Remove the easy ones, group everyone, tag A/B/C by feeling, then fill in key details for your A's only.
The idea
Organizing a database feels like a mountain, so in my coaching we broke it into four steps, done a little at a time. Each step has one job, and none of them involves going down a rabbit hole. Our guiding line: simple is better than great is better than perfect.
How to do it
Remove the easy ones. Filter out colleagues, internal staff and transactional addresses, and move them into a group in bulk. Archive only when you'll truly never need their info. Don't delete.
Group everyone by how you know them. Start with past and current clients, then your general sphere.
Tag A/B/C by feeling: love, like, or don't know. Look at the name, react to the immediate feeling, and move on. Don't go down the rabbit hole of trying to figure out who someone is.
Fill in your A's only: an outreach interval, home address, birthday, key anniversaries, phone number, and what they're an expert on.
Then keep doing it in small batches, every day.
Example
For the Compass agents in my coaching, step one started with a single filter: other agents and staff, meaning anyone with an @compass.com email, went into a group en masse.
Watch out for
Building a fancy tag system before your A's are done. Complexity can wait until the basic habit sticks.
The Three Things That Matter in a Database: For each person, know three things - how you know them, how you feel about them, and when you last talked. Everything else is optional.
The 10 Contacts Rule: Organize 10 contacts at a time, about 10 seconds each, every day. Never a three-hour Sunday marathon.
A/B/C Spheres: Sort everyone into three tiers by gut feeling (love, like, don't know) and spend more time on A's than B's, and more on B's than C's.
The A-List Essentials: For your top people, decide what you'll actually use (birthday, address, family names, outreach interval), then fill in only that, before building fancy tags.