Dispersed Life

Some days ago I realized that my life is dispersed. It does really hard admit that. One day I just thought about why my life became so complicated and I found this:

• I have 2 mobile phones, for work and personal. Each one has their own contacts list and as they belong to different mobile providers (Movistar and Claro) I have my friends’ numbers spread between them. My personal one can’t synchronize with my PC (it’s a Kyocera Soho without cable and too old) and my work one is changed every year, changing brands (between Nokia, Siemens and Motorola) and of course as is not mine I don’t want to expend money in cables or accessories.
• I used Outlook Express, who had my e-mails (since 1998) and a contacts list, where most of the contacts were generated automatically when I answered mails.
• I had a Palm Zire 71, which had its own PC software to synchronize (Palm Desktop). I was a loyal user of Palm since 2001, and all my personal data was there (contacts, mails, phone numbers, schedule, notes, photos, reminders, etc.). Also I used as a digital camera, mp3 player, Microsoft Office documents editor (using DocumentsToGo), dictionary and portable game console.
• I have a PC and tablet PC. No comments.
• I have multiple e-mails accounts, a total of 10. I “only” check daily 8 of them, because Outlook Express helps me with that. Also 5 of them are related with instant message services. The worse part is that I used them in different websites to register and logon, so I have to remember all the passwords and where I used them. In addition, I have Skype.
• I have an avatar in Second Life, and there I have part of my contacts (my only-SL contacts).

My crisis started when I tried to contact a friend and I couldn’t remember where her information was. I found that her information was in 5 different places! Also I didn’t know if that information was accurate. I simply shocked. What happened with KIS (Keep it Simple)? What happened with me?

A friend explained me that if your life is dispersed, also your mind is dispersed. And in that condition you can’t focus correctly, I think because you spend too much time gathering all your pieces of information. She was totally right!

After a lot of meditation, I decided simplify my life. First checking my bad habits I have to change, and then taking some actions. I want to share two of them:

• First at all, I should merge all my data. I moved my e-mails from Outlook Express to Microsoft Outlook and all my Palm information using PocketMirror by Chapura (http://www.chapura.com/). That was my first big problem, more than 4000 contacts, most of them old e-mails and duplicated records. I spent 2 days to fix that. Today I have 321.
• I bought a new mobile phone, a Nokia N95. It’s replacing my Palm (I’m still crying) but I think its one of my best buy. I’m very happy with that. Of course I synchronize it with MS Outlook, so now all my contacts are in my phone. One of the advantages is that now I really check my personal schedule daily.

This is only the beginning. I continue exploring my N95 and finding some ways to get simpler again, mainly avoiding distributing my life.

P.S.: Writing blogs and/or having spaces (like hi5) also could disperse your life. Being consequent with this post, I first write it in a word document and then publish it. That’s my way to have a backup of this part of my life in my PC.