Getting Rid of the R.O.T!: A friendly reminder

It’s my favorite and most well suited acronym and I apply the philosophy behind it to just about every project I encounter. It stands for: Redundant, Outdated and Trivial and it refers to content and information you’re just better off living without or not creating in the first place.

In order to really see something clearly you have to get rid of all the crud thats surrounding it. I (others included) call this simple method “getting rid of the R.O.T”.

Nothing is worse than finding the same digital asset in over a zillion places in one system, it devalues the original and is a headache to seek out and destroy all existing versions. For the next point, nothing makes information more irrelevant that when it is outdated. Outdated information can not be leveraged nor can you receive any ROI on it being available, the best thing to do is just get rid of it! Trivial content is just that, it’s trivial and unnecessary. For example if you have a system that can generate a particular file type on demand, let’s say it’s one that can generate a JPG from any type of supplied file be it a TIFF or a PSD or whatever you throw at it. Is it necessary to then also keep copies of JPGs versions of everything in your system as a “just in case”? Nope, no way! Get rid of it.

So, for every asset that makes its way across you desk you need to ask yourself, “is this R.O.T?” You will find that if you start approaching all your projects with “getting rid of the ROT” in your mind, you will start to clear away the cobwebs weighing down your system and overall make it more usable (and your life a bit easier) in the end.