time spent offline
Note: I wrote this back in 2018 when I deleted my LinkedIn account. I wasn’t on any social media then, but I’ve been back on Instagram since September 2020.
What do you do when an online platform intended for professional networking and growing your career turns into a nuisance to your everyday life?
You need to cut it.
Continue reading “Why I deleted my LinkedIn account”This is a guest post by Matt Jennings from mattjennings.uk.
As a digital minimalist, is it possible to ‘do social media’ without the constant connectivity that apps like Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and others enable? In this post, Matt is going to put forward the case that you can.
Continue reading “A digital minimalist’s approach to social media management”A digital declutter journey.
Taking my own advice, I paid attention to what part of my digital life was causing me the most stress. Email was the number one offender.
On a recent vacation, I experimented with life without email. For a week, I didn’t check my email at all. It was simply amazing, glorious, freeing, delightful, exceptional…
*Sigh.*
Since I can’t completely opt-out of emails, I wanted to figure out a way to make email less painful. The solution? A radical declutter of my email and online accounts to minimize digital overwhelm.
Without further ado…
Continue reading “Radical digital declutter to minimize digital overwhelm”Digital declutter is a very personal journey.
For some, it’s their email inbox that is cluttered and stressful. For others, it’s their desktop overflowing with files and documents.
Below are three ideas to determine if digital declutter is for you.
What, if any, area of your digital space is overflowing and stressful?
Is it the unread emails? Is it the to-read, to-watch, to-listen bookmarked pages? Is it your social media feed? What about your cluttered desktop?
Assess, and determine.
What areas of your digital space is the most cluttered or stressful?
While it could be one or ten, I advise people to pick 1-2 areas to start with.
Digital decluttering can be burdensome because it’s easy to hoard stuff in the digital space since we don’t see the clutter pile up around us. It exists in the cyber space.
Once you declutter one area and see how rewarding it is to keep your digital space clutter-free, you can use that as motivation to move forward with the rest of your digital space.
Close your eyes.
Visualize your day with less email to sift thorough when you open you inbox. How about only a handful of apps on your phone? Imagine your desktop super organized with a few folders and you always know exactly where to look for important documents?
Whatever your ideal is, visualize it and feel it.
Does it feel good?
If you have determined digital declutter is for you, and I hope it is, I have a tip to make the experience a breeze— okay, less painful— for you.
Give yourself time, but also put a date on it (oh, oh, oh!)
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but Rome was built. #okurrrrr
Give yourself enough time to tackle decluttering your digital space, but also set a clear timeframe. If you are a tomorrow-junkie like me, postponing everything to tomorrow, setting a specified period of time to tackle a project will be useful.
Personally, I’ve dedicated this month to do a digital declutter, Digital Declutter December. Next week, I will be sharing what areas of my digital clutter I’m simplifying.
Stay tuned!
Until next time. . .
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Email, an abbreviation of “electronic mail,” was invented in the early 1970s by Ray Tomlinson as a personal side project. Tomlinson later said he “had no notion whatsoever of what the ultimate impact would be.”
Since the first email sent by Tomlinson in 1971, email has ushered in an incredible new era of communication we now enjoy with billions of people all over the world sending and receiving emails every day.
What Tomlinson, surely, did not anticipate back then was how ubiquitous, addictive and compulsive email would eventually become for its users.
How did an invention meant to serve as a speedy way for programmers and researchers to keep in touch – particularly for those who can’t be relied on to answer their phones become a nuance to our daily lives?
Continue reading “Five tips for reducing inbox clutter”