Prune Your Address Book

To help you jump start the new year, we’re posting thirty-one technology and business treats, one for each day of January.

Hmm. I wonder how many have more than one digital address book? I’m really hoping no one has a digital address book AND a paper address book or Rolodex (for those of us old enough to remember those)! I’m sure someone has over 10,000 contacts too.

Fear not! We’re only going to talk about pruning your address book today. IF you have more than one address book scattered across your various devices, I suggest selecting only one for this exercise. I’m all about success, not creating a nightmare, today.

We all manage our contacts differently. Most of us have created some sort of a system that works most of the time. This side of eternity, there will always be an outdated email address or wrong address for a contact. It’s reality. But every so often, it’s good to go through your contacts and prune. I prefer to purge, but I know that’s a little too drastic for some.

This task definitely requires some good music, preferably upbeat, and a pick-me-up beverage (that rules out most adult beverages). The goal is to have a mostly-current, manageable, and useful address book at the end. Ready?

Here are some suggestions:

1. Decide before you start what your pruning criteria is. Some will be easy, like business contacts that are no longer in business and exes (yes, them). Others might have a time limit, like the guy you met at a networking event three years ago.

2. Pick a letter and start. Go through each name in that letter, making a decision about whether or not they’re staying in your address book. Set a three-second rule for deciding. The fate of the global economy is not at stake. And, with less than six-degrees of separation between everyone on the planet, someone will have the information you need should you need it again.

3. Move on to the next letter until you’ve exhausted the twenty-six letters in the English alphabet. Remember, what you don’t do now will only be haunting you until you complete it, so just do it!