Data Spring Cleaning For More Productivity — And Less Illegality

Cleaning out old scripts and deleting files increases focus and makes sure you don’t accidentally break data privacy laws.

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Once, while participating in an internship with company-sponsored housing I was called into a serious meeting about the state of my bedroom. The property manager noted that the room, containing beds for my roommate and I, was the only space in the three-bed apartment to fail quarterly inspection. The culprit? A pair of work shorts carelessly dropped on the floor.

Though the incident didn’t scar me or leave me with a paranoia that someone was going to enter my current apartment/office and grade its notably more, let’s say, “comfortable” state, I’ll begrudgingly admit it did reinforce the importance of keeping a clean (or at least operable) space.

When I was a boat captain we were required to complete checklists indicating we conducted safety checks, cleaned and, yes, literally “swabbed the deck.” One of the nice things about working as a programmer is that there is more leniency when it comes to virtual workspace hygiene. As long as my code is legible, syntactically perfect and well-documented, my team doesn’t care whether I first wrote it in a spotless virtual environment or transcribed the final…