“A recurring cleaning will make you a happy person.”
– Anonymous
The fresh spring air has arrived and with that often comes a desire to spring clean your space. We deep clean our floors and throw out old clutter. But we often forget about the digital clutter too. Apps, junk mail, subscriptions, and old files take up space in your mind and on your devices. Taking even 5 minutes to clean up digital clutter can make a big difference in your mental clarity and ability to focus. Here are a few practices to complete a digital spring cleaning.
1) Take advantage of ‘waiting time.’
We all have opportunities to wait. It can be at the doctor’s office, during a subway commute, waiting in line, etc. While waiting, try cleaning out your phone or tablet. Scroll through photos and delete duplicates or screenshots you no longer need. Then work on cleaning up other areas such as notes, emails, contacts, apps, text messages, bookmarks, voicemails, etc. Or use that time to go into applications you frequently use and disable notifications.
2) Update your computer’s performance.
If you are like me, you use your computer quite frequently. But how often are we taking care of our devices? Schedule time to improve your computer’s performance by running the operating system and application updates, deleting old downloads, removing unwanted programs, and removing startup items that don’t serve you. Then make a recurring task or calendar appointment to do this clean up every 6 months. Your system will thank you for increased performance and memory!
3) Cancel subscriptions.
Remember subscribing for daily cat facts? Me either. It’s time to remove some subscriptions that you aren’t engaging with. Finding with accounts you still have active subscriptions on an iPhone is easy – go to the AppStore, tap Apple ID, then View Apple ID, then Subscriptions. On google, tap the Menu button, then account, then Subscriptions. Or scroll to the bottom of the daily cat fact email and look for the unsubscribe button.
4) Empty your trash.
You selected and deleted all the old photos on your phone, deleted junk mail, and added temp files and old downloads to your trash bin on the computer, but you need to empty the trash. And if you use Microsoft Outlook for email, make sure to click on Folders and delete those Sync issues. Those emails can add up quickly!
5) Identify timewasters and improve digital well-being.
My final tip is to identify how you digitally waste time. On your iPhone, go to Settings > Screen time. For Android phones go to Settings > Digital Wellbeing > Dashboard > check the time under Screen time. Look at your daily activities and how much time you spend on each application. Does this time bring you joy? If not, set boundaries and limits. Utilize focus mode on devices. Fine-tune these tech habits to help achieve your personal digital well-being.
After you have completed these steps, you can enjoy the benefits of your rejuvenated system and enjoy fewer digital distractions – at least until next year. We recommend creating recurring tasks or calendar appointments to revisit these steps next spring.
Author – Stephenie Rockwell
Director of Operations & Relationship Lead
About InteraWorks
InteraWorks is a global learning company on a mission to elevate the human experience at work. Specializing in professional development and performance enablement, we offer top-rated learning programs based on four defined conditions that must exist for individuals, teams including Effective Edge, Best Year Yet, and the Essentials series. Our integrated learning framework and online tools generate immediate and sustainable breakthroughs in performance. Through decades of working at all levels in enterprise companies across many industries, we’ve built a reputation for helping people and organizations harness their focus, mindset, talent and energy to produce results that matter most.
We’ve defined four conditions that must exist for an individual, team or organization to be effective within the arena of performance and development; Accountability, Focus, Alignment, and Integrity. We’ll continue to explore these and more in our blog and look forward to your engagement and interaction with us. Stay tuned as we engage the edges.