Welcome to 2025, data-tamers!
I'm going to get right into this week's content, because we're already to the 7th of January, and you've probably all had enough "Happy New Year" well-wishes and festive email prologues to last a lifetime--or, at least, for the rest of the year.
One of you reached out to me right at the end of 2024 with some questions about 2025 material (thanks, JL!). You wondered whether there was a new challenge coming, having jumped into Tidy '24 late in the year and missed much of the early subject matter.
I had to admit at the time that I didn't have as solid of a plan for the next 12 months as I would have liked to. I spent a good bit of time considering possibilities, and I've settled on a plan that I think you all will enjoy.
2025 at Tidy Bytes will be the Year of Consistency. 📅 🎯
This is as much for me as for all of you, since I have multiple data organization projects and goals that could greatly benefit from some consistent effort and progress.
The Plan
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Here's what I have in mind:
- Choose *one thing** to work on for each quarter of the year (Jan-Mar, Apr-Jun, and so on).
- Pick a measurable goal to reach by the end of the quarter.
- Determine a measurable action that will move you toward that goal.
- Perform that action at least once per week, noting the progress you made.
- 🏆️ BONUS: Report your weekly progress to somebody else each week, or ask them to remind you. 🗨️
**You don't have to plan all four things in advance, and you don't even have to change to a new thing at the end of each quarter. I chose quarterly milestones to provide an opportunity to switch if you want to. 3-month sprints give you an opportunity to establish actual consistency without switching too fast, or committing to something too long. Weekly action periods provide flexibility in potentially busy schedules. Bring in an accountability partner for the best results.*
Example Goals
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Let me emphasize that this does not need to be complicated. Keep it as simple as you can. Just make sure it's specific. Vague goals with imprecise actions and no easy way to measure progress will get you nowhere.
🚫 Bad Example: "I want to organize my email. By the end of this quarter, my email will be organized. Each week, I will organize 20 emails." (In addition to the vague target, what does "organized" mean here?)
✅ Good Example: "I want to reach inbox zero. By the end of this quarter, I will end each day of the week with an empty inbox. Each week, I will delete as much as possible, unsubscribe from anything I haven't read lately, and ensure that my message count is closer to zero than the previous week. I'll text my brother every Saturday to report how many messages are in my inbox."
This good example is crafted to ensure you always know what you're supposed to do. Even if you can only sit down for five minutes once in an entire week, you can still look at your consistency plan and immediately do something useful. Heck, even if you miss a week, you can still jump back in and start moving in the right direction.
Here's my personal goal for Q1 2025:
- 📋 I want to clean and organize my old archives.
- 🎯 By the end of this quarter, I will have all of my data on a triage hard drive and a file count of less than half of what I started with.
- 📅 Every week, I will work through at least 5 top-level folders from one drive and delete, sort, or deduplicate everything in those folders.
- 📈 I'll note in a simple table how many files I eliminated each time I work on my task and report to all of you how it's going in this post.
This is specific enough that I can sit down at my computer and work on it any time. I can split it up and do one or two folders per day and still reach the weekly goal. It gives me some accountability to you as well, since obviously I don't want to have sad-looking numbers each week. Some weeks might turn out that way anyway, but that's okay. I still have a goal to follow, and I can still build consistency.
We're only in the first week now, so use this time to think about your own goal--something you might want to work on (and accomplish specifically) by the end of this March. Next week, we'll start taking action.
An Invitation
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If any of you want to participate in this and would like some extra accountability, I offer my own inbox as an easy option. Please use me! I'd love to be the recording + reporting backstop to your 2025 Consistency Challenge, and I'd love to make it as frictionless as possible.
You don't have to ask, you don't have to be formal, you don't have to detail everything you did, you don't have to put your information in a particular format. Just share your progress anytime in the comments or by reaching out directly, and put the relevant info at the top of your reply. Something like:
- "deleted 30 emails, unsubscribed 2"
- "sorted 1 month of photos"
- "scanned 20 pages"
- "cleaned off one hard drive"
- "moved 10 notes into Notion"
If you track your progress somewhere visible, it becomes much easier to review how the quarter actually went. Will that be a lot of work? I don't expect so, but honestly I'd be giddy to see enough engagement that it becomes more work than I anticipated.
One other thing: this consistency challenge will be one focus for the year, but I'm still going to work on sending timely, interesting, and relevant content about data organization as well. It won't be structured monthly like Tidy '24 was, but it will still be there, so have no fear (if that's what you were looking forward do).
Here's to a great 2025, and happy data-taming!