Prisidio helps you take your first steps toward filling your digital vault with the items you want available whenever and wherever you need them.
I personally believe that an organized digital life is one of the keys to reducing stress in your daily life, and that’s why we created Prisidio.
As a husband, company founder and someone who’s made several moves over the past few years, I know how important it is to be organized. And I also understand just how intimidating it can be to get started.
The truth is that one of the biggest challenges in starting down the path toward having an organized digital life is taking the first step.
While this article is about getting started, it’s also important to select a highly secure, trusted cloud-based vault to house your most private and sensitive information. We’ll cover in a future piece what to consider as you select a vault.
Once you’ve signed up for a vault, it’s time to start filling it with your key documents and life management information. Here are three tips to help you organize your digital life – which today, includes items from nearly every domain of your life.
Remember, at first your goal is not to create a perfectly organized digital record of all your activities, financial and social. Your goal is to start getting organized, and today, you don’t need to think about your digital legacy quite yet (unless that’s why you’ve opted to sign up for a digital vault in the first place).
Instead, begin by walking in your home office, garage, attic, or storage unit, and pick one box of documents you’d like to digitize. Better yet, the next time you sit down to review your finances or pay your monthly bills, take the time to enter those accounts and any people associated with them into your secure digital vault.
Then, stop and take pride in the fact that you’ve taken the first step!
To ensure you don’t get overwhelmed by trying to get your whole life in order in one afternoon, press pause when you feel good about the progress you’ve made and not when you’re exhausted. This will make it easier for you to pick the task back up later.
If you already pay most of your bills online, you may find it easier to start with a values-based approach to getting your life organized. But as with the first approach I recommended above, don’t try to do it all at once.
Instead, triage what matters most by starting with what’s most immediately important. To put it another way, think of putting things into your cloud-based vault the way you’d pack a go bag: If you found yourself in an emergency, what important items would you need?
This might include your passport, your medical records, your insurance account information, and a photo of your grandchildren. As you fill your digital vault, physical space is not a constraint. Your digital vault can include personal mementos, and it should also contain any documents or information your family would need to access in your absence. It’s also a good idea to include a record of all the things you store in your safety deposit box(es) at the bank.
This is one way to break the task of getting your life organized into manageable chunks. It also gives you an opportunity to notice the many significant people and items of value in your life!
To keep this project moving forward and sidestep the procrastination trap, begin by taking on a manageable scope that works for you. This will make it easier to commit to returning to the task.
With Prisidio’s cloud-based vault, you can easily take a photo or video right in the app. You simply upload, label, and tag the document or item you have on hand at the moment. The next time you open your at-home safe, grab your phone and open the Prisidio app. Record the location of your safe (closet, garage, study) and add pictures of the items in the safe.
In Prisidio, it’s easy to associate newly added items as you go with existing information (such as people and places) you already have in your vault. If adding these layers of information at first feels overwhelming, you can always return to Prisidio to add text or video notes whenever you’re ready.
As you layer in new information – whether you opt for written notes, descriptive file titles, or videos – provide the context your family will need, even if it’s as simple as an accurate file name with the date included.
If you’re not sure what the right format or title conventions are, don’t sweat it. Keep your filing system simple and aim to make it as functional as possible for you and the people you choose to have access to your vault.
Consider these few basic questions to begin getting your digital legacy in order today, so others are not left to do this later.
Is your digital go bag packed? Here’s what to include now, to save you from scrambling later.
The time you spend document hunting every time you need to reference critical personal data online — do you want it back?