Ok before I start this conversation I want to play a quick game with you and
in order for us to do this I have to give you the rules of the game. Rule
number one, is forget the title of this video. Pretend that you didn't see it, you
didn't read it or anything. Right rule number two, is have something to write on;
a piece of paper, or a notebook, your laptop or even in the
comments section of this video. Rule number three is be honest and right
the first thing that comes to mind and I'm actually gonna play this game with
you to make it fun. So first thing is write down the first thing that comes to
mind when you hear the word "clutter." Ok, now write down the first thing that
comes to mind when you hear the word "declutter."
Alright, now write down the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the
word "minimalism." Ok, now what are the odds that all three things you wrote
down have something to do or everything to do with your physical space? Pretty
high right if you were being honest. I mean I wrote down messy home, donate and
goodwill, and then living it with less. See you may have heard me mentioned
before how we tend to only focus on the physical aspect of minimalism and
decluttering on our journeys right naturally and we tend to forget about
the mental and emotional clutter that we have as well but there's one other area
that I've yet to talk about and that is our digital space so here's how you can
declutter your digital space to ensure that all aspects of your life are fully
within your control alright so I'm going to break this video down into four
categories email photos and apps social media and entertainment and lastly
notifications and as we're walking through these categories I'm going to
share some tips and tactics with you to help you keep these areas decluttered
and under control but first I want you to keep in mind that your minimalist
journey is going to be unique to you in your lifestyle so as I'm sharing these
tips with you take them and use them as a starting point towards managing the
digital clutter in your life what I said the first category we're going to talk
about is email now when it comes to email the first tip that I want to share
with you you may have heard before but I still feel it's important to mention and
it's unsubscribing from any and all email lists that you don't find value in
now why am i sharing this even though you may have heard it before see it has
something to do with the idea of our emails being out of sight out of mind
see to be honest most of the time we sign up to receive emails with every
intention to read them or to use the discount codes we receive from my
favorite store but we actually don't do this as much as we think we do and in a
few times we do open an email to read it or as we're scrolling through our inbox
there's a question our mind is constantly
be processing when the heck did I sign up for this or Hawaiian that has crossed
my mind most often is I don't even remember giving them or this person my
email right and then we wonder why we're sitting here confused and overwhelmed by
the fact that our inbox is filled with messages that we don't read don't use or
don't find a value in the second tip I have for you regarding your email is to
create filters now keeping your inbox and the messages you receive and read
and find value in under control is an art in itself and creating filters is an
easy way to keep these things organized prioritized and cluttered free and
here's how you do it okay personally I use Gmail as my email
provider however I'm sure the steps are similar to create filters regardless of
which email provider you use so just do a quick search online and I'm sure
you'll find the directions you need but here's how it works for Gmail right so
here's an email that i received from buzzsprout who i used to host my podcast
where do i start and let's say I want to create a filter for these emails so that
way their flag every time I receive an email from them regarding my podcast
right so the first thing you want to do is you want to open up the email you
want to create the filter for and you want to click this three-dot menu here
at the top or hamburger menu I think it's called and once you click that you
want to scroll down to filter messages like these you click that and then this
window here is going to pop up you have a few different ways that you can filter
your email you can do a by email address by subject line or words that are in a
body of the email personally I like to just do it by the email address so we're
gonna leave that there we're gonna go down to create filter now two things you
want to do first thing is you want to apply a label so then we're going to
create a new label here we're just gonna say buzzsprout and then podcast right
alright then we're going to create the second thing you want to do is you want
to go down to the last box here and check apply filters or however many
messages or conversations Gmail has recognized based on the selected filter
you choose so because I chose the email address there are 29 messages that match
that email address so I want to add all of those to this filter then we're going
to create filter now one thing you're going to notice is
here on the left-hand side of your email account you'll see a new folder right
and this is the buzzsprout podcast voted I just created and something that I want
to do first or that you may want to do is you want to change the color of that
folder right so again you'll click the three men you here you're at a label
color and let's say let's just do purple for the sake of demonstrations right so
one thing you'll notice now is when you go back to your main inbox every email
that you receive from that email address that you filtered is now going to have
this color call-out here so next time you check your emails you're gonna
recognize where the email is from who it's from and it's also going to filter
in this folder you created so it's gonna keep things organized easy for you to
respond to easy for you to delete easy for you to archive all right
the second category we're going to talk about is photos and apps now when it
comes to digital clutter in general I think it's safe to say that our phones
hold the bulk of this clutter I mean it's very easy to fill these things up
with unnecessary apps we don't use or only download because we're bored or
because it was trending across every ad or video we watched and not to mention
if you're anything like me you probably snap photos every time you go somewhere
new and before you know it your phone is filled with thousands of photos so how
do we manage this area of our digital space two things number one is by having
an honest conversation with ourselves and understanding what triggers us to
download these apps we don't truly need like I said earlier it could be boredom
right and if it is why are you bored or what can you do to be more active
instead or to stimulate your mind without your phone in front of you right
or number two is when it comes to photos and videos on your phone you can simply
delete the duplicates that you don't need and then transfer everything else
that you want to keep to a separate storage system you can use an external
hard drive as an example like I do connect to my laptop or you can save
everything to the cloud using something like iCloud or Dropbox just getting
these things off for your phone is gonna help your phone feel less cluttered but
you can still keep those photos you truly enjoy okay the third category
we're going to talk is social media and entertainment I've
shared a few videos here on the channel talking about ways to declutter and
things to avoid when decluttering and one thing I've mentioned that I still
actively do on my journey today is i declutter as I live meaning whenever I
come across an item that I don't need or don't use or a thought that I want to
clear I deal with it right away in that moment and this tactic can be applied to
any area of our life including social media and entertainment as an example
for you the other day Lexi and I were training our bodies or in other words
working out and we were listening to music and a few songs started to play
that we no longer found joy in that we didn't really want to hear right and we
noticed that we would just continue to skip over these songs every time they
played so instead of skipping them we decided to just remove them from our
phone completely the same thing can be said for social media every time I'm
scrolling through the platforms that I use every so often I'll scroll through
my friends list or the people I follow or the people I'm subscribed to right
and I'll either unfriend unfollow unsubscribe to those that are no longer
interact with or find value in watching so the next time you're scrolling for
the sake of scrolling take a moment to look through who you're following or
what you're listening to if you come across anything or anyone that you no
longer find value in in this chapter of your journey then remove them all right
the fourth category we're going to talk about is notifications and I'm going to
keep this tip simple indirect now when it comes to social media or any other
apps that you're trying to limit your time on turn off the notifications
period right if you're not notified every time someone likes this or shares
that then you're less likely to open the app now when it comes to everything else
like your email or other notifications that are helpful to you customize when
how often and where those notifications appear right as an example I have very
few notifications that show on the lock screen of my phone because personally I
don't want to feel overwhelmed every time I check the time or plug my phone
in to charge hey I'm very intentional with what and how often I'm notified on
my phone and I really want to encourage you to do the same if you haven't I hope
you enjoyed this video and if you did and make sure their
thumbs up for me if there's something that you do to manage the digital
clutter in your life that I did not mention let me know in a comment section
down below this your first time tuning in welcome I'm really glad to have you
here I hope you enjoyed this video and if you did consider hitting that
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drop a new video and always remember to stay true to you I've seen the next one
peace