Look around you- we live a life online, wired up and app-ed up! Our phones, our laptop, tablets, even our smart TV’s are full of stuff and what was supposed to make us efficient and productive can do JUST THE OPPOSITE when it gets out of control. Let’s take a dive into what we are using and whether its helping or hurting us as we do what we do.
I’m going to tackle the TOP 5 categories to get you started-
- STREAMLINE YOUR PHONE by effectively using your phone features you can leverage the best apps available to help it help you the way it should.
- Take some inventory of everything on your phone-are you using the feature to organize your apps into categories and naming them in a way that it makes it easy for you to find and use what you downloaded for a certain purpose? Title the tiles with obvious names: BANKING, NEWS, MUSIC, SOCIAL MEDIA, rearrange as needed- and take some time to DELETE what you don’t use- save space- you can always upload it again later
- Use the HOME SCREEN as your GO-TO summary of apps you use most often the HOME SCREEN is prime real estate on your phone so move the apps you use/need throughout the day or refer to most often.
- Leverage The Power of Widgets you can set widgets that come with certain applications so they always display info on your home screen: the weather, train schedules, meditation or step counters are great and will operate without opening the actual application to view the data
- Use the power of GOOGLE CALENDAR having it on your home screen will give you the snapshot of everything by the day/week/month- email links/websites/appointments
- GATHER UP THOSE CORDS there are terrific docking stations with multiple outlets that let you powerup various devices all at once and often offer cable clips/or channels to untangle the mess at the same time. Some other stations also have compartments where you can store your keys, glasses, loose change- it becomes and all-in-one place for everything.
- CATEGORIZE THE KEY APPS
- Factor this into your “app choices”- every new application has a learning curve, but if it takes too much time or is too confusing to master it- THEN DELETE IT. Before you download think- “will I really use this program, will it make things easier or more efficient, if it doesn’t work for you- forget it.
- Notifications can make you crazy- switch off all the beeps and blinks that tend to be more of a distraction and an annoyance-and who needs that! Did you know that it takes on average 23 minutes to 15 seconds to re-focus back to what you were doing before the notification alert interrupted you?
- EEEK THOSE EMAILS!!! The stream of messaging by email and the various folders they come into can start like a drip of water and quickly become a tidal-wave of in now time! Build a “dam” with these simple fixes:
- Read when Ready-you can schedule your email platform to only download or alert you of emails to come through when you have the time to review it.
- Use flags to categorize your emails based on importance- work colleagues, clients, urgent, followup- whatever makes sense for you
- Adopt the FAT mentality: FILE, ACT, TOSS with every message and be diligent about DELETE
- Use subject lines that make sense about the content- so you don’t waste time searching through piles of messages to find what you need to respond to and why
- Use filters to make your emails seamless: create templates for your signature or even certain messages that you send frequently- only change what’s necessary
- CLEAN OUT YOUR FOLDERS like you CLEAN OUT THE REFRIGERATOR – get rid of old and unnecessary messages at least once a month- they only take up space and storage on your hard drive and make you less efficient
- CONTROL THE PHOTO BUG Sure, the quality of the camera on our phones are not only amazing but ridiculously convenient. Here are some quick tips of what to SNAP and what to SCRAP:
- When you take a picture, organize it as soon as possible by creating an album and move the new picture into the album (category) so you can find it, share it, post or print it easily.
- Harness the power of your phone’s platform- I-Phones can organize your photos by date, location of where they were taken and can automatically sort them if an album already exists. Other great photo apps are: FLICKER or SLIDEBOX and are worth taking a look at if they work for you.
- Review your pictures the day you take them and delete the ones you don’t like as soon as possible. Be discriminating- create a temporary album and call it THE BEST OF TODAY’S PICTURES- and move all the images into that album so you can review them all in sequence.
