Ways to declutter your digital life

A huge aspect of our work life is digital. We store so much information on our computers, drives and smartphones. It’s easy to let our digital space become overwhelmed and disorganized, and it’s important to regularly clean it out if we want to be productive. One challenge we all face is taking the time to organize and manage our digital storage. The more we hang on to, the more we have to manage. In honor of the 2021 Digital Cleanup Day on March 20, below are some tips to clean up several areas of your digital life.

Challenge: find an hour in the next week to see how much of your digital content you can clean up. Give each task below about 10 minutes of your time to see what can be done in a small amount of time.  

Email

Unsubscribe

Unsubscribe from any email subscriptions that you don’t find of interest or value. This means less email filling up your inbox in the future, and less email to manage.

Set a timer for 10 minutes and scan or search your inbox for any e-newsletters that you never read and click the unsubscribe link.  If you don’t see an unsubscribe link at the top, look in the footer of the email for an unsubscribe link.

Delete messages

Delete the messages you know immediately that you don’t need. Things like calendar and social media notifications, subscription emails you already read (or will never read), event reminders, and old emails that are no longer relevant.

Set a timer for 10 minutes and start mass deleting any messages you know you don’t need. Search operators are your friend here! In the Gmail search box, narrow your search by using one of the following operators:

Search by sender to quickly find subscription and notification emails.

• Operator: from:
• Example: from:linkedin.com

Search by size to get rid of your largest emails.

• Operator: larger:
• Example: larger:10MB

Search by attachment. If you have already downloaded the attachments, you don’t need to keep them in your inbox.

• Operator/example: has:attachment

Search by date to delete “back in the day” emails that are no longer relevant.

• Operator: before: 
• Example: before:01/01/2011

When you see your search results, check the Select all box and if there’s more than one page of emails, click select all conversations that match this search. Then delete!

You can find more search operators on the Google help site.

Clean up your Google Drive

Create folders that make sense to you

No one organizes the exact same way. If your folders don’t make sense, you won’t use them. Scan through your files and look for patterns. These are categories that would make good folders. When you make folders, make sure you give them names that make sense. Tips for your folder structure:

• Add a number to force a folder to the top of your folder list (e.g. 1-Zoom). Having your most used folders at the top makes them easier to access.

• Create an zArchive folder to store old project folders that you don’t access often but are not ready to delete. It reduces the number of folders to scroll through on the left. By adding z to the name, it will display at the bottom of your folder listing.
• Create one folder for unsorted documents. Once you get some files in there, you can see if you need to add some new folders for any categories that emerge.

Organize or purge

Are you hanging onto files you don’t need? It’s easy to get in the mindset of keeping everything. Just because you can keep things doesn’t mean you need to. This digital purge is a good thing to reduce your overwhelm.

Set a timer for 10 minutes and see how much you can clean up:

• Open this link, to show you a list of Drive files sorted by size with the largest items at the top. Be very careful when using this screen. While it is the only area you can sort on file size currently, this doesn’t have a way to just show you files you own. This list is any file you have access too. 
• Search for untitled documents, spreadsheets and slides, These are created when you open a Google app but don't name it. If they are empty files, delete them.
• Watch for duplicates and remove them.
• Press “Ctrl” + click to select multiple files and drag them into folders (or delete!)
• Switch between list view and grid view to see a preview of your documents.

• Use the Advanced Search Options to search by type, owner, date, location, etc. 

Clean up your computer

Desktop

Is your computer desktop full of icons that you never use? Every program on your computer can be accessed via the Windows Start menu so you probably don’t need the shortcut on your desktop if you don’t use it. 

Take 10 minutes and drag as many unneeded icons on your desktop to the recycle bin as possible. Right-click on your desktop to sort by type, so you can see what is left to organize. Pin applications you use often to your Taskbar.

Downloads folder

The Windows downloads folder can become a big dumping ground for everything. Downloads should be a temporary spot for files, not a permanent place to organize and store documents.

Spend 10 minutes cleaning up your downloads folder.

• Drag documents that you want to save to your Documents folder. Better yet, move them to a folder under your Documents!
• Delete everything you don't need.
• Sort files by type.
• Quickly view images and videos by changing Views to show icons. Then Group by Type.

  

Other digital files to clean up

• Shared Drives
• Network Drives
• WeVideo (videos and images should be removed when you are done with your projects)
• Kaltura Mediaspace
• YouTube
• USB Flash Drives
• Unused apps on your mobile device

You may have just touched the surface but setting aside time each week to deal with emails and files will help you stay on top of it. Don’t add to your clutter. Organize new files right away and delete whatever you don’t need.