While many of us begin spring cleaning to organize our closets and to remove old clutter, this is a friendly nudge to also give attention to your digital space.
Old emails, untitled documents, random photos downloaded from Whatsapp, so many files get stored over time and for many, the thought of going through it all is SUPER overwhelming. Just like physical mess, digital clutter can affect your productivity when it comes to your work and therefore should become a priority at least once a year.
Now I know what you’re thinking, “We are cleaning for Pesach, spring cleaning our homes, I just don’t have time for this right now.”
TOTALLY! If now isn’t the right time, block a couple weeks off at a different point in the year when you know you have some down time. The point is, just like we take two weeks to clean our homes in spring so we can feel ready and geared up for summer, we ALSO need to take the time to clean up and organize our digital space!
So grab your theoretical mops & sponges (or in other words, get ready to start hitting your big, scary delete button), and let us help you clean up your online world.
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Cleaning out your email
Why?
We’re all familiar with that guilty feeling of leaving emails unanswered for way too long. That annoying feeling when you don’t know what to do with an email that you got. How about that frustration of trying to go through your unanswered emails but then realizing that one email is about a shopping sale, the next is from a client and the one after that is a “I’ll read it later” kind of email. If you’ve ever felt any of those things (and I know you have!) then go ahead and start cleaning out your inbox!
How?
- Focus on which emails you want to keep, not which ones you want to delete, then go to your oldest emails and work your way forwards. You definitely don’t need to be keeping emails from 5 years ago, how about 2 years ago, or from your old job…
- Make folders for saving your top select few, such as; receipts, or something important from your accountant, etc.
- Then archive/ delete whatever does not belong in one of your folders, whatever you don’t need to be saving.
- Remove ghost followers from Instagram
Why?
We’re all so caught up in vanity metrics; “How do I get more followers”, “I barely get any likes on my posts”… But the truth is, if you want to create a community of real people, who are really engaging, then you’re probably better off with a lower number of followers who actually interact with you.
This is because the algorithm shows your post to a few of your followers and based on how/if they engage, it then decides whether or not to show it to more of your followers. If those first few followers are bots or inactive accounts, then this will cause your post to perform poorly overall.
How?
- Go through your “followers” list and start removing sketchy followers. Followers that have their email or phone number as their handles, anyone who hasn’t posted anything in years (or never posted), any followers that don’t have profile pictures or who only opened their accounts for giveaways.
- When you find one on your following list, just click “remove.” The number of your followers WILL go down, but your engagement insights will go up too and that’s wayyy more important!
Check out @JLMSocial for more on ghost followers!
- Delete Media
Why?
You are either paying for storage on a monthly/ yearly basis or you’re constantly getting messages about how your computer/ phone is running low on storage.
How?
- Start by deleting videos. Videos take up LOTS of storage and we almost never watch them.
- Then, skim through your pictures quickly and delete the notically bad/ unnecessary ones. Delete blurry pictures with a thumb that got in the way, any pictures that just had a temporary purpose (EX: items when you were shopping so you could refer to them later or show someone)
- Unfollow people who you don’t like on social media
Why?
Your social media news feed is a competitive place to be. If you open up Instagram, TikTok, Facebook or any other platform for a quick scroll and start feeling angry, sad, inadequate, or bored then it’s time for a change!
How?
Other than the obvious option of unfollowing/ unfriending a person, here are some other tips for not seeing someone’s content/ posts.
- Facebook: You can be friends with someone and “unfollow” them, so they can still see your stuff but you won’t be bothered with theirs.
- YouTube, TikTok and Instagram Reels you can mark videos as “uninterested” so the algorithm knows not to show you that kind of content anymore.
- Go through old documents
Why?
Your documents home page is a mess, nothing is filed, and you are always typing in the title to find (hopefully) that document you were working on 6 months ago.
How?
- Like your email, you are going to work starting from your oldest documents and work your way to the present.
- Make folders and separate however you see fit.
- Move files into folders
- Delete old, irrelevant files
- Go through the dreaded “untitled documents,” if they are important, give them a name! If they are not, DELETE them!
This process, like any, will take time and patience, but we can guarantee you will FEEL more productive and on top of things. If we missed any of your favorite digital organizing tips, please let us know so we can add them to the blog!