Digital Decluttering: Simplify Your Online Life
Most of us spend quite a lot of our lives online. Whether it be for work or socializing, we are digitally connected, sometimes more often than we are in person. These spaces, while not physical, still are presentations of us, and just like our physical spaces, they can get a bit cluttered. Your experience of the digital world can be influenced by the clutter and chaos of your personal online space. Decluttering this space can help maintain your peace of mind and increase the ease in which you navigate your online life.
Tips for Organizing Digital Files and Emails
Keeping emails and files organized is important for keeping track of important information and helping you communicate what you need with others. Our biggest tip for organizing digital files: Folders are your friend! You can make as many or as few folders as suit your style, but having folders with simple labels can help you navigate the information you have online and easily return to it when needed. You can have folders for work, for photos, for recipes - anything that you find useful - and then have subfolders within if you want to get more specific. The same can be done with emails; if you have emails you want to save for your records or to return to later, putting them in labeled folders that make sense for you can declutter your inbox without losing important information. The important thing about organizing files and emails is to use labels and categories in a way that will trigger your memory, even if it doesn’t make sense to other people. Doing this can help clean up your inbox and your desktop and make it easier for you to find what you’re looking for.
Best Practices for Managing Social Media Accounts
Whether it be Instagram, Facebook, or Snapchat, we are constantly using social media to connect with each other in a multitude of ways. But with this connection comes its own sense of chaos. It can be tough navigating multiple platforms and can, in some cases, lead you to feeling overstimulated and overwhelmed. Consider which social media apps you tend to get joy from - the ones which leave you feeling connected with the people you love, and focus on those apps. If there are apps that negatively affect your mental health or that you don’t really use or enjoy, consider deleting them. And be sure to utilize settings to manage your digital presence and digital intrusions. You can control when and from whom you get notifications, what types of content appear on your page, and who you follow and who can follow you. If you use social media for work, controlling your notifications will be key: turning them off when you’re at home can help you separate your work media usage and home media usage and give you a break from the online spaces you work in. CISA offers a guide to help you protect your personal information when using social media.
Tools and Apps That Help with Digital Decluttering
Digital decluttering doesn’t always require manual work; you can leverage online apps to declutter and organize your online space. There are apps and online tools for just about everything, whether it’s personal organization, group projects, or social media. Asana allows you to collaborate with a group, assigning tasks and organizing all your work into one space. Clutterfree is an app that can not only help you declutter your physical space but also assist with decluttering your digital space by helping you delete old accounts you don’t use, reviewing files from three years ago that you forgot existed, and helping you decide what parts of the digital sphere you actually want to use. If you’re using social media for work, you can use apps like Later to plan social media posts and create posts to post to multiple social media platforms at once. You can also track when your social media posts are doing well and get insights on when you have the highest digital traffic. For any specific digital decluttering need you have, there is almost always an app or other online tool to help you get it done.
Organizing your online digital space may seem overwhelming or even overkill, but it’s an important aspect of understanding how you exist online and how you prioritize your digital life. Just as your physical space affects your mental, emotional, and physical health, your online space does the same and deserves the same organizing effort to keep you active and engaged in your digital communities.