How to Organize Your Digital Space
In our modern society, most people have to interact with technology in some way, shape or form to make a living. With technology being both a necessary good and evil, it’s important to be aware of the ways we can improve our digital habits so that time spent on the internet and various devices is used efficiently.
One important digital habit to maintain is routinely organizing your digital space. Organizing is a necessary practice because our online workspaces easily get clogged with digital clutter or the disorganized accumulation of data and files on our devices. Much like a messy physical workspace can affect your health and ability to work, digital clutter can impede your productivity and cause unnecessary stress throughout the day.
Some people are better about dealing with digital clutter than others, so check out these telltale signs to see if you need a digital deep clean.
5 Signs You’re Digitally Disorganized:
Your desktop is cluttered with lots of files, photos, or icons.
You have unnecessary duplicates of files and can never seem to find what you’re looking for.
Your email inbox is overflowing with unread emails.
Your social media feed is full of strangers you don’t care about.
Your phone is full of apps you don’t actually use.
If you found yourself guilty of any of the above, you’re not alone. The average person doesn’t use 62% of their phone apps and leaves at least 35% of their emails unread. As the clutter builds up, it affects your ability to do your job efficiently, with one study finding that the average worker spends 45 minutes a day searching for information necessary for their jobs. If you’re similar to the average person (or maybe even worse), it’s time to tidy up your digital space. Use the tips below to cut the clutter and take control of your day.
Tips for Organizing Your Digital Space:
Delete Unnecessary Documents and Duplicates
The first thing you can do to cut down on digital clutter is deleting unnecessary files from your devices. Whether it’s your phone or computer, no one needs seven duplicate files of the same document. Go through and delete any duplicates or any files you’re no longer using.
If you do need a copy of a file for any reason, consider saving it to the cloud or onto a USB or hard drive so that you can keep your device clean. Whatever files you have left over should be renamed so you can easily find them. Once you’ve appropriately named important files, organize them into clearly labeled folders for quick and easy access.
2. Slow the Flow of Email
Another major source of digital clutter are emails. For many, the more emails we get, the harder it is to manage your inbox. One tip to managing your emails is to create a secondary email account that you use for non-important things. For example, having another account for stores or promotional emails can save your primary inbox from spam and other clutter.
On top of the overflowing inbox, incessant email notifications are another incredible distraction. Try these tips to help slow the flow of emails and notifications:
Filter notifications in Gmail. By creating a filter for certain emails in Gmail, you can have any emails you specify skip your inbox altogether. Instead, they get rerouted to a label in your inbox but don’t disturb your primary inbox with unread messages.
Ignore email conversations in Outlook. If you’ve ever been CC'd on a long email thread that isn’t relevant to you, the constant email notifications may be an unnecessary distraction. Turn on the Ignore feature to stop notifications of new replies to certain conversations and send them to your deleted items folder. If you decide you’d like to see them, you can always go back and turn the feature off.
3. Reorganize Your Phone
If your phone’s storage is nearly maxed out and you can’t seem to find anything you need, it’s a good idea to do some reorganizing. Go through and delete any apps you haven’t used in the past month because you’re unlikely to use them again in the future. This will help free up storage space and make it easier to find the apps you do use.
Next, place your most-used apps on the front screen of your phone and organize apps into categories. This will help save you time navigating to your frequently used platforms. Apps that you do use, but not every day, can be moved to a second or third screen.
A final tip is to purge your phone of other unnecessary things like saved images or opened web browsers. Close-out of any browsers you’re not still using and upload any pictures you want to save to the cloud while deleting the excess. This will help improve the speed of your device and keep your phone free of clutter.
It’s important to recognize our own digital disorganization so that we can adjust our digital habits. Cultivating a clutter-free digital workspace can result in benefits like less stress, faster devices, and higher productivity at work. Free yourself from digital clutter with these tips, so that you can take control of your work day and have time left over to spend doing your favorite non-digital activities.