Spring is here! And, as you may be thinking about spring cleaning for your home or office, you should also consider a digital declutter! Digital decluttering can be thought of almost exactly the same as physical decluttering, just for your electronic devices! Organizing and simplifying your digital spaces can not only improve your peace of mind, but it can also improve cybersecurity, productivity, and efficiency. Sometimes, we accumulate so many stored things on our devices that they become difficult to navigate, frustrating to work on, and even operate slower, which is why including your devices in spring cleaning is so important. Digital clutter is anything that needlessly takes up space on your device. For example, extra and unneeded photos, apps, and old files, endless rows of open browser tabs, cramped email inboxes, and a surplus of pop-up notifications all count as digital clutter.
Basically, anything that is distracting, causes unnecessary stress, or gets in the way of your day-to-day tasks is digital clutter that should be tidied up. If your desktop home screen is so full you can’t find what you are looking for amongst the mess, or you are constantly receiving notifications that your storage is almost or completely full, or your browsers are loading slowly due to hundreds of tabs being open, you are the perfect candidate for a thorough digital declutter. Many people don’t realize just how much of a toll digital clutter takes on their devices and are often shocked by the results after they declutter.
So, how does one declutter their device? It may seem like a daunting task depending on how much clutter you have, and you may have to intentionally dedicate some time to the task, but it is completely do-able and worth it. You can start by deleting any applications on your device that are no longer used regularly and updating the apps that you want to keep. Old applications that are not used regularly anymore can be subject to unauthorized third-party access that evades your awareness since you no longer access or utilize that app. You should also consider deleting old contact information, text conversations, emails, photos, notes, browser tabs, files, and anything else that is saved on your device that you no longer need or use.
You can also declutter your email inbox by unsubscribing from mailing lists that you don’t want to be subscribed to, and/or blocking and allowing certain email addresses. And, you can reduce the volume of notifications that you receive by adjusting your notification settings in your device. After decluttering, you should also consider organizing all of the things you want to keep into convenient spaces so that they are easy to access. This organization may indirectly help keep away future clutter as well! If you really want to go crazy, you can even explore the customization settings in your computer, applications, browsers, etc. to make your computer work just right for you!
Read our previous post: How to Deal With Insider Threats
