#Photo declutter app how to#

#Photo declutter app how to#

Dropbox, Tresorit, Box, Google Drive, iCloud):Ĭheck out Tom’s Guide or How to Geek for more.

Online syncing services: syncs files between a Cloud service and various devices (e.g.

Online backup services: service that copies files to an offsite server (e.g.

Opt for one hardware and one cloud storage solution from these options:

Store and backup everything: Before you do anything else, make sure your files are backed up.

Declutter documentsĬollege papers, old banks statements, scripts from attempted screenplays - what random documents are you still hanging on to? Here’s how to set up a solid backup system, and an organized way to access files going forward:

Maintain the decluttered life with simple and consistent habits.īe patient with yourself on this project - it’s all about having a framework, with tasks you can slowly chip away at instead of finishing right away and ultimately making things easier for yourself.

Do an overview of all things digital (files, folders, accounts, etc.).

Pruning distracting objects, limiting the “noise” of social media, and deleting reminders of unfinished projects can help you direct what you pay attention to. This makes it harder to focus and reflect, think creatively, and make important decisions. A cluttered environment gives the feeling that various things are competing for our attention, which can be mentally taxing and stressful.

An inbox 8,000 emails deep, with several hundred unreadĭigital clutter doesn’t take up physical space (except maybe at a data center in Las Vegas), but it takes up significant space in our heads.60 painfully uncurated Facebook photo albums.Dozens of accounts I never log into, like closed credit cards and unused apps.In my own digital declutter, I discovered: The average American has about 83 bookmarked websites, 7 tabs or browsers open, 582 saved cellphone photos, and 13 unused apps, according to a survey by Summit Hosting. A digital declutter is an audit of one’s entire digital life, followed by removing or reorganizing everything into a simpler, more secure, and more backed up system. This realization is what inspired me to do a digital declutter. What becomes clear from reading these books is that, in an age of constant connectivity and never ending floods of information, it takes work to focus on what truly matters to you. Learn more about what Cal Newport can teach us about decluttering our digital lives in Digital Minimalism. Their problem with this frenzied activity is less about its details than the fact that it’s increasingly beyond their control. As many people clarified, the issue was the overall impact of having so many different shiny baubles pulling so insistently at their attention and manipulating their mood. It’s not that any one app or website was particularly bad when considered in isolation. His influence in writing the book came out of notes he received from readers of his earlier book, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, about their struggles with focus: Our very idea of productivity is premised on the idea of producing something new, whereas we do not tend to see maintenance and care as productive in the same way.Īnd Newport, a computer science professor, in Digital Minimalism, offers a blueprint for organizing our technology around what we most value, and minimizing the rest.

In How to Do Nothing O’Dell, an artist and writer, questions our society's definition of what counts as 'productive':Į inhabit a culture that privileges novelty and growth over the cyclical and the regenerative. Rather than achieving this through sheer self-control, he suggests “constructing an environment that does not tempt you all the time.” In Joy of Missing Out, Brinkmann, a philosopher, argues that the path to happiness is not in acquiring more but wanting less. This double-edged sword was brought home for me recently after reading three books, each about building one’s life around less: Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, Jenny O’Dell’s How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, and Svend Brinkmann’s Joy of Missing Out: The Art of Self-Restraint in the Age of Excess. The flip side of all that digital abundance is that we often feel overwhelmed, exhausted, and burned out from it all. Our digital lives today are seemingly limitless worlds of people to follow, music to stream, articles to read, and so on.