When I travel to a different city, I prefer to travel light. That means not carrying a bunch of extra stuff just because "I might need it." This is the complete opposite of how I have lived my life generally. I have lived it as if I live here, and "here" is a permanent location, and I'd better have everything I need so I can be prepared for anything.

Of course, when "anything" happens, it all too often happens that despite my best laid plans, it turns out I didn't think of "everything" and I wasn't as prepared as I thought I was.

For instance, I thought I'd set up my computer to have automated backup. But no - it was actually set to manual backup, and when my external hard drive failed a few days ago, the backups were several months old. Better than nothing, but certainly not what I'd expected.

One of the positive things to come out of this is that even if my data can be restored, I'm going to set things up differently. Because I realized that I don't need 75% of the stuff that I've accumulated. Indeed, I should be going through a pruning procedure every week, and a more intensive one, every month.

I also set up the categories and tags by which I organize my stuff to be incredibly granulated. But looking back, what that made me was a librarian, and not a very good one at that. I had set things up to be findable - not to support goals, projects and tasks.

This is more a neuroprogramming thing (see John C. Lilly) than a computer thing. After all, the computer reflects my preferences, just as your computer reflects yours.

So - the new focus is on goals, projects and tasks. Giving up the librarian function will very likely mean that I can travel a lot more lightly.