Eliminating physical clutter and creating a cozy and inspiring workspace is a great way to get more done, but there’s one aspect of clutter that often gets overlooked: digital clutter. We store so much information on our computers and smartphones, and online. It’s important to regularly clean our electronic devices if we want to be productive.
Cleaning out your closet and tidying your kitchen are great ways to keep your life in order, and feel a sense of accomplishment, but organizing your digital life can be life can make you happier and be life-changing. The average American spends eleven hours a day interfacing with electronic devices of some kind. It’s amazing how small changes can alter your entire experience with your digital and electronic devices. Here are some ways to organize your digital life:
1.
Clean
out your “closets”:
Everyone is guilty of saving documents for years and years
that are totally unnecessary. Whatever you haven’t gotten rid of in your desktop cleanup,
now is the time to throw away irrelevant software, files, and documents.
Anything you want to save, but have no immediate need for can be saved on an
external hard drive. Also, the same can be done on any of your other devices.
This is your opportunity to
get rid of unused apps on your smartphone and tablet while you remove pictures,
recordings, and videos that you don’t need. We all know what it’s like to have
no space on our smartphones, but not know what to do about it. The fastest fix is to remove data that’s taking up storage
space by wiping the device completely of cookies, temporary files, and other
data hogs. There are other less drastic options as well.
2.
Compile
your tasks: Depending on your style, there are “to-do list” apps out
there for everyone. Centralizing your tasks is important to organizing both
your digital and physical life. Who needs all those scribbled notes clogging up
your actual desktop? To-do list apps will help you keep track of your tasks and
needs while removing the need to keep information in various other places
across your digital life.
3.
Deal
with your email:
Dealing with your email is one of the most important parts of
organizing your digital life, It’s difficult for a lot of people.
First, go through your mailbox and move your mail into folders based on month
and year. Next, you should set up filters to deal with different kinds of mail
as it comes in and unsubscribe from newsletters you don’t read.
Now that you’ve pared down
your inbox it’s time to delete irrelevant and unnecessary messages. Your
inbox should be in good shape by now. It’s important to develop a system going
forward. If you’ve already set up a to- do list solution, then there is no reason
to keep emails as reminders. Having an inbox at zero every week is the ultimate
way to organize your digital life.
4.
Don’t
be so social: There
are far too many ways to be connected and social on digital devices. It’s
important to concentrate your efforts on the social media platforms that you’re
good at, and get rid of the ones that you barely use. You should turn off your notifications. You
don’t need your notifications to clog it up.
5.
Get
a password manager: If
you do nothing else to make your digital life better, getting a password
manager is important. Not only does it help you keep track of all your
passwords, but it’s also a way to make sure you’re safer and more secure
online. There are several options of paid and free
password managers out there depending on your needs and specifications, but
the important aspect is collecting your logins and passwords.
Many
of them will also analyze whether the password is good any more, and identify
changes that will better protect your digital presence.
The easiest, cheapest way is to type them on a Word or Excel document, and then
put them on a zip drive (thumb drive) for safe keeping.
6.
Organize
your RSS feed: Perhaps
you don’t use your Rich Site Summary
(RSS) feed, but we all spend too much time surfing the web of things
that interest us. It’s important to clean up this process. There are options
like Bloglovin, Pocket,
and Feedly
that centralize articles, blogs, and other items of interest. The main
point is that you should find a method for centralizing the news, blogs, and
articles that you care about regularly, and then remove the rest from your
digital life.
7.
Straighten
up your space: Once your digital life is
secured, the real work begins. Just like when you’re organizing the rest of
your life, cleaning up your space is really important. This is the time to
clear up your desktop and organize your files. Having extraneous files lying
around is unnecessary, so create folders for all the items that are necessary
to save and get rid of the items that don’t need to be on your devices.
8.
Streamline
your browser: Add-ons
and bookmarks are easy to add one-by-one, but after a while you’ve got a
browser bogged down by a bunch of useless weight. Organize your digital life by
clearing up your web browser by removing all the unnecessary plug-ins,
toolbars, and add-ons that you’ve accumulated. It’s even possible to add
folders of bookmarks to your toolbar, but be careful with this option. Just
because you can organize more bookmarked pages doesn’t mean that you need more
of them. If you don’t use it at least weekly, is it really necessary?
9.
Train
a digital housekeeper: After you’ve done the hard
work yourself, it’s time to train a “housekeeper” to keep your digital devices
organized. Programs like Hazel (Mac) and Belvedere (Windows) are available for you to
set rules for new files and items added to your device, and then these programs
organize those things for you automatically. Working in the background, these programs make sure your hard
drive stays well-organized.
10.
Update
your contacts: If you haven’t communicated with someone in over a year,
there is no reason to have their contact information in your digital life. This
is also your opportunity to integrate your contact information by adding email
addresses to phone numbers, and making sure you don’t have duplicate
information for the same people.
“Our digital
future is about enabling better productivity and decisions making to enjoy a
better quality of life.” (Yacine Baroudi)[i]
[i] Sources used:
·
“10 Quick Ways to Clean Up Your Digital Life” by
Digital Doc
· “5 Ways to Clean Up Your
Digital Clutter” by Shelby
· “RSS” from Wikipedia
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