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IT’S OFFICIALLY SPRING. (EVEN THOUGH IT MIGHT NOT FEEL LIKE IT AROUND HERE).
Spring’s a time for renewal, rejuvenation and a chance to start fresh. So, I say it’s time to spring clean! Forget about the mops and brooms though. I’m talking about the place you spend a ton of your time but and might be overlooking…your digital world.
Let’s be honest, whether its for business or personal, we spend a lot of time online. We’ve all been guilty of letting things get a little messy. Sometimes there’s just so much activity and content it can get a little chaotic. Organizing your digital world will clear the clutter and help you stay productive.
So here are 5 areas where you can start to spring clean your digital world:
A great place to start is in your email inbox. Sometimes that inbox can be a little overwhelming, but there are some easy ways to tidy things up. Set aside some time to actually go through it. Make yourself some folders. Whether you have clients or just friends and family emailing you, giving yourself a place to put their emails will keep things organized. It’s also a good idea to have a priority folder to put the email that you absolutely need to follow up with asap.
Now is also a great time to go through and unsubscribe from all of those unwanted mailing lists. Remember when you made that online purchase over the holidays? Are you still getting daily deals and offers from them? Unsubscribing from the lists that you’re uninterested in will clean things up.
If you have multiple email accounts, another good idea is to consolidate them if possible. You can direct all mail to one place, so you only have on account to look after.
Doing a few of these things will help tidy your email up. And don’t forget to have a little discipline when it comes to email. Schedule your times that you check it. You’ll never get anything done if you’re constantly responding to emails all day.
The next step to help you spring clean your digital world is to clean up your Facebook profile. Take a look at your profile and see if it’s still up-to-date. Check your profile picture, header photo and about section to make sure it’s all still relevant.
Next take a look at that friends list. Are you connected with so many people that you could never keep up with them all. Seriously, don’t be afraid to unfriend some of them. If you’re hesitant to hurt feelings with an unfriending, you can also utilize the lists to control the updates you receive. Making lists for close friends, co-workers, etc. will help you review updates for each of those things as you wish.
On Twitter you should first do the same review of your profile images and information as you did on Facebook. You can go through your following list and unfollow accounts that are no longer relevant to you, and that’ll clean out your timeline. There are also tools out there like “who.unfollowed.me“ which can help with all of this. This tool helps you see who you’re following that isn’t following you back.
Twitter also offers a list feature, so you can organize the accounts that you follow. Creating lists like news, close friends or local prospects will help you manage your timeline, and you can see whichever type of tweets you want, when you want.
Since LinkedIn is primarily for business and professional networking, you’ll want to make sure your profile and resume are up-to-date. Review the LinkedIn groups that you’ve joined. Are the groups still active? Is it still relevant to the type of work you’re doing now? If not, get rid of them!
BACKUP/CLOUD
The last thing you need to do to spring clean your digital world, is to back up your stuff. You should collect your music, photos and files and move them to a backup file. There are multiple tools you could use for storing your files. External hard drives or storing them somewhere in the cloud. Some popular cloud options are iCloud, Dropbox and Amazon Cloud Drive. It’s always a good idea to organize the files that you store by date or some other means so you can find them later. Getting all your files backed up like this not only keeps them safe, but it de-clutters your computer.
With the weather warming up and life starting to bloom, there’s no reason your online life can’t start fresh too. If you take a little time to spring clean your digital world, you’ll be more productive and life will run a bit smoother. Now get to cleaning!
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