How To Stop Technology from Taking Over Your Life
With dozens of different email subscriptions, app notifications, and social media platforms calling our names every second, it can easy to feel overwhelmed by the role that technology plays in everyday life. Next time you feel this way, try performing a digital audit on yourself, focusing on these three key areas to put your technology in its place and take back control of your life.
Subscriptions
Sift through all of your subscriptions (yes, ALL of them) and unsubscribe from anything that you haven't read, listened to, or watched in the last month. Websites like unroll.me are a great way to get a handle on your email subscriptions, but for things like podcasts and youtube channels, sometimes you just have to scroll through the old-fashioned way.
Social Media
Step number one is to turn off your push notifications for your social media apps. Even if social media is your job, jobs have office hours, and you should not feel like you have to be glued to your phone 24/7 in case you get a new comment/like/follower. Next, go through the people you are following with a fine-toothed comb. Why are you following them? Do you enjoy their content? Do you care about what they have to say? If you say no to any of these questions - unfollow. You can always change your mind and follow them back later.
App Overload
With touch ID and single touch downloads, it can sometimes be a little too easy to try out a new app, which is why every now and then it’s important to go through your phone and rearrange, reassess, and even delete your apps if necessary. Declutter your phone and all of a sudden scrolling through the app store will feel a whole lot less appealing.
When it comes to technology, we can’t avoid it. What we can do is eliminate the unnecessary distractions that it allows us to have, making it easier to use technology as the tool that it is intended to be - and not a procrastination method or source of overwhelm.
