I’m not a superstitious person, but at Chinese New Year even the most rational of us find ourselves following the old traditions such as buying new clothes, cutting our hair before new year’s day, paying off debts, cleaning the house and giving red packets. For many of us these acts are more of a mental exercise of renewal and an adherence to culture than any belief in luck, good fortune or evil spirits.

In the past few years I have had my own Chinese New Year To Do list, taking the opportunity to remind myself to keep my digital world updated. Given the amount of time we all spend on computers and digital devices these days, it’s worth spending a few hours at least once a year making the effort to keep these things running the way they’re supposed to.

If you’re one of those people to which these kind of things come naturally, my hat goes off to you. But if you’re anything like me, you might benefit from the list below:

• Backup all your hard drives
• Update your existing software on all devices (computers, iPods, iPads, phones, GPS etc.)
• Clean up folders and purge or organize old files
• Tidy up your desktop and dock or taskbar
• Clean up and organise your music, photo and video libraries
• Change your wallpaper
• Get any new software you’ve been needing and delete unused programs
• Synchronise your bookmarks across all your computers
• Clean your screens and keyboards
• Clean the outside of your computer
• Change your online passwords (Security experts recommend that this be done several times a year, but most of us don’t do it at all.)