Digital Decluttering

Digital clutter is the new messy desk. Between emails, apps, phone calls, text messages, notifications, tabs, it can feel extremely overwhelming to stay organized in this digital age.

We have a few tips to stay on top of digital chaos and feel more in control.

1. Email Inbox

Inboxes get out of control fast. Between the business emails, spam, personal emails, before you know it you have 1000’s of emails clogging up your inbox and your mind.

To empty a full inbox today, archive or delete anything over 6 months old. If it is something business related you may need to refer to later, archive it now. If it is personal or spam, just delete it. If you haven’t looked at it in 6 months, it probably isn’t important any longer.

Creating rules in your inbox can create automatic organization with little daily effort. For example, create an email folder for your to-do list, client emails, receipts, spam, etc. This way these types of emails automatically go into these folders when they hit your inbox saving you sorting time later while keeping your inbox empty of busy work. How nice it is to only have important tasks to address in your inbox, which is normally only a few, while everything else sorts itself out effortlessly.

Set aside 10 -20 min every day to review your inbox and handle the important tasks immediately so that they are done and not clogging your mental space.

2. Desktop

This will not apply to everyone, as some never save anything to their desktop. However, if you do, here are a few ideas.

Create a “sort” folder for items you need to deal with but perhaps are not ready to tackle today. This removes the clutter from your desktop right away giving you a clean uncluttered look on your computer screen every time you log in.

Delete anything you know you do not need to save.

Review your downloads folder as well. This gets extremely full when saving documents. Either delete documents you no longer need or sort the ones you do need to the desktop sort folder saving space on your hard drive.

3. Organizing cloud storage

Consider your cloud storage to be equally as important as your computer storage and email.

Create consistency with your documents. Decide an effective way to title documents you save so that you can easily refer to them later. For example. “6.5.25 Best Buy Receipt” or “6.2025 Client Name, Invoice #”. This will save time when you need to locate these documents later.

Have clear folders in your cloud storage as well, such as Google Drive or Dropbox.

Choose what makes the most sense for the documents you are consistently saving.

Organization is key in keeping the clutter down but also clearing up space for you mentally as a business owner.

4. Digital Security

Spend time at least once a month reviewing your passwords, information and two factor authentication for your apps, programs and banking. This will help avoid potential scam risks. In today’s world, protecting your online identity is hugely important!

Look into 1Password or Last Pass if you need password management.

5. 

Digital Reset

Set aside a time each month to declutter your digital life for the things that are pending if you are not already doing this daily.

Consider this as part of your end-of-the-month routine. Much like you would with your businesses bookkeeping but this is for your brain.

Even 30 minutes can make a huge difference in your mental load as a business owner.