Overwhelmed by pings, alerts, notices, and
other digital clutter? Try this
by
Dan Fogarty | May 6, 2019
Sure, you’ve heard of
Marie Kondo and her book The
Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. But the war on clutter has
multiple fronts. For instance, what about the digital clutter in your life?
First, a definition:
digital clutter is a time suck on your computer, tablet, or smartphone that
doesn’t contribute to your professional or personal life.
It’s an alarming push notification that sends you to a news story
you’ve already read too much about, unopened newsletters that crowd your inbox,
or five hours spent on Facebook.
It doesn’t include
intentional entertainment, like a much-needed Netflix session with your spouse
after a long day at work. But it does include that time last weekend when you
were supposed to pay your bills, but instead watched videos on YouTube all
afternoon.
Robby Macdonell is
the CEO of Rescuetime,
a service that shows you how you spend your time electronically. When he thinks
digital clutter, two distinct forms come to mind.
“One is the desktop
with a million different icons on it,” he says. “The other type is all of the
information streams, moving clutter. The things that are hitting you
from all different angles, trying to capture your attention throughout the
day.”
The latter, he says,
“are really problematic if they’re not kept under control.”
Heed the hallmarks of
clutter
“Right
now, the thing most people don’t realize is how little time they have in the
normal work day to actually focus….”
Robby
Macdonell Rescuetime
The human brain likes
to scan its environment for new opportunities and contacts in any given moment,
a callback to an earlier time when forging new connections was vital to our
survival. The pings and buzzes of notifications—hallmarks of digital
clutter—take advantage of our evolutionary hardware.
Linda Stone, a former
employee at Apple and Microsoft who’s now on the board at MIT Media Lab, coined the
phrase “continuous partial attention” in 1998.
Continuous partial
attention is when we pay attention to a number of incoming information sources,
but only at a superficial level. In large doses, Stone has written, continuous
partial attention leads to more stress and
a lack of fulfillment.
Scott Hartley, a venture capitalist and
author of The Fuzzy and
the Techie, says a constant bombardment of information has led
to a loss of agency. You’re deluded into thinking you’re deeply involved in a
number of conversations, but you’re actually just partially, continuously
attentive at a very shallow level.
“We’re maybe focused
on one thing for 30 seconds,” says Hartley. “And then we receive a notification
or ding from some other app, and suddenly we’re pulled in that direction.”
According to data
from Rescuetime, the average person checks email or messaging services like
Slack once every five minutes. A constant environment of digital clutter—in the
form of electronic interruptions—creates a work environment rife with more stress,
more effort, and more frustration.
“Right now, the thing
that most people don’t realize is how little time they have in the normal work
day to actually focus in an uninterrupted way,” says Macdonell. “They don’t
realize the impact that has on performance.”
Clean up your desktop
Like a clean physical
desk, a clean desktop home screen creates a more tranquil space. But if it’s
cluttered with applications and documents, this can create a sense of
imbalance.
“If you have 200
icons on your desktop, can you go through and put them into folders?” Hartley
says. “It makes the experience of being on your computer that much more
focused.”
Like a clean physical desk, a clean desktop
home screen creates a more tranquil space.
After all, he says,
if you’re going to clean your desk to have a productive day at work, why not
clean your desktop?
You’ll want to set
aside some time to implement a sustainable system for organization—Lifehacker has some good choices. But if you’re pressed for
time and need a quick fix, clear everything out.
Do this by creating a
new folder on your desktop. Call it anything you want. Then, drag and drop
every un-filed document on your desktop into this folder.
Clear your phone
Do the same thing for
the apps on your phone’s home screen.
Create folders
for groups of apps, then drag and drop each app into a corresponding folder.
Don’t allow apps that hoover up your
time to remain on the homescreen.
For instance: a
“social media” folder will house Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. A
“financial” folder might house apps for your bank accounts and credit cards.
Move all of these
folders onto the second, third, or fourth page of your home screen. This will
make you have to tap two or three times to get to them, instead of just once,
making it harder for you to get sucked in.
If there’s an app you
need to have fast and easy access to, and it isn’t designed to hog your
attention (a finance app, for instance), feel free to keep it on your home
screen, outside of a folder.
But don’t allow apps
that hoover up your time to remain on your home screen, Hartley advises.
Keep a list—on paper
Christina Crook, a digital
wellness expert and author of The Joy of Missing Out: Finding Balance in a Wired World,
has a unique tip for staying on-task in the face of digital clutter.
On a piece of paper,
“write a list of the things you want to get done online before you open up your
computer,” she says. “Be ruthless with that list.”
