Organizing Your Digital Life
With so many things vying for space on your to-do list, I’m willing to bet that organizing your digital life is often pushed to the wayside. So today I’m sharing some tools to help you streamline and simplify everything digital, so you can stay efficient and productive as you manage your business.
1. Eliminate email clutter.
With Unroll.me you can compile all the subscriptions you’ve signed up for and choose which you want to keep receiving and which you do not. Then, it will consolidate the ones you want to keep receiving and send them to you in one comprehensive email, taking up less space in your inbox and less time in your day.
2. Never reset a password again.
1Password is essentially a password vault. You enter all of your different logins and then create one master password you know you can remember. Since this password will unlock all of your confidential information, it’s important that you make it something that would be extremely difficult to hack.
3. Find the photos you need without scrolling through your hard drive.
Google Photos allows you to search your photos by the people, places, and things in them. But the best thing is, you don’t have to tag each photo; it does it for you.
4. Eliminate excessive email as your manage projects.
Asana allows your team to communicate efficiently about any project. Instead of sending dozens of emails back and forth or managing various Google Docs, you can organize files, create to-do lists, set deadlines, manage messages, and create a team calendar from Asana.
5. Keep your desktop clean.
As a business owner myself, I know how many files and folders many of you have to manage, but your desktop is not the best place to keep them. Instead, create master folders and organize your documents into subfolders within them. As you organize your files, keep in mind that you shouldn’t have to open a file to know what it is. Labeling clearly will save you an incredible amount of time later.
I encourage my clients to download a desktop organizer with four categories: To Do, To File, To Read, and Pending—or something similar. That way, you can keep the files you are currently working on at your fingertips and file them away when you’re done.
6. Clear out computer files.
Just as you would go through physical paperwork, you should purge your digital files on a regular basis. This includes uninstalling programs you no longer need and emptying your trash.
These days, everything is digital: our files, our communication, our books—every aspect of our businesses. And although digital clutter is not as apparent as physical clutter, it still creates stress. Taking the time to declutter your digital world now will free up mindspace and increase your productivity down the road.
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Contributed by Jen Robin of Life in Jeneral