Dealing with Digital Clutter

As we head into a new year, a good declutter in life will help us keep our focus on our goals. Decluttering your home and office are a good place to start but I want to talk about digital decluttering. When your digital world is cluttered it can cause you to get distracted and veer off task, without you even realizing it. It can also cause your computer to run slower causing your work to take longer. Here are a few tips for a digital declutter:

• Delete old files. Over the year we accumulate many files that we often only need one time. Take an hour to go through your files and get rid of the ones you will no longer need. Don’t think you may need it one day, either you do or don’t, don’t keep the maybe’s.
• Organize your desktop. We have a great post and layout available here.
• Clear out your emails. Unsubscribe to anything you are no longer interested in. Go through your inbox and delete everything you no longer need.
• Clear your downloads. Downloads can get overloaded if we don’t keep them in check, so take time to clear everything out of that folder.
• Clear out unwanted bookmarks. There is no reason you should have something bookmarked for more than a year, you obviously aren’t going to use it, so clear it out!
• Delete any unused accounts. If you have old email or social media accounts, go in and delete them, they are just taking up valuable space.
• Go through and organize your pictures. When we upload pictures from our phone, we often upload unwanted screenshots, and they are always unorganized. So take time to delete unwanted pictures and organize them appropriately.
• Take the declutter to your social media accounts. Go through and unfriend or unfollow anyone who you aren’t interested in or brings no value to you. If they have a negative energy don’t be afraid to cut them loose, it’ll help you in the long run.

A new year always brings a sense of freshness, as it should. You are starting new in 2017, make it a good one by decluttering your digital world and getting rid of the frustration that comes with a cluttered hard drive. Take action steps towards this today, start by doing one of these tips per day or week, and you will slowly but surely have a successful digital declutter.