In a post-quarantine era, most of us have been relying on our screens now more than ever before. We’re on our devices for work, social hours, shopping, entertainment, storage, and more. There’s very little that we need to be physically in person to be able to take care of.
That being said, with so much of our daily lives taking place on our screens, much like we should give our physical bodies a detox every now and then, the same can be said for our devices. When your computer, tablet, and phone are cluttered, they will clutter up your workday. This will lead to higher stress levels, lower productivity levels, and an unhealthy day in general. There are 3 main areas of our digital lives that we are going to be talking about decluttering:
Social Media
Social media is where the average adult in the US spends at least 3 hours of their day, according to a study done by Review42. If this is one of the number one places that you are feeding your brain from, it’s important to take a look at what you’re feeding it with. Do you follow accounts that are healthy for you to be following? Do the accounts that you follow give an added benefit to your life? Are you learning something from them or gaining something helpful? Do you even know who these accounts are run by? If the answer to these questions was NO, maybe it’s time you start to do unfollowing.
Your Inbox
This can tend to be the most daunting of the decluttering tasks. But don’t worry, we're experts at this. We’ve spent the past few years gathering up the best apps and inbox management tools to share with you. First, make use of the folders + tabs feature that your inbox has, and COLOR CODE them. For example, you can put all your client emails into the green folder and personal emails into the red folder. Another great tool you can try is Unroll Me. This tool unsubscribers you from unwanted emails instantly. Another inbox management tool is Sanebox. Sanebox is an inbox management software that SaneBox identifies important messages, hides distractions, has Do Not Disturb, banishes annoying senders, reminds you to follow up, and more. And if all of this still feels like too much, one of our VAs can do all of this for you.
Desktop
Think of your desktop as the living room of your house. It’s the first place that people see when they walk in, it’s where you host things, and it’s where you spend most of your day. If your desktop is messy and cluttered, your day will be too. First of all, utilize folders on your desktop. Did you know that you can customize and personalize desktop folders? You can change them to different photos and icons rather than just the standard blue folder. Make sure that all of these folders are labeled properly and clearly. And next time you go to hit “save to desktop” make sure to save things in their respective folders.
We challenge you to work with your VA to implement some of these techniques, or try them yourself and let us know what you think! Organization is a major key to workday wellness + productivity levels and we hope that these tried and true methods can help you as they’ve helped us!