By Alina Fridman -
As this unprecedented year comes to a close, I've been feeling a little overwhelmed lately. No, it's not from staying at home for 10 months with two kids while I try to balance work and life during this pandemic. It's from social media and all of the marketing emails that I signed up for which are sitting in my spam box patiently waiting to be deleted.
The world shut down this year. As a result, we have turned to the internet to connect with others because we crave social interaction. The internet has been there for us in our time of solitude. It's helped several businesses stay above water or pivot altogether. The problem is, too much of a good thing can turn bad quickly.
I've followed several Instagram accounts, joined a whole bunch of Facebook Groups, and signed up for way too many workshops and webinars during this time. Now, my inbox is loaded with emails from marketers peddling their courses, workshops, promos, and whatever else they're selling. Some of these marketers send out three emails in one day! Seriously? C'mon! Who has time to go through all of those emails? And are they really relevant to my needs? I get it, they're doing their thing. I send out emails to my subscribers too. A good approach to sending emails is usually twice a month or weekly. If you have great content or promotion, upping it to two to three times a week is OK, but be sure to monitor your campaigns.
Tired of the mounding emails in my inbox, social media accounts, pages, and groups that are no longer interesting or relevant, I decided to use master organizer, Marie Kondo's method known as the KonMari method, and consists of gathering together all of one's belongings, one category at a time, and then keeping only those things that "spark joy" and use it to declutter my digital life.
This is how I've decluttered my digital life and how you can too.
I went through all of my emails and hit the UNSUBSCRIBE button to no longer receive emails from brands and companies which I no longer have any interest in. I also created folders in my Outlook (you can do the same for Gmail and most any other email service provider) for brands and companies which I do look forward to receiving but don't have time to immediately read. I created a rule for those emails to go directly into the assigned folder when they hit my inbox and when I do have the time, I can easily access them.
I unfollowed Instagram accounts that I am not interested in anymore. Now that I've unfollowed the Instagram accounts that no longer spark joy, I am seeing more accounts in my feed that do spark joy. They are relevant and hold my interest.
I left Facebook Groups that also no longer interest me and I have no use for. The Facebook Groups that I follow and am more active in have been pinned so that they can appear at the top of my list. I also set my notifications to control how frequently I get notified from each group.
Decluttering feels so good! I highly recommend trying it. And you don't have to stop at just social media or your inbox. Declutter your computer files too! I've always been great at that and have kept all of my files organized by categories and subcategories. I'm a digital label queen when it comes to organizing digital files. Each file has it's place and is easy to access.
Have you decluttered or are you planning to declutter your digital life? Leave a comment and let me know how it's going for you.