Anyone who is familiar with my roundups will remember that I have included a monthly task list along with the roundup each month until this January. Why did I stop including the tasks? It wasn’t because I didn’t believe in them anymore because I do. It’s because they were getting lost in the roundup shuffle. The end of the month and beginning of a new month are such busy times for me, especially with my responsibilities at The Daily Digi and with our homeschool program. I started to feel that by the time I got my roundup done, that I really didn’t have time or energy left for the tasks.
I also realized that the tasks are an important enough part of my memory keeping process that they really needed to be separated into a different home all their own. I have some really exciting ideas for these, but I would love your input as well. Here’s the list of the tasks that have been included with my roundups for several years.
- Upload all digital pictures to my hard drive and clear off memory cards in camera. Place all photos for the month in a computer folder labeled with the month and year. Make a backup copy of the photos from the month on my external hard drive and a dvd. I also upload all photos to my flickr account (you can use any offsite photo storage site, but here is why I love flickr). Ideally, these activities should be done every time you process any pictures through your computer so you don't lose any precious files, but if you have lapsed during the month, now's the time to get it done!
- Choose photos or digital layouts to be printed out and get it done while I'm thinking about it.
- Backup any other documents or files as needed. I use an external hard drive, I also upload many documents to Google docs. I don't like to lose stuff.
- Backup my blog. It's easy to do if you have one, just use Typepad backup or blogger backup.
- Clean off my work area, empty my inbox, and clean up my computer files. Here's a link to my digi organization post.
What do you think? Are these still relevant to you? Are there tasks that don’t apply to you? What’s missing? I’m also wondering when in the monthly schedule is it best for you to think about these types of organization things – or does that matter? I’m toying with two different approaches for posting my reminders; mid-month, or about a week before the roundup prompt goes up. Any preferences? I’d love to hear from you.
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