Monthly ‘Digital Cleanse’ Challenge: Decluttering Your Devices and Digital Life

The digital life that we’re living in today has become more real to us than our own surroundings and our loved ones. The digital era has totally blurred the lines between the real world and the virtual world in ways that we cannot even imagine.

Like everything new, the digital age too has its fair share of pros and cons; on one side, it has made it easier to commute with friends and family sitting on the other side of the world and reduced physical labor; on the other side, it has made everyone totally dependent on the very machine they helped create for others’ convenience.

There is much preoccupation with searching, researching, and downloading as many applications and AI tools as possible to make our job a lot easier than it already is that we don’t even notice when the mail inbox is bombarded with a barrage of notifications or the storage space becomes full.

This digital clutter has become a major issue that is overlooked, right from the no-longer-relevant apps to thousands of files lying idle and unattended for long. It mirrors the chaos and disarray of our lives throughout.

The monthly digital cleanse challenge comes into the picture. It is a valiant effort to declutter your laptop and other devices to put your digital life back on track and remove all the unnecessary files and apps from it.

Also Read: How to Create a Powerful Personal Brand on the Internet

Necessity for Digital Cleanse

Cleaning your device is not something that most people are excited about, but the psychological effects it can have on your life can be too much to bear. It negatively impacts your focus, increasing mental fatigue, stress, and anxiety.

A cluttered digital space makes work ten times harder and distracts you from your personal life, due to which you end up nowhere. Digital cleansing is as important as physically cleaning your office desk or bedroom because it reduces work-related stress and increases focus, as a result of which you’re able to enhance productivity by finishing your tasks on time.

Monthly Checklist

It is important to create a monthly checklist so that you get an idea of how and where to begin with the digital cleansing process. The given points are important to practice that might seem like hard work at first, but with a level of discipline and consistency, rest assured that you can do wonders.

Declutter Your Email Inbox

We’ll start with the easiest task, as email is the biggest source of digital clutter. With countless messages, newsletters, and promotions that pile up quickly, it becomes difficult to move them to the trash in one go, not knowing which message is important and which isn’t.

• To tackle this issue, you can start by archiving emails that are unimportant but might be of use later.
• Simply delete the old messages with large attachments.
• Unsubscribe yourself from unwanted and unnecessary mail lists through apps like Unroll.me.

Segregate Your Files

It takes a simple mistake for everything to disorganize. Files in cloud storage fall into this category, so create a folder structure for them so that they can be identified easily.

• First of all, remove old and outdated files and documents. Merge the duplicates as well.
• To organize everything, use Dropbox Smart Sync and the Google Drive file suggestion feature.
• There is much significant data that can be lost if not maintained properly. Therefore, secure cloud storage and backup data on a regular basis to an external hard drive.

Reassess Notifications

It becomes nerve-wracking to deal with all the alerts and notifications every few minutes, so make sure to tailor your settings so that only relevant alerts are mailed to you.

• Click on the ‘Do Not Disturb’ option during working hours to avoid unnecessary distractions.
• Leverage all the summaries in the notifications option.
• Turn off the notifications for unimportant apps.

Clean Your Social Media Feeds

The never-ending supply of social media feeds can sometimes lead to a mental breakdown, so reevaluate all your social media accounts to keep your mental health safe and sound. The following points will clarify it better:

• Either mute or unfollow all accounts that don’t pertain to your interests and goals.
• Delete your old accounts that are useless.

Reorganize Your Mobile Pics and Media

Every smartphone is replete with videos and pictures galore, most of them being duplicates, screenshots, and other miscellaneous pics.

• Scan your photo gallery and delete all unnecessary things.
• Use cloud services like Google Photos and iCloud to back up important media files.
• Gemini Photos is one of the best AI tools to identify duplicate stuff, which can be used to weed out such pics.

Conclusion

All said and done, a digital cleanse is an extremely time-consuming process that requires a great deal of patience. Given the massive digital clutter, it can become quite daunting, especially to inexperienced folks. For one thing, old devices lack tools for decluttering in a seamless manner, while the new ones have optimization apps and high subscription fees.

So start small, like taking up one device or one category at a time. Within a few months, once you take up the gauntlet, you can memorize the process until it becomes as easy as pie, along with the practical and mental benefits that will prove that it was well worth the effort.

Incorporating a digital month cleanse challenge into your routine can change your digital life for the better, as you can create a balanced bond with your devices and use them as tools of convenience rather than toys meant for entertainment.

Also Read: Digital Detox: Unplug in a Connected World