Let’s say you have a folder with 100 of your favorite music videos. However, you think that’s too many, so you want to bring it down to your top 40 favorites.
One way to whittle down your collection is with what I call “Plus-Minus Curation.”
You can keep track of your files using a spreadsheet or by directly changing the filenames.
First, number your files. If you’re using a spreadsheet, make a column with unique numbers for each file. If you’re changing the filenames, add numbers to the front of the filenames. Make sure you add leading zeroes (like 000-100) so you can sort your list easily.
Now comes the fun part. Go to Random.org and pick two random files to face off against each other. Which music video do you like better? Every file starts with a score of 0. The winner gets a +1, and the loser gets a -1 (you can tack this number to the end of the filename if you’re not using a spreadsheet).
Keep pitting items against each other. When an item gets to -2, you can delete it (double elimination).
Eventually, you will get a few clear favorite items that have numbers like +5 or +9. Keep repeating the process above until you hit your target number, which in this example is 40.
Plus-Minus Curation can be a slow process, but the advantage is that your clear favorites will have high scores and will become near impossible to eliminate from your curated list.
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