By keeping a list and
using your computer only to get the list done, you drastically reduce your
likelihood of getting sucked into mindless surfing.
Build barriers to
getting online
Creating folders is a
good start, but you can take things a step further to protect your attention.
“I’ve removed the
Facebook app from my phone,” Hartley says. “I still use it periodically, for
things like Messenger. But I generally have to go to the Safari browser and put
in my password. It creates a little bit of a barrier—a bit of a friction
point—where I don’t do it waiting on line at Starbucks anymore.”
By introducing extra
steps—in this case, having to log in to Facebook through a web browser—you’re
forcing yourself to stop and think: Is it really a good idea for me to be on
social media right now?
Don’t use your phone
as an alarm clock
“I put it on a
charger in my kitchen, and I don’t have it in my bedroom,” Hartley says.
If the first thing
you do in the morning is grab your phone and turn off the alarm, you can very
quickly find yourself in your email inbox or scrolling through social media.
Put your phone in a different room, and use an old-fashioned alarm clock to
wake yourself up.
Do not disturb
“Getting friendly
with your device’s ‘do not disturb’ feature is huge,” says Macdonell.
By turning it on,
you silence calls, alerts, and notifications when your phone is locked. Most
devices, including computers, have them. It keeps you on task and away from
being interrupted.
Let your iPhone help
you
Screentime,
a newer iPhone feature, allows you to monitor how much time you spend on your
phone and individual apps.
“You can also set
limits in there,” Hartley says.
If you like
Instagram, but don’t want to spend more than an hour a day looking at pictures,
you can set a 60-minute time limit for your daily Instagram usage.
“It will block you
once you hit that limit,” Hartley says.
Flip the switch
When you leave work,
flip the switch.
The line between your
work life and your personal life has never been blurrier. Texts and emails
about work will be flooding in, even on nights and weekends. As a result,
“clocking out” has become a foreign concept, and many workers feel like they’re
always on.
The line between your work life and
your personal life has never been blurrier
But with so many
interruptions during a normal workday—pings, chats, emails—actual work has
never been harder to get done. People are being “thrashed around” by
information streams, Macdonell says, and it’s hurting people’s personal lives.
“We see a horseshoe
effect of people either coming in really early or staying really late because
they didn’t feel like they were getting any work done during the day,”
Macdonell says. “They have to let their most important work bleed out into
their personal time.”
Over time, he says,
that can lead to burn-out, upset whatever work/life balance you have, and harm
relationships with your family.
Observe a shutdown
ritual
Cal Newport, the
author of Deep Work, lists out his shutdown ritual here.
It includes a mantra that he says at the end of the day, signaling to himself
that he’s off the clock.
Crook has her own
method of making the transition, one that’s especially useful if you work from
home.
“Just stand for a
minute outside and concentrate on your breath,” she says.
Establish digital
no-fly zones
To maintain a healthy
distance from digital distraction, Hartley suggests making certain areas of
your home analog-only.
Make certain areas of your home digital
no-fly zones.
Design your home to
engage with physical things—not just devices. Whether it’s reading,
woodworking, or painting, those things can lead to more fulfillment and allow
your to reset from a lot of screen time.
“We can have a place
where we watch TV, but then there’s a quiet place where there’s no screens and
no phones,” Hartley says. “Maybe you just have books, or you just have a
guitar. A device bends to us, but we have to bend ourselves to a thing. If you
learn to play the guitar, you have to submit to how it hurts your fingers at
first.”
Find your clarity
Keep in mind why
you’re doing work in the first place. Maybe it’s because you’re truly
passionate about your current project. Or maybe it’s just to clear off your
to-do list so you can get home and spend time cooking with your spouse.
Keep in mind why you’re doing work in
the first place.
Crook says you need
to find something that motivates you, the reason you’re doing work in the first
place. Getting to the bottom of this reason isn’t easy for everyone, but Crook
has a clear first step: a half day—or, better yet, a full day—completely away
from technology.
Crook recommends people
“spend this time doing something they really love, with people that they really
love.”
Stay aware
Remember this: these
devices are designed to distract you.
“I look at my own
behavior,” says Hartley. “I wish I could say I’m a robot and I can withstand
any pressures of app notifications, but I react to them the same way that
anyone else does.”
We’re all human, says
Hartley. So the key to battling distraction is to stay aware and use technology
in an intentional way.
“I try to be
conscious of when I’m making a choice and when I’m sort of being pulled in a
certain direction,” Hartley says. “And I think that that’s what we can each do
as individuals: try to be conscious of how we’re engaging with technology, and
when we’re choosing to engage.”
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