to create a foundation for an organized and productive life. Let's take a look at the two:

Digital Organizing: when you find solutions that will help you with your digital stuff, or a digital resource that helps you with your physical things.
Physical Organizing: solutions to get you organized with your physical items.

For example, let's look at getting organized with your groceries:

Digital: Apps that track your grocery list for shopping.
Physical: Purchased items that live in your pantry.

The Impact of Technology on Organizing

Not too long ago, digital and physical organizing were very separate—but with the shifts, accessibility, and changes in technology, we're seeing a lot of overlap.

This means we have tools that will help us stay organized in both areas of life, yet you might be doubling your work if you're not using the tools seamlessly between the spaces. For example, have you stored digital files on your computer, yet still printed it for your records? That's duplicating the system and the work.

5 Time Saving Tips for Your Digital & Physical Organizing Solutions

Now, let's walk through five tips on how to save time by using both digital and physical organizing solutions, so you don't have to duplicate the efforts!

Pick a planner, calendar, or agenda that you can access both physically and digitally.
Pick a planner or calendar that you can share easily (Google Cal, Microsoft, Etc)
Organize your receipts; you may have boxes and folders and drawers full of these receipts that you don't even know if you need or not. If possible, start asking for the digital receipt and file it away in a folder. (For the non-digitals, take a picture and file it away.)
Create a digital inventory list of what you have so you can know what you need (groceries, gifts, etc).
When picking your digital solutions, ensure that you can easily download it if you needed to, so that you can move it to another solution if you needed to.

As you begin your journey to organizing or even start to improve the journey you're already on, this podcast will become a resource for you! We'll be bringing on guest experts in the coming episodes, so make sure you're subscribed and tuned in on your favorite podcast app!

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Happy Organizing!

Review the Transcript:

Welcome to the organized and productive podcast with organized grooming go. I am your host, Stephanie, a professional organizer and productivity expert, ready to explore the right organizing and productivity solutions for you. Yeah, well, then let's go.

Here's a question for you. Do you ever feel overwhelmed with the digital organizing solution that is supposed to make life easier, but now you are doing double work to keep it organized digitally and physically? If so, you are not alone. And this episode will introduce you to why you may be feeling this way, and what to do to avoid the double work. Hi, friends, and welcome to our organized and productive podcast based. For today's episode, I am talking about digital organizing versus physical organizing. What is it? What am I talking about the definition of them, and what are some solutions for both types of organizing laid out the groundwork for a subject that we will later dig a little deeper on.

But I wanted this particular episode to just be the groundwork like the type of conversation we have that we can always refer back to, before we dig into the details and the nitty gritty of the two types of organizing. So let's go ahead and start off with the definitions of what digital organizing is, and what physical organizing is, and how this relates to your life, and all that good stuff. So digital organizing is when you find solutions that will help you with your digital stuff. Or it's a digital resource that helps you with your physical things, then physical organizing, is solutions to get you organized with your physical items. So to use an example, less use getting organized with your groceries, maybe your pantry. So you've got digital note taking apps that help you with your inventory of your pantry, your food, it helps you make grocery lists, if you're on a health and wellness journey, you may be trying to keep track of your food and your items in your refrigerator. So you keep those things digitally.

And then you go in order them maybe digitally, but then you go and pick them up. And now it becomes physical things. So that's the difference between that's like you ordered it, you planned it digitally. But then you went and got the items that are physical items. And now they will be living in your physical space, which is your pantry. So that's just one example, we can use many other such as photos, especially in a world, the world we live in today, we still have physical photographs, pictures from either our that were inherited by our parents, or grandparents or family or friends, or you still like to print pictures. So now you have digital photos that live on your phone or your digital camera. And then you've got physical pictures that were printed. And so that right there is a merge of the two. So that's what I mean about digital organizing versus physical organizing. And up until now, we have tended to talk about organizing and productivity into segments, the organizing for physical spaces segment like the home, the office, the garage, etc, like a physical space, and then organizing for the digital spaces. So you've got your computer or your digital fire files, your digital photos, etc, your phone, your camera, that's all the digital world. It used to be that the two were very different ways of organizing.

And the solutions for those organizing solutions were also very different. But in today's world, they are now merging, and they have a lot of overlap. The main reason now they're overlapping is because technology has come such a long way. So it's much faster, it's easier, more accessible to the masses. And so now we are both using and living in both the digital world and in the physical space world. And how this affects your organizing and productivity journey is that now we have tools that can help with helping you get organized in both areas of your life. But we're still in a world where sometimes we're using a solution for each and we're doubling the work. And that's what I'm trying to help you avoid. So in future episodes, what we're going to do is we're going to break down physical organizing, and some of the solutions that will help you with your physical organizing, like your spaces and then we will also have the digital type of organizing so people will that can help you with how did how can I better organize my digital files. And then we can we will continue to march both. So we will always talk about Okay, so if I have this document on my computer, do I need to print it? And if I do now that it lives in my physical space, how can I not duplicate the work? How do How does one know that the other one exists? So I don't continue to make duplicates and quadruplets of things. And then now it just becomes a big pile of things for on both your digital space and your physical space.

So that is my goal to help you avoid all of that. So here are five tips on how to save time by using both digital and physical organizing solutions. So you don't have to duplicate the efforts of all the At the time that you're creating these things. So these five tips are five tips that I would suggest when you were trying to pick a system that supposed to help you with both your digital and physical spaces. Let's go with tip number one is pick a planner, or a calendar or agenda that you can access both physically and digitally. So what I mean by that is that it has the ability to print if you needed it, it but you have access to it online, so that way you can access it from your desktop, your phone, but also the ability to download it and print it if you are more of a paper to pen type of person. And having those options will allow you to know that you have them both available to you. And now you're not trying to keep two different planners that are going on at the same time.

Tip number two, pick a planner or calendar that you can share easily. So this is kind of the problem with physical type of planners and physical types of documents that you're supposed to be able to share with other people. So if you're trying to share maybe a family calendar or with coworkers, or with work or whatever it may be, when you have a physical planner, it makes it a little bit hard. So pick something that you can share easily. For some people, if you're if you're still a paper and a pen type of person, agenda planner, individual. So what some people do is at the end of the day, they take a picture and they send it to the people that are in there that they need to share it with. So that's a quick and easy way, right. You also, of course have the great tools such as Google Calendars, and I mean, there's outlook and Microsoft, and there's so many out there. But basically, it's it's one solution that you can share easily with others, so that you don't have to duplicate the work.

Tip number three is all about receipts, those pesky little things that just pile up and pile up. And then before you know it, you have boxes and folders and drawers full of these receipts that you don't even know if you need or not right like the receipts, the physical receipts that get printed at the store. So in today's world, there's so many other vendors and stores now have the ability to just email you or text you the receipt, in my opinion, and in my suggestion is pick that version instead. And then put it in a folder if you don't have that option. The other option is when it gets printed, you just take a picture of the receipt in on your phone, and then you put it in a folder that's labeled receipts. If you want to get nitty gritty, if you're you have the time, inability or that or you need to separate them then go ahead and create different folders in your photo app. But basically take a picture and then go ahead and put them in a folder. What's really cool about today's technology is that most cameras do read the receipt. So it's texts, it's able to read the images and the text that's within the image, which is really cool because then you can do a search for the vendor for the store, maybe you know if you needed it in to get easy access for it later. So pick the email or text option as much as possible when you have that option from the vendors. But if you don't have that option, then go ahead and just take a picture of the receipt and then put it in a folder.

Tip number four is create a digital inventory list. So when that when you're out and about like a store, you know what you have, there are some really fancy schmancy appliances now like refrigerators that will send you a picture of what's in your fridge. So if you have that read, that's really cool. But most of us don't write and especially in today's age. So before you leave, or maybe at the end of the day, take a picture of what you have in your pantry and before you go out to the grocery store, etc. So that's a form of digital inventory. Another form of digital inventory is great and list so especially true for things that not so much I probably wouldn't say so much your pantry or maybe your closet maybe other items that you want to keep inventory of Christmas holiday birthday, you're an entertainer type of person you're always entertaining at your house. A lot of realtors have a lot of items that they give away to their clients and for events and things like that. So keep keep inventory of what you have. But digitally so that when you're out and about you're not double buying things that you already have back at your house back at your storage back in your office. Another version of that is taking pictures of what you have and putting them in the folder in your in your photos folder. So you can always refer back to that. So that's kind of like the receipts suggestion I made made in tip number three. And that just would be take a picture of the items, put them in a folder that maybe say you know holiday decor and so now you have a folder of the pictures of all of your holiday decor that you can always look back into. This is also a really good tip for those of you who are collectors or you have items that you inherited or have purchased and you think that they need may be worth something because when you take a picture of your collections now that you have them so that if you need to get them appraised, or you just need like quick reference point, like, Hey, I think I have something like this, you go to a store or something, you're like, hey, that I didn't know that was a collectible. I think I have this, well, now you just have to go back to your inventory, list your digital inventory list, and then bring that into your physical world in the moment, right, you can easily access it. And for tip number five, it's very important that so whatever digital solution that you have, you can easily download it if you needed to, so that you can move it to another solution if you needed to. So what I mean by that is, in today's world, you know, if your digital solution is not working for you, if the company shuts down, if you don't want to use them anymore, and you want to try something new, that data should be yours.

So make sure that you own the data that you're inputting in your digital solution. And or you can easily transfer it from place to place as part of tip number five, but also a warning overall, don't overthink the fact that digital solutions may own your data or that you're going to lose your data. And that's why you're printing it and you want double and duplicates, I get the fear, I really do. And we're actually going to be talking about this with a mental health expert about that. But as long as you have it in, you know two different plates, like a backup somewhere else, and you don't keep information that's super important, like very important documents like trust in financial statements that you need, as long as you do have a backup for that somewhere else, everything else can pretty much be replicated very easily. And so yes, when I say make sure that you own your data, make sure you have a backup like that is important. That is tip number five, but also don't overthink it. If you haven't done that if you haven't done a backup, that's okay, start now and go from there. And just remember to make sure you're not duplicating the work or wasting energy doing the work twice. When you pick a system that works for you for both your physical and digital needs. It should add value, save you time and in the long run, be something that is making your life easier, not creating more work. And as I mentioned earlier in the episode, this is just the start of the conversation, we will have some experts talking about how to pick the right digital solutions for you. We will also have experts that talk about physical solutions for you.

And then we will also talk about merging the two especially in some fields like the finance field like accounting and finance paperwork that has to do with the numbers. medical documents like what should you keep physically versus what should you keep digitally? What should you keep in both formats and so we will also talk to experts that can guide you towards making the right decisions over those things. I hope you found this subject matter helpful and if you have any questions, feel free to send us a message over at Instagram at the organized Flamingo. Thank you for listening to the organized and productive podcast with the organized Flamingo. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love it if you'd leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. It helps with letting people know that we're here. For full show notes and resources head on over to the organized flamingo.com/podcast Happy organizing.