Digital Minimalism — How to keep yourself digitally organized? — Part I
You are probably thinking right now: Oh no, not digitalization again, right? Especially for everyone living in Germany, digitalization (or digitization) is one of the trendy topics nowadays. In essence, this article is about digital minimalism and how not to get lost between all the apps, platforms, and folders, etc.
Initially, I’m a nerd of organization. I keep consuming different content about this topic since it keeps me updated about all the new hacks. Thus, let’s cut the chase and get down to best practices of digital minimalism:
Without a digital minimalism strategy, you are like a ship without a sail. You are just floating along without a purpose, letting the wind take you where it may. Therefore, pick one method and stick to it. Create a cloud, upload everything you have whether on OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive, or any other storage app. Besides that, you should have a specific method of naming your files.
One of the backbones of digital minimalism is toning down on all types of apps and platforms you are using. You can do that through conducting quick research and navigate meanwhile on different calendars, to-do lists, financials, and notepads apps since we will need one of each. Such a technique will lend an enormous hand to avoid any distraction and help you not to forget where you can find a specific thing. I can’t put in words how much that helps to set a clear mind.
Here are some recommendations:
Notepads: OneNote, Evernote, and Google Docs — Don’t forget to divide it into various sections and books, one for work, studies, general notes, financials, passwords, etc.
Financials: Wallet App is the best that I can think of. It gives an overview of all the expenses and income streams. You can link it with your bank account to save you time and effort by adding all the transactions, expenses, etc.
Calendars: Google Calendar or Outlook, but I prefer the first one since you can link it with Todoist. Todoist is honestly a pure game-changer. It can provide an overview and keep you prepared ahead of time, avoid stress, and last-minute preparation.
Some people prefer to have multiple calendars, one for work, one for personal life, etc. For me personally, I’m the type of putting everything organized and structured into one specific place. That facilitates checking out my free time and planning it precisely. For instance, if I want to look for any note, I don’t have to deal with the idea of “is it on OneNote or Evernote?”
For all that I mentioned above, make sure to use the label and filter function. All apps come with this, so why not using it? Creating appropriate labels makes it easy to view a set of related emails or anything else by simply searching for that one.
Here is a practical example:
Lastly, I want to mention a strategy that I call “The Laundry Approach”. So, let me ask you: do you wash every single piece of clothes separately? I’m sure not. You simply wait until the whole bag is full and then do the laundry. Thus, here you can follow the same approach. Don’t keep yourself busy with checking out your emails the whole day long. You can do that once a day or once in 2 days, depends on their importance. Nevertheless, the same goes for deleting old pictures, editing your music playlist, favorites links, etc. You can do that once a week or month. Before getting into such a process, ask yourself: do I really need this application? This file? This subscription? This game? If not, trash it.
Adopting digital minimalism does not only make me more focused and productive, but it saves me a lot of energy, time, and sometimes even money. Drop a comment if you think these tips are interesting and share them with your friends who struggle with being digitally organized.
