Back to posts

Deleting as pruning

I used to be somewhat of a digital hoarder. I would leave tabs open for weeks or months because they felt like uncompleted tasks and if I closed them (or, heaven forbid, they got closed on their own during some sort of system reset) I would end up forgetting whatever I was supposed to do with them, and miss out on a movie, a restaurant, an album on Bandcamp, a clothing brand. Every once in a while when my browser started to get slow, I’d be brave and shove them all into an aggregator like OneTab and tell myself I’d get back to them later. That inclination is how I ended up with a big graveyard of lists – random tidbits in my Notes app, email newsletters left unread, drafted tweets, a set of reminder-style calendar events that I move from month to month, unread messages on every social media platform, favorited recipes I have not made; lists on Letterboxd, Goodreads, GameFAQs, the Chicago Public Library website, Discogs; unfinished Ableton projects, screenshots of things to remember on my desktop, folders of previous years’ worth of similar screenshots, saved albums on Spotify, playlists on YouTube that I’m 30% through.

A couple years ago I started gradually trying to go through these lists and address each item. I would sit down for a couple hours each week to remove things that weren’t pertinent anymore and “take action” on a couple – beginning a book or making a recipe or completing a purchase. The lists did slowly seem to get smaller, but it was work I did begrudgingly, and it was clear that I had on my hands one Very Large, Unmanageable To-do List.

I would call this weekly chore my “reset” time because I eventually wanted to get back to some Inbox Zero–style zen state where I had completed everything. Obviously that would never be truly possible, but even a small step in that direction felt like forward motion, like I was progressing. In time, though, I’ve become aware that this type of motion is not forward at all – it’s more like riding a stationary bike or treading water. It’s meta-work, and it distracts me from actually “doing the work” (whatever that might mean). If I’m spending my free time going through lists from five years ago, that’s time I’m not spending on doing anything current or making anything new. These amassed notes and ideas and links were a ball and chain.

I think this obsession with keeping old lists stems from some sort of fear. I’m afraid that an idea I wrote down last year might still have value for me, and that letting it go would mean potentially missing out on something good I could use. And that fear stems from another one even further down: that if I let go of an older idea, a new one might never appear to take its place, and I’ll be left with no inspiration or ideas at all, and feel lost.

The reality is that new inspiration appears every day, and I won’t wake up one day with nothing at all to work with. There is no shortage of inputs into my life from books, conversations with friends, social and traditional media, day-to-day walking around and observing, new music and videos…the idea that I need to hoard scraps from the past is a type of poverty mindset.

I don’t think the right reaction for me is to throw everything out and start again from nothing, though. I’ll admit that it’s tempting – I recently read a blog post from Joan Westenberg about how she deleted her “second brain” and felt emotionally freed. But I’ve been trying to weigh that against a chapter I found helpful in Ableton’s Making Music that talks about how all scraps and ideas can be re-used or re-purposed in the future, and that it’s helpful to keep them around. After all, I use my bag of fabric scraps often when sewing, so wouldn’t there be value in a digital “bag of scraps” too? I want to find a way to continue to take note of my inspirations and ideas, but have a way to visit and wander around though that space without it feeling like a to-do list.

Making Music has a microsite as well as a pdf of the full book. This chapter is in the pdf on page 74.

That emotional association is what bothered me so much about my lists. Since going through them felt like a chore, there was never a way for me to reach into that part of my life to find inspiration. It could never be a springboard for me, because the whole time I would be running into reminders like “that’s right – I’ve got to watch X” or “oh, I meant to write a setting for the poem that Y shared” or “I’ve got to make time to learn more about Z.” Something about the framing was keeping me from any excitement or joy to be found there – it was always a list of “shoulds.”

In trying to reframe things I’ve landed on this idea of pruning. By purposely getting rid of something (even if it still has value), I know that I’ll produce something newer and fresher to take its place. The idea is not to prune a tree down to the stump – then it might die! Instead you prune a quarter or a third of the canopy, since that’s how much the tree can regenerate without becoming stressed or producing suckers. Then the new growth can be more productive, or be less prone to disease, or be trained in a different direction.

It’s been uncomfortable for me to delete perfectly good notes and ideas, because…what if I want them again later? But being able to name it “pruning” helps me let go of something even while acknowledging that it was (and still is) important. I’m letting go of something good in order to make way for something else that I trust is coming. It’s a sort of hopeful preparation rather than pointless destruction. This second step of regrowth or regeneration is what makes pruning successful. In my own case I’m opening up space in my life as well as making the effort to fill it up again; the two steps have to be linked together.

I’m going to keep my practice of sitting down every week and going through old notes and lists, but it’s split into two parts now: a step of letting things go (maybe taking action on a couple items, but removing much more than before), and a second step of doing something new. Even if these things can’t happen at the same time I’m trying to consider them connected.

I used to get a little dopamine hit every time I crossed an item off a to-do list; it felt like progress. And it still feels good to prune and make space, but I want to delay the real feeling of satisfaction to the second part, where I fill that space with something new.

P.S.

Here are two YouTube videos I watched recently that touch on this general theme:

P.P.S.

I originally titled this post “Deleting as blood-letting” but then felt the metaphor was not accurate, since historically it was more connected to the four humors rather than forcing the body to produce new blood.