Episode 253: How to de-clutter your downloads
Digital file clutter is something that so many people deal with. In today's episode, Fiona shares a quick tip on how you can declutter all your digital files and have more control over where are things saved, and be able to find them again. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
De-clutter your downloads
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business Coach
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
Welcome to episode 253 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. My name's Fiona Killackey, I'm your host, and today you are lucky because this is a quick tip episode and honestly, this is one of the best tips ever. But before we get stuck into that tip, two things. First, I want to acknowledge the traditional owner and custodians of the land on which I get to record this podcast and bring you these tip episodes, and that is the Wurundjeri and Wurrung people of the Kulin nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging. I acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
The second thing that I wanted to remind you of is that we offer a bunch of online courses and templates and eBooks and all sorts of things from a 90-day Content Calendar that has a hundred content ideas to Money Mapping, which is a short course that has literally transformed people's appreciation and relationship with money in their business. You can find those over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/shop. It's not just business coaching that we do, although we do a lot of one-on-one and group coaching, we also run a bunch of programs, courses, online tools, and templates that you can buy. Check them over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/shop. And if you are buying for a Biz friend, we also have a gift voucher, which is really good at this time of year. Let's get into today's awesome tip episode.
Firstly, I have to give a massive shout-out to my amazing friend Marre Smit from Smit Club and Web Club. She lives in the Netherlands and told me about this and actually sent it to me and was like, “I think this would be a great one for your podcast.” And I was like, “Thank you, amazing friend.” Because not only was it great for the podcast, it is great for me as a person. It is just honestly something when you find out something and you're like, How do we not know this? How is this not just general knowledge? I am a pretty organized person. I would say I'm somebody who thinks in a way that works well with the organization. I tend to put things, even just ideas and stuff into like Excel sheets or created Canva documents or everything very visual as well.
I always am downloading things from the world wide web. What happens is that I use a Mac, I'm coming from my perspective, I use a Mac and I use Chrome as my browser when I'm searching on the internet. I might be downloading any number of things. I could be downloading raw, like MP3 files because of this podcast. I might be downloading artwork, or I might be downloading somebody's profit and loss statement that they've sent me. I might be downloading any number of things, freebies, my own and other people's, and all sorts of stuff. We are actually doing a big transformation behind the scenes in this business.
One of the things that we're working on is taking everything from Dropbox and putting it into Google Drive. We've tried to do this before in the past and then just reverted to old ways.
But I would say that in general, like I can find my files, I'm pretty good at that. However, when it comes to downloads, like my downloads folder, I don't even want to pull them. I was going to pull up how big my downloads folder is at the moment because I can just get on a roll and maybe I'm downloading a bunch of images that I think are good from Unsplash for a client or I'm downloading all sorts of things. If it's a busy day, I might download a bunch of stuff and then not put them anywhere, not rename them, not file them properly. Then you're searching through your downloads and trying to find stuff and what Marre my friend told me has been life-changing. What is it? It is the ability to wait for it to be able to choose where your downloads go whilst you are searching the internet.
I almost said surfing the internet, imagine that surfing the internet, feels so old at the moment. If you are on Chrome, this is how you do it. Literally, it is so easy that I honestly wish that someone had told me this about five years ago. I would've saved myself a lot of digital detox heartache. What you do if you use Chrome, is go to Chrome and go to preferences. You go to your open, you are on the internet, and you'll see Chrome if you're on a Mac at the top left, I imagine that's also where you'd see it on a pc, but I don't work on a pc. You hit preferences and then you'll have you and mine set up through Google, but you've got the hamburger menu at the top left.
It says next to settings you've got the three bars. If you click that, you'll find a whole bunch of stuff and then it'll say downloads, you click on downloads and it'll have the location of all your downloads and then it'll say ask where to save each file before downloading. Unfortunately, that has been toggled to the left, which is off. It should just be defaulted on. Honestly, I think that is a major fault with the way that this has been set up with Chrome. But anyway, we can change that today. You can click the “ask where to save each file before downloading,” you just toggle it over so it's on. The next time you want to download anything from the internet, what will happen is you are downloading, I'm literally downloading an invoice at the moment because I need this as a receipt into my tax area and it's not just going into downloads, it's showing me like my whole menu.
Where do you want to put this file? Maybe, what do you want to call it? This sounds so simple and maybe lots of people out there know that you can do this. I did not know that you could do this until again, my amazing friend Marre from the Web Club in the Netherlands told me about it. It has transformed my life. It's these small things that seem so small but actually have such a massive impact. I know whenever I look at my downloads, I just feel kind of sick because I'm like, “Oh God.” I used to have a thing where once a quarter I would try on the new quarter, September or October when the first quarter starts, I would try to go through my downloads, but it's just so many files and so many things.
Sometimes I'd be like, I'm just going to delete them all. But I know that I do use some of those things that are in there. Anyway, this has been life-changing and I really hope that it has been life-changing for you. If you use Chrome, I am sure that whatever other browsers, you must be able to just go to preferences, settings, downloads, and then toggle something. But I did not know that you could do that. I wish I had known. Again, if you are using Chrome, you simply have your internet open. You go to Chrome, which is usually at the top left of your screen, click on that, and click on preferences. Once you're in preferences, you scroll down or you go into the menu, then you go into, so the menu is at the top. You've gone Chrome, preferences, menu downloads, then you should have something that says, choose where to save your downloads.
You just need to toggle that on. It is going to change your life. Honestly, I do not mean that lightly. Digital file clutter I think is something that so many people deal with. It's like those shows like home edit on Netflix or Marie Kondo, all the different shows she's done now on Netflix, we all have clutter, but a lot of the time it's not visible because it's digital clutter and there's so much of that happening and this is just one small way that you might change and declutter all your digital files and have more control over where are things saved and be able to find them again. Thank you so much Marre from Smit Club and thank you Chrome. Although I really shouldn't be saying thank you. If anyone from Chrome is listening, please change it to, this is just a default. It would make it a lot easier for people. That is it for today's quick tip episode. If you want a link to everything I've talked about today and how to actually do it again in text format, you can find the show notes including all of that over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/253. Thank you so much for listening, I'll see you next time. Bye.
Thanks For listening to the My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram @mydailybusinesscoach.
