We spend a considerable amount of time using laptops, desktops, Smart TVs, cell phones, and tablets every day, which means we accumulate a significant amount of digital clutter. Have you ever thought about How to Ditch Your Digital Clutter in 2021?
In the same way that physical clutter can affect your mood and concentration, digital clutter can have a negative impact on your productivity and your ability to relax during your time away from work.
How to Ditch Your Digital Clutter in 2021
If you’re eager to streamline your life and embrace positive changes, take a look at these top tips and ditch your digital clutter now:
- Identify Different Types of Digital Clutter
Before you begin clearing out your Recycle Bin or accidentally deleting important files, take the time to identify different types of digital clutter. This will make it easier to determine what you really need to keep on your computers and mobile devices and what you don’t.
Files, photos, opened browser tabs, free downloads, junk mail, notifications and alerts can all be classified as digital clutter. Even though you may want to keep some of these, you can streamline your digital life by reorganizing data and storing it safely. To get started, make a note of all the various types of digital clutter so that you can systematically purge your devices.
- Delete Unwanted Photos
Today’s cell phones mean we have access to top-quality cameras at all times, which makes it tempting to snap a picture at every opportunity. From selfies in the mirror to photos of your lunch, there’s probably a fair few pictures on your phone that you don’t want or need to keep.
Fortunately, this can be resolved fairly quickly. Knowing how to delete duplicate photos on iPhone or Android means you can banish copies forever, for example. Similarly, going through your photos on a regular basis and deleting the ones you don’t want helps to keep the size of your virtual photo albums to a minimum.
Many cell phones upload your photos to cloud storage as standard, although you can turn this feature off if you want to. However, automatically uploading your photos and deleting them from your device can help to free up space. Just beware that you aren’t moving your clutter from one location to another.
- Clear Your Inbox
Most people receive hundreds of emails a day, although spam filters and junk folders do stop many of them from filling up your inbox. Despite this, you probably spend a significant amount of time deleting unwanted mail from your inbox and checking your junk mail in case you’ve missed anything important.
While deleting unwanted mail is a good way to clean up digital clutter in the short-term, it won’t take long for more incoming mail to arrive. By unsubscribing to mailing lists now, however, you can reduce the number of unwanted emails you get in the long-term. Similarly, setting up automated processes to file or archive your emails can save you time. When you work emails go straight into a designated folder, for example, you can attend to them during working hours, instead of letting them interrupt your personal time.
- Uninstall Unused Programs
Now that many programs are available free of charge or on a subscription basis, it’s tempting to download and install a wide variety of software. However, our digital behavior changes over time, which means there’s a good chance you have programs installed that you no longer use. By removing these from your devices, you can free up space and drastically reduce your digital clutter.
Remember – deleting a shortcut isn’t the same as actually uninstalling a program. To ensure you really are getting rid of clutter, you’ll want to completely uninstall unused software from your devices.
- Do a Social Media Audit
If you’re active on social media, you might have followed people, added friends, and even joined games over the years. As times change, however, you might interact with some people less and spend less time using certain features. If so, you can enhance your digital life by streamlining the people you follow and the groups you’re part of.
When you follow fewer people or businesses on social media, it also reduces the amount of clutter that appears in your feed each day. This reduces the amount of time it takes to keep up to date and means you can minimize the amount of time you spend on social media too. If you’re looking to cut down on device usage, this is a great way to do it!
- Clear Cookies
When you visit a website, there’s usually a pop-up or banner asking you to consent to cookies being used. These cookies are small files that can be used to record information and they’re often used so that businesses can advertise to relevant demographics. Although you need to accept some cookies in order to be able to use certain websites, you don’t have to hang on to them.
Going to the settings section of your browser will give you the opportunity to delete particular cookies or to delete all the cookies you currently have saved. By getting rid of them, you may be able to cut down the number of ads you see but you can also speed up your browser too.
- Disk Clean-Up
Over time, files get stored on your hard drive, even if you don’t realize that they’re there. From temporary internet files to new software drivers, your devices hold a variety of data that you haven’t actively installed or saved.
With in-built disk clean-up software or third-party programs, you can delete unnecessary or outdated data and optimize how your device functions. This saves you manually deleting every piece of digital clutter on your device and it also prevents you from accidentally deleting any important system files.
Streamline Your Digital Life
Constant alerts, a full inbox, and a cluttered hard drive can increase your stress levels and make it harder to concentrate on the task at hand. By taking the time to declutter your devices, you can simplify your digital life and enjoy a stress-free experience every time you use your laptop, desktop, tablet, or cell phone.
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