Over the years I have built up an digital environment that demands my attention - both online and offline. Today, I have started to remove the clutter from this digital life in order to add more clarity and give me breathing space.
Mac/iPhone
Focussing on important apps
- Backdrop is a tool I've mentioned before. The aim is simple; it blacks out your screen allowing you to pick only the essential applications to focus on.
- WriteRoom is a decent text editor that uses the same black-out effect as Backdrop, allowing you to concentrate purely on writing.
Removing notifications
- Growl notifications seemed like a good idea once-upon-a-time. More often than not, they serve only as an annoyance and break my concentration.
- I've disabled iPhone push notifications for Mail as e-mail is never important enough that I need to read it straight away
Online
The key question that I kept coming back to as I sifted through this mess is
How does this support my life as it is now?
Unsubscribing from e-mail alerts
I've unsubscribed from the following e-mail alerts:
- Facebook notifications (57 different notification types in all!)
- Twitter user follows
- Google alerts
- Dozens of music and tech mailing lists
Knowing that my level of e-mail will now drop, I'm less inclined to check it as often.
Unsubscribing from blog RSS feeds
I had 82 feeds in my feed reader, and I realised that I read new items from them very rarely. I've now unsubscribed from all but 3;
I'm sure these actions will be helpful in the long run, I am hoping this is a step towards a less overwhelming environment.