Declutter your Digital Life – shave off precious minutes from busy life

Updated Dec 6 2022

Tidying Up with Marie Kondo is a very popular show on Netflix. The Show has millions of views. Here Kondo assists her clients in clearing out the clutter and choosing joy in a series of inspiring home makeovers. I was inspired by the amount of Cost and effort saving achieved by effectively organizing or editing your surroundings.

We spend countless amount of time with our smartphones and laptops with their Apps and Portals. Sooner or later we catch ourselves swiping through endless news feed on LinkedIn or Flipboard. Most people can be categorized into two types. Type “A”, In that moment of epiphany everyone wishes if they could somehow reduce this digital distraction and focus on something productive. Type “B”, maybe you are already doing something productive and wonder if it could be done any faster. If you fall in any of the 2 mentioned categories then read on, this blog post will help you save considerable amount of time without modifying any major user behavior.

In personal space and most of the workplaces, smartphone is a constant companion. Ever wonder why companies are pouring billions in smartphones and not on self driving cars and green energy?. Ever wonder why Apple breached USD 1 Trillion mark and not manufacturing giants like Toyota?. The answer is, that Smartphones were revolutionary for marketing.

Earlier with the print ads, radio ads and television ads marketers bet their money on ads hoping a sizeable number of qualified customers will see. Customer will see ads, buy marketers learns from this and tweak their advertising strategy and medium. In this cycle feedback is a very critical component but constant innovation and economy of scale anyone can own a smartphone for as low as $50. This has a huge implication for the marketing world. Smartphone essentially makes it’s 3 billion+ user base into.

Mobile

Mobiles come with a standard screen size of 6.5 inches in 2022. The increased screen real estate is aimed to act as blinders for humans akin to blinders on horses. Marketing strategists do not want you to remove your attention from the scree. After all we are living in the attention economy. Youtube is filled with mobile reviews. A pretty common parameter showed is screen on time. 5-6 hours of screen on time is considered pretty average and any phone not capable of delivering is termed sub par. Just imagine the expectation in today's world is being set as for you to spend 25% of your time on screen. To take control of your life and time back, it is imperative to evade the dark patterns of UI/UX design which have become a norm.

Use Responsive Wed Design (RWD) or Mobile website alternatives

Most of the eCommerce apps such as Amazon, Fipkart, Myntra, etc. work excellent in their mobile version. Barring a few features in terms of search capabilities, they provide the same experience as apps. This helps in two ways

Saves tons of space used for app installation. Avoid intrusive notifications from the apps. Make sure to disable browser notifications in the settings.

Move apps to desktop

Certain apps are used in such a low frequency that we can very well easily use them on desktop browsers. Apps like MakemyTrip, Redbus, Goibibo, bigbasket, etc. All these apps are used once in a fortnight or more.

Desktop

Youtube Playlist

Subscribe to quality channels instead of endless scrolling on the suggestions page. Add videos in the watch later list. Dedicate a specific time period of the day to consume your playlist. Avoid the Shorts section of Youtube (read cancer of brain).

RSS feed

All of us browse multiple sites to get our daily bite of updates. the best way to do this is to subscribe to their RSS feed via Feedly, Inoreader, etc. For the sites which does not provide RSS feeds there are two ways to get updates

Use service like Feedity to convert any website into RSS Use Google alerts with parameters “site:www.xyx.com/”. This creates a blanket query to send alerts whenever new updates come on the website. This is especially useful for official company site which publishes less frequent updates

Automate stuff

Regular and repeated functions we perform should be automated using simple settings or utilities. few methods are given below.

Use Macros in Office productivity applications such as PowerPpint, Excel. WordUse Chrome Extensions to save pages, bookmarks, etc. Configure form autofill in Chrome or Firefox and use text expander utilities.

This is just a personal list of tips and trick I use to reduce time wasted on official and leisure activities on Digital platforms.