One of the easiest ways for me to get entangled in a lot of mess is not keeping my digital lifestyle efficient and streamlined. And there are days when that could get really frustrating. So in my own ways, here is how I keep things organized for myself.
Notifications
Considering that I have a lot of my business online, I usually have to leave my internet on most of the time. What this always results in is notification from all four corners. I had to either do something about it or keep drowning in it all.
In order to enable myself to differentiate between notifications and determine which to attend to or ignore, I go right down to the nitty-gritty of the settings. For example, most of the important apps to me have specific notifications set. WhatsApp DM sounds totally unlike the group chats. The same applies to Discord, Snapchat, and whatnot. So when I get a notification, I likely know where it's from.
Apps with likely unimportant notifications (or at least not urgent) share the same sound, so they take the least priority. And to further streamline my notifications, I restrict notifications from places I don't need them. Why should my phone buzz, only to tell me, "It's going to be sunny today?" I'd already be under the scorching sun.
Email & Security
If you don't have 100+ unread emails, then congratulations; you must have your inbox in order or something. I used to have too much—perhaps even more than 7,000—some of them more than a decade old. I wasn't sure how to handle it until I started missing highly important emails. Then I figured out a way to sort my email inbox to keep it neat and clean.
Other than unsubscribing from redundant mails, such as ads and promptions, I make use of labels and filters. If I wouldn't want to unsubscribe, or perhaps I can't, I use a filter to mass-delete or put them all under a label, and even make future mail from that specific sender go right under that label and not appear in my primary inbox. That helps keep my inbox neat. For the banks and finance services I use, for example, I pull all their messages under labels. That way, I don't keep seeing OTP or transaction notifications. in my inbox.
To avoid dealing with decluttering my email frequently and to also increase my security, I have a different mail for logins. Many sites these days ask me to "Login to continue," and with Google's one-click login, I never feel safe, especially with my main email account. So I have another for logins—well, unnecessary logins.
Reading Journal
Keeping track of things is satisfying for me. Books that I have read in the last year, that I am currently reading, and the ones that I'll read in the future—I have a system for them. Took a while to set up on Notion, but it is now functional and helps me keep that part of my life organized.
I see everything at a glance. It's even set up in a way for me to track my goals. While my target isn't exactly to read a certain number of books but to just learn more, it does keep mindful of my pace.
Declutter
For my photos and videos, there's a lot of them. I don't have infinite storage, so I try—perhaps once a year or after such a long time—to go through all of my photos and videos and delete what I don't need. Memories that I wouldn't interact with, I quickly back them up. That kind of helps me manage my 128GB and 512GB capacities I have on my phone and PC.
And that's how I keep myself together. Everyone's got their style, I believe. What's yours?
Images in this post are mine
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