How Digital Clutter Destroys Your Peace of Mind

How Digital Clutter Destroys Your Peace of Mind

We know that physical clutter can lead to disruption in your life, but what about digital clutter? Are the old photos, posts, and comments from Days of Yore(tm) making you exhausted and feeling out of sorts? I was thinking about the post I wrote last week about making quick decisions, and decided to add onto that. As we’re all locked down in many parts of the world, it’s an excellent time to declutter. Our physical spaces need it, but how about our digital spaces?

Old Photos

Do you obsess about those old photos on your phone? What do you do about the old photos that you have stored in your phone and on all your social media accounts? When is it time to clean them out? We take so many pictures now from fear of missing out on a cute kitten or puppy or baby moment. NPR has an excellent article: Here’s How Tech Experts Recommend Organizing Your Photos. The authors recommend sitting down once a month to cull unwanted selfies and duplicate photos from your massive vault, then organizing what’s left. Sounds a lot like physical organizing, doesn’t it? Organizing the photos by date will help you avoid headaches later, then you can sit down and tag them as well. By the way, if there are old photos (of you) that you don’t like, you’re allowed to throw them away. Sounds silly, but lots of people can’t seem to throw away photos!

Documents from the Stone Ages

Do you really need those Word documents telling the cat sitter (who moved to Oregon in 1992) how to feed the cat who is no longer alive? Maybe you do! But probably you don’t. The reason you want to organize those documents is so you can easily find what you need later. Organizing your documents, just like organizing your social media, lets you quickly find the things that are really important to you. By the way, you might like this article: Organizing Your Social Media So You Can Have a Better Life. Just like old photos, old documents can hamper your progress and make you feel frustrated.

Posts from Long Ago

When can you finally let go of old posts you made? Is it even possible to delete posts you made previously on different social media platforms? Yes, you can go back and delete posts, and it’s especially easy on some platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram. If you have a lot of duplicated posts, that’s an easy place to start. In the article How to Quickly Delete Old Facebook Posts from PC Magazine, Scott Bay suggests viewing your Facebook feed from the point of view of an outsider. You could also opt to simply hide posts or make them private.

©Maya ALESHKEVICH 2019

All the Blah Blah Blah

The Blah Blah Blah includes all those emails from the last century that you’ll never look at again. Each email requires that you make a decision. One easy way to declutter that email? Delete in bulk. Search for one sender and delete everything from last year, for instance. What other Blah Blah Blah do you have and how does it weigh you down? Leave me a comment! Thank you.