Today I want to talk about an area of the office that may just be one of my favourite things to organise – your computer!
Because we can’t see computer clutter as obviously as we can see physical clutter, we often don’t realise it’s there but believe me, it’s still affecting you.
How does it affect you?
When you open your Inbox and feel drained at the sight of all your emails, when your computer runs slow because there are so many photos on there and when you click into your Google Reader and can’t BELIEVE how much some people post because you went through your blogs for 3 hours yesterday and now there are 127 unread items yet again!
Sound familiar?
We’re going to look at 4 places where you can declutter electronically. Today we’re going to look at two and next week we’ll discuss the other two:
Free downloads
We (especially women) like fr.ee things, don’t we? Buy one, get one f.ree sales come to mind… As a result, we download anything and everything we can find that’s for fr.ee.
If it’s fr.ee, it’s got to be good, right?
No, actually, it’s not all good. Not only are you cluttering up your computer but you can’t possibly use all the things that are out there because we live in an information-overload society.
I wish I could say that I’m immune to the addiction to F.REE stuff but I’m not! I am much better than I was but I still find myself entering my email address far too often for my liking.
At one point I had about 6 different grocery shopping lists on my computer (all fr.ee downloads) and 10 different versions of a to-do list. None of them quite worked for me so I made my own and deleted all of them.
Mmmm, email.
My clients need help with email more than any other thing in their office, and paper’s a close second.
That’s because email’s so fast and because we don’t use it correctly. Did you know that for every email you send out, you get at least two emails back?
So how do you know if your emails are a problem?
The quick answer is if you spend more than 30 minutes a day on email.
90% of people waste an extra hour a day on email that they don’t have to. That hour translates to SIX WEEKS a year. You read that right – six weeks!
Get familiar with the delete key (my favourite key on the keyboard) and start deleting. Delete immediately once you’ve replied to an email and don’t file unless you absolutely have to.
Disable all the notifications from social networking sites like Facebook.
I only get friend requests, messages and notes on my wall in my inbox. The rest I’ll see when I choose to log on. (No, I don’t get Facebook on my phone but that’s another article for another day)
Here again, decide on your comfort level for emails and make sure you work your system until you can breathe again. Personally, I set a daily goal of deleting at least 50 items so once I’m done with my inbox, I go through my Sent Items and delete, delete, delete 😉
As a matter of interest, how many emails are in your inbox right now? 😉
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Marcia Francois is a time management coach and speaker who inspires busy women to break out of overwhelm, make the most of their time and take purposeful and focussed action so they have the time and freedom to live life to the full. Visit http://purposefultimemanagement.com for your free Time Management Purpose Pack.
I also struggle with those free downloads. And when I enter competitions then I am forced to sign up for ridiculous newsletters which add no value to my life. I am very good with the emails though and do a big delete AND unsubscribe action at least once a month. I also delete sent items as well as the deleted items folder and my spam folders. I’m still trying to figure out how to archive and put what I need to hold onto into mail folders. Gmail is not as lovely and easy as outlook when it comes to this or maybe I just haven’t been find an easy way to do this. I don’t get any FB or Twitter notifications either unless they are friend requests and postings on my wall.
ITO Google reader, I read certain blogs everyday. Others I read only once a week. And I am not shy to remove a blog from my reader if it no longer adds to my life or if the blogger is too sporadic with posting.
At the moment I have 7 unread mails. I may read then later and will delete them immediately as they are daily newsletter type mails.
WOW, you have a fantastic system going. Sounds really, REALLY good.
Oh my! In my Gmail account alone, I have 692 (that is down from the other day when I went through and cleared out about 100). Let’s not even discuss my other email accounts.
I definitely need to go through the files on my computer. Way too much junk and unnecessary files I’ll never use/read again.
Angie, I do mine often but mine could also do with another good clean-out 🙂
Right now I have 25 e-mails total in my inbox, including 13 unread. I’m lacking time right now so I simply leave the ones I want to read more deeply for now. It’s on my to-do list for this weekend, though!