How To Get Digitally Organized
Happy New Year, Deeters! Welcome to 2020! As we enter this new decade, many of us are reflecting on the past 10 years. A handful of people are still processing how much technology has taken over our lives and are feeling overwhelmed by it. Although the idea of getting digitally organized may scare some of you, it’s time to face reality and wrangle your digital clutter!
Calendar: In order to start the year off on the right foot, lets make sure that you’re getting to all of your appointments on time and managing multiple schedules. When it comes to getting your calendar organized, what’s most important is committing to one calendar. There’s nothing worse than having to keep track of multiple calendars in multiple planners or apps. We are big fans of using Google calendar that translates onto your phone and computer, keeping it all in one place all the time. Consistency is key. Keep your verbiage the same (Call w/ Dr. Smith, Appt w/ Trainer, etc.). Remember what I said about multiple calendars? If you choose to use your Google calendar you can create multiple calendars, ie: personal, work, kids and have them each color coded. The best part is that you can choose which calendars you want to see at any time. You can easily make sure your work commitment doesn’t interfere with your personal life and that your hair appointment isn’t the same time you have to pick up your kids from basketball practice.
Email: Emails can very quickly become traps for clutter. First, we suggest purging as many emails as possible to clear the visual clutter. Then categorize your remaining emails into folders. The names and categories of folders should be whatever makes sense to you. Some example folders are: TO RESPOND, TO DO, ARCHIVE while others might have it by an activity or upcoming event. If you find yourself receiving an overwhelming amount of subscription or junk emails, check out Unroll.Me where you can unsubscribe from emails with a swipe or click of a button.
Passwords: How many times do you have to sign into something and can’t remember your password? OR, how many of you have the same password for most of your logins? If sirens are going off in your head like you just won the lotto then this is a serious problem that needs to be fixed. When it comes to saving your passwords digitally, we love using Dashlane. It uses the strongest encryption available to protect your passwords and personal data. It can be used across multiple devices if you pay for their premium service (100% worth it!) and will auto-fill your username and passwords for you on websites as well as come up with super complex ones that you can’t think of on your own that will help keep your accounts super secure. If you need to share passwords with others, it can do that for you as well as grant access to all passwords to whomever you choose in case of an emergency.
Reminders: This is one of my all time favorites! Use the Reminders app that’s a native app on iPhone to create lists of any tasks that need to be accomplished. You can set a date, time and place of when you want to receive the reminder as well. One of my favorite parts of Reminders is its sharing capability so others can be aware of what their tasks are or what groceries need to be picked up.
Task Management: If you need to take your task management one step further, check out our favorite task manager: Asana. Create endless to-do lists that you can share in real-time with co-workers, family members or any other groups you’re a part of. It’s a super robust password management app.
If you’d like to learn more about how to get digitally organized, we teach a digital organizing workshop at our studio in North Cambridge where we go into all of this and then some in great detail.
And drumroll please…because this has been so popular, we are about to launch our online digital courses as well! Make sure you’re signed up for our email newsletter and stay tuned so that you’re one of the first to know when it launches. Now let’s go get digitally organized!