4 Ways Digital Clutter is Slowing You Down

 



The minimalist movement always gets a lot of attention at the first of the year. People recognize how important it is to declutter their lives and get rid of items that don’t really hold a constructive purpose for them. Generally, “decluttering” refers to physical “stuff.” Like old magazines, mementos or clothing. Sometimes, it refers to emotional clutter and proactively working on guilt or hurt feelings. These attempts are all great. But, in an effort to streamline other parts of our lives, we often forget to pare down another aspect that is far reaching professionally and personally: our digital world.

Your digital clutter is slowing you down. It’s impeding your professional progress and success. It’s one of the most challenging arenas of your life to harness: you can’t see it, it accumulates easily and our worlds depend on being “plugged in.”

But, tackling the concept of digital clutter is one of the keys to becoming more efficient. Consider these 4 ways digital clutter is slowing you down:

  1. It sucks up your time. Many people find themselves checking text messages, synching their inboxes and looking at social media updates frequently throughout their work days. While each of these tasks are important, especially depending on the type of work you do, they have tendencies to draw you in and absorb valuable time you should be using for more constructive tasks. Limit your use of each of these so that you can focus your time more deliberately on projects for your job.

  2. Digital clutter is distracting. Our devices are constantly updating us with “important” notifications. Most of these updates are unnecessary and detract from your focus. As you’re engulfed in a project for work, seeing that someone “liked” your pin on Pinterest does nothing to support your progress. It only derails you, tempting you to to veer from the task at hand to explore your notification. Once you redirect your attention to work, it takes a few minutes to get back into your project. 

  3. Most of it isn’t useful. It’s very likely that you have numerous apps on your phone or tablet. When you purchased and downloaded them, you had the best of intentions. But, by now, many of them sit dormant, cluttering up your screens with unused “stuff.” Delete them! Not only do they take up space in your device’s memory, but they also make it harder for you to find the productive tools you actually use. If you delete them and change your mind later, they will still be available.

  4. It makes you disorganized. Trying to sort through all of the “junk” on your hard drive to find that one file you need can be an almost impossible task. Improperly naming files, saving unnecessary ones and lacking a filing system can add to the dysfunction. 

We understand that the task of getting rid of your digital clutter can be a little intimidating -- knowing what to keep and choosing deletable files. We are experts at helping you through this task and setting you up for success afterward with sustainable processes to keep clutter at bay. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help YOU!

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