De-cluttering your digital life can set you free

We've got multiple e-mail accounts, social networks, media streams, blogs, websites, electronic calendars, instant messages, phone contacts, online bills, passwords coming out of our ears and screen after screen after screen of computer stuff to back up, share and sync.

That doesn't include the virtual reams floating in the ether, enough to fill the Library of Congress more than 40,000 times, said Douglas C. Merrill, former chief information officer for Google, Ph.D. in cognitive science and dude who wants to help us better manage our digital clutter.

"That's 32 feet of books for every man, woman and child in America. We're drowning in information," said Merrill, who nearly wrecked his health helping to manage the details of taking Google public.

Merrill, once an information scientist at the Rand Corp., struggled with dyslexia as a kid, so de-cluttering — digital and otherwise — is a huge priority for him, so much that he's written a book on the subject with James Martin, "Getting Organized in the Google Era."

We all know about clutter offline, but our digital selves have filled up in a huge way, too. We're suffering, but we can't dig out or keep up with rapidly changing and proliferating tools. Geeks do. They track products and reviews — and have the time and skills to test them. The rest of us fret and stress.

"I have several e-mail accounts. I have several websites. I'm constantly behind returning phone calls. It's a good day if the number of unread messages is below 200," said Berit Brogaard, a St. Louis college professor and single mom to a busy 6-year-old whose life also needs to be managed.

Anybody looking for a non-urgent e-mail reply from Brogaard might be waiting awhile. She relies on a few canned e-mail responses that she stashes in Gmail and rolls out when she's swamped, like this one for close friends:

"Hey there! Miss you. I am insanely busy. Sorry for being so lame. Will fill you in soon."

Merrill, who left Google for the music company EMI, then his own financial startup in Los Angeles, said a good place to begin a digital de-clutter is accepting that our brains are lousy multitaskers, among other bad things. They need all the help they can get in clearing out space, just like our computers and smart phones.

Another good place to start is taking heart in the array and flexibility of today's tools. He offers these tips, acknowledging there's no one-size-fits-all answer:

SEARCH, DON'T FILE