Spring Clean Your Digital Life
Spring (Photo credit: Charalampos Konstantinidis)
It’s finally here! It is officially Spring! Usually when this day rolls around I am packing up my sweaters and bringing out the tank tops – – but with the chilly weather still here in NYC (UGH) I thought I would get into the mood by spring cleaning my digital life instead.
It seems like a daunting task to go through the TONS of files and folders that have been clogging up your hard drive but never fear I’ve got you covered. Here is a list (of course) of ways to help refresh your desktop, emails, and your social media accounts! Your computer will thank you for the fresh start 😉
Untweep: Get rid of those lingering twitter accounts that you follow with Untweep. This will go through and pick out accounts that haven’t tweeted in x amount of days (you decide, can be 1 day of not tweeting or a whole month) and unfollow them for you. This is a great way to clean out your account!
Unfriending binge: Not a bad a idea to go through Facebook and unfriend people you don’t interact with! You come to realize you may not even know some of the people on your friend list or you just may be sick of seeing those old acquaintances status updates you skim over anyway! This way — you won’t miss the good stuff.
Unroll.me*: We all sign up for newsletter after newsletter to get promotional deals but all they end up doing is clogging up our inboxes. I was subscribed to almost 300 without even realizing it! Unroll.me will handle this messy problem for you. This site will go through your email account and locate each and every newsletter you’re signed up to receive and unsubscribe for you. (Except for the ListProducer.com email updates — I know you want those. Sign up here!) No need to go to each site and do it yourself- such a time saver! See more about it here!
Clean out your Browser: I bookmark things all the time that I find on the web like recipes, fun articles, or sites that I want to go back to and explore. Because it’s hidden away it builds up quickly. Go through and delete unwanted items. It’s also smart to go back and delete cookies and your browser history – tidy everything up nicely!
Backup your data: It’s smart to keep files safe and back them up! Sites like Dropbox are perfect for this. You can store as many files as you want including pictures and images. This allows you to make sure nothing gets lost in case a coffee spill on your laptop happens and it opens up some room on your hard drive! I’d also suggest going through your Dropbox account and clearing that out too. Any old photos or documents that you’re not going to use anymore should go. Do not forget Evernote either! The same goes for your work data too. Backup as much as you can. No one likes to think too much about losing their data or crucial work documents, but you can never be too safe.
Clear out the apps: We download so many apps with the intent to “try them out,” but usually never do! This happens to me all the time and I now have two full screens of random apps that I never use. I cleared them all out and now I have much more space on my phone – more room to try even more apps now 😉 Test out a few of my faves here.
I hope these tips help with the start of your digital spring cleaning! What other ways do you organize your cyber life?
Happy spring everyone!
*Unroll.Me makes money by learning what people stay subscribed to and what they unsubscribe from – that data is valuable and helps corporations learn what people want and what they don’t want. Your email address is NOT sold. If you’d like to keep your subscription list private you’ll need to unsubscribe manually from individual email subscriptions. If you appreciate the swiftness that you can unsubscribe from multiple sources while helping brands service customers better then Unroll.Me is for you!
Get More Done By Speed Reading
Photo credit: iBjorn)
With only 24 hours in a day, finding time to get everything done in our hectic lives is really a challenge. Each day I find new articles, books, or little tidbits that I am dying to read but they just end up collecting dust in a pile on my counter or get lost in one of my cyber folders – what a waste! I’ve started using a new system to capture some of the tweets and articles I want to read later but it’s not enough. It’s hard enough to read what I need to (especially now that I am attending B-School) and it’s frustrating that I have no time to read for fun. But recently, I thought… “What if I could speed read?” that would solve this problem, right?
Speed reading is a technique that allows you to obtain the material you are reading in half the time as normal by reading groups of words at once. It may seem strange and it’s a little intimidating at first, but it really works !
Here are two tools that I found for quick and easy speed reading:
ReadQuickApp: This app displays an article (no books) of your choice one word at a time at the pace you are comfortable with. You can start at the slowest speed and gradually move on to get used to the technique! It will also tell you how long an article will take you to read based on your words per minute. (Cost $9.99 and is available for the iPhone)
Spritz: Want to read a whole novel in 90 minutes or less? Well now you can with Spritz. This app works by displaying one word at a time with a “fixation point.” One letter of the word is a different color and that is where you focus your eye. This allows you to focus on the word individually and obtain it, rather then moving your eyes side to side – this leads to distraction. This app can train you to read up to 1,000 words a minute – that is some serious speed reading! (Comes out around March 21st for Android, Javascript for web, and iOS. Test it out on their site here.)
If you can’t get into the speed reading that’s okay- it’s not for everyone! There are other ways to cut down reading time by using some old fashioned skimming techniques:
Yahoo News Digest (formerly Summly): No time to read lengthy news articles? This app will summarize them for you. Each story is created from multiple news sources that way you are consuming the essential information. You get all the important stuff without wasting your time! And it’s free!
Need 2 Know: This awesome free newsletter gives you “Need 2 Know” news coverage! It’s one of the first things I read in the morning. They consider themselves the CliffsNotes for news. In each news category they sum up everything you need in 1-2 sentences. Want to know more details later – no worries, they provide the links for the full coverage.
How do you get all your reading done? Let me know which reading techniques you like best – I’m always looking for new ideas.
Where Does Luck Come From?
Is it luck that opens doors in our life or is it our hard work and determination that pushes us forward? I think that it’s a little bit of both! When I look back at the good things that have happened to me — sometimes I’m the one who creates my own luck! I think that Oprah puts it perfectly, “I believe luck is preparation meeting opportunity. If you hadn’t been prepared when the opportunity came along, you wouldn’t have been ‘lucky.'”
It’s always good to be prepared for the time that opportunity comes knocking