Organize your virtual world on your computer and mobile devices for better focus.
If you are like me, then you do a lot with your devices: read the news, watch videos, take pictures, some of us might work a full time job on our device, take notes, order food, among so many other things. You might have social media accounts which can be a real time waster when you’re trying to stay focused. So, let’s talk about this!
Marie Kondo Your Virtual World
You might not think about this affecting your productivity, but if you spend a lot of time on screens it is important to think about treating our virtual worlds as another room of ours at home. It is the ultimate multipurpose room that should be reset every time you use it. It should stay organized so we can get done what we wanted and steer clear of petty distractions.
Let’s Start Sweeping Our Virtual Workspace
Downloading applications on our mobile devices and computers can be fun! But it can also clog your device’s “home” screen, or “desktop.” Just as you’d rather step into a clean kitchen to begin your hour of flexing your chef muscles, your brain is deserving of less distraction.
Let’s first take into consideration an organized home screen/desktop. Apps can be put into folders with other apps in their category. For example, every application you use for work could go in a folder you can title “work”. Depending on your device (Android, Apple, etc) you typically click and hold the applications and drag them over one another to create a folder. On a computer this would look a little differently, you would right click on the desktop to “add folder” from the dropdown menu.
Now that we have our applications organized, there are a few other places we might be able to sort through.
Photos
I’m sure we all have a TON of pictures on our devices. You might want to finally go through all of your photos and delete all of the one you don’t want. It frees up space, and it helps you in the future when you want to transfer only the important memories to your new device (stay tuned next week when we discuss backing up your devices to external storage for safe keeping).
Files
Do you have a hard time finding old documents? Are all of the things you’ve ever downloaded in one huge list ranging from 2011-2022? This might just be the nudge you needed to finally organize all of your documents.
Typically there is a place like “my computer” or “finder” where all of your documents live. Organizing files can be so very specific for each type of person, so I am going to stay vague here. Create a folder like “Personal” and “Work.” From there you can create folders within those ones. For example, in my personal folder I keep a folder called “Taxes” where all of my digital tax forms are kept. I update this every year and it’s password protected and backed up to a cloud network.
Keep it up!
Feng Shui in your virtual world is just as important for your mental well-being. Thanks for enjoying this TECH LIFE HACK and look forward to more from your local neighborhood tech crew.