Simplify Your Digital Life

Like many of you, I read Marie Kondo’s award-winning book Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up when it came out and it definitely gave me a new perspective on how to let go of emotional clutter, but it also got me thinking about the digital clutter in my life.

As entrepreneurs, we often fill our schedules with so much work that the importance of keeping our digital desktop organized gets thrown to the wayside.

We end up with 300 browser tabs open, a desktop full of screenshots that we’re “saving for inspiration” and random notifications pinging us at any given moment.

But all the clutter and distraction is making our brains run on information overload — allowing each notification ping to interrupt our workflow.

Plus, wouldn’t it be nice to spend less time trying to find a file, look for a password, or wait for your computer to load, and spend more time actually enjoying the workday?

Here are some of our favorite tips to help you turn off the digital noise:

1. Organize Your Desktop

To save time and make your digital life a little more sane, start with organizing your computer desktop.

Yeah, I know.. It might take some time. But get those files off your home screen and sort them out into folders that are categorized. Create files for your clients, your business, and your personal items.

Better yet? While you’re getting your desktop organized, why not give some thought to using Google Drive or Dropbox to organize your docs.

2. Tidy Your Email

Honest question friend, how many unread emails do you currently have in your inbox?

So many of us (myself included) have the habit of skimming through emails and only opening the “important ones” leaving hundreds, if not thousands of emails taking up space in our inbox.

First things first, take some time to unsubscribe from any newsletters that you no longer want to receive. We also love tools like unroll.me which help you quickly unsubscribe from all the things!

Next, for those emails that you can’t bear to delete (or need to keep for future reference) create custom email folders. You can also create rules that automatically sort items into folders so you don’t have to do so yourself.

(Want some more useful info on how to manage your email inbox? Check out our last Forbes article about cutting inbox overwhelm to save yourself some email sanity).

3. Turn Off Notifications

There’s nothing worse than getting interrupted by those pings from email, text messages, social media, and the like (especially during an important zoom meeting or client phone call).

Take some time to silence your apps, turn off notifications, social media alerts, and unsync your phone from your computer (if you have a Mac). You’ll thank us later.

4. Organize Your Bookmarks

It may not seem like the hundreds of bookmarks you have hiding away in Chrome are a big deal, but they really do affect you behind the scenes. Not only will your browser and computer respond slower over time, but it’s also easy to lose track of what you saved and where.

Wouldn’t it be easier if you could access all of your favorite sites in just one click?

We recommend using an app like Toby for Chrome to store all your website bookmarks in one place. Not only can you save current sessions without having to bookmark each one, but you can also keep boards for topics or client projects so you never have to lose a link again.

5. Securely store your passwords

There’s nothing more annoying than wasting time trying to remember your log in to a website or app.

To make life easier try using an app like LastPass to keep track of your passwords. LastPass is a secure app that will remember all your passwords AND the app inputs them automatically into sites that you are trying to access - total win!

No more wasting time trying 20 different passwords combinations.

6. Find A Better Project Management System

To create a more organized workflow, we highly recommend using a project management system.

There are several out there (and we’ve tried a number of them!), to get started we recommend taking a look at Trello and Asana. These free apps will help you to easily manage work projects and can even make file-sharing a breeze.

If you need a bit more of a robust system, check out apps like Dubsado. These apps do all of the above while also providing other services to help you manage contracts, proposals, and even invoices.

7. Use The Cloud

Although you are probably already using (and loving!) the Cloud, I still thought it was important to add this in, just in case you’ve been living under a rock.

It’s so easy to rely on your desktop to store all of your client and business files. But after a while, it can become an unorganized mess that bogs down your computer -- Yep, those 9,000 images are definitely affecting your computer’s processing ability!

By using cloud services like Dropbox or Google Drive, you can free up precious memory space and make it easier than ever to share files.

8. Check for Software Updates

Last but not least, I’ll leave you with a friendly reminder to clean up your digital space by regularly restarting your computer and checking for updates so your apps don’t crash.

When was the last time you restarted your computer? A lot of us are guilty of leaving our computers on all day and night for months!

Installing new updates can help your computer and applications run more smoothly and efficiently, and reduce the risk of your computer just calling it quits without warning — and nobody has time for that.

I hope these tips will help you declutter your digital desktop and, ultimately, help you become even more efficient in running your business.

Cheers to more daily focus and productivity friend,