Digital Spring Cleaning
I often sit at my desk, in a coffee shop, or even on the floor and stare at my desktop. Sometimes it is more frightening than doing taxes (and that’s saying something). I have files, folders, and pictures galore scattered everywhere. In those files is more chaos and in that chaos I find burnout.
If you’ve ever been so bogged down by the details that you can’t see the forest for the trees, then you know what I’m talking about. It’s like being stuck in quicksand, the more you fight it, the deeper you get.
The answer isn’t to just plow through and hope for the best. That usually leads to half-assed work and even more frustration. The answer is to take a step back, clear your head, and organize your thoughts. Once you have a plan of attack, it’s much easier to execute. So if you’re feeling overwhelmed by your to-do list, take a deep breath, plan, and start fresh tomorrow.
It sounds like it is time for a digital spring clean!
Here is my plan outline for my yearly digital spring clean:
Section 1: Email
I have three emails. My 9–5 work email which I fortunately keep very organized, My side hustle email (which is only a year old so not much to clean), and my personal gmail which has been in use since roughly 2014.
The goal here is to clean out as much ‘clutter’ as possible. This means deleting all that isn't current or relevant. If I didn't read that newsletter from three months ago odds are that I will never get around to it. Delete.
Gmail has separated your email into three categories: Primary, Social, and Promotions. Odds are you can delete all social and promotional emails. Primary becomes more of a beast. I delete everything from 3+ months back that isn't starred. That gives me more wiggle room and time to go through things that might have some relevance.
This might seem overwhelming so here’s a tip: Just do one email account a week! Pick 20 minutes and just do it. If you need more than 20 minutes, space it out throughout the week and the next time you do it it won’t take as long (I promise)
Section 2: Desktop Organization
This is a fickle beast. My way of coping until my digital spring clean is to throw everything into three folders which go as followed:
- Work
- Personal
- Other
This is not a good coping mechanism. 10/10 do not recommend. Here is my solution:
I found that creating a general folder and then within that folder go month by month makes clean up easier. That way I can go through at the end of the year and everything I want to keep becomes a year folder.
The key to not getting overwhelmed is to just space this out. Spring cleaning doesn't happen in 15 minutes, Rome wasn't built in a day, and none of want to do this.
Section 3: Bookmarks/Want To Read/Watch Later
The bane of my existence, to put things off.
“I’ll just do it later” or “I’ll get gas on my way to work in the morning”
These are traps.
I use Medium, YouTube, and Skillshare everyday. I also add videos and articles to my reading/watch later list everyday. This is not a good combination and it is avoidable! Last year I had almost 500 YouTube videos in my watch later list, 100 in my reading list here on Medium, and 40 courses on Skillshare I was going to start. I did one massive cleanse, getting rid of things I no longer had interest in and old videos that I watched halfway but never finished.
I now have an hour every Saturday that I dedicate to content I haven’t gotten around to during the week. I find that it cleans up my lists and I don’t feel overwhelmed.
While you might not need or have all the sections I do, the message is the same. Take some time and sort through your digital mess! Don’t feel like you have to do it overnight either. I used to have a desktop that was so cluttered, I could barely find the icons for the applications I actually used! But I finally took the plunge and spent some time sorting through my digital mess. And you know what? It felt great! If you have some helpful tips and tricks drop them in the comments!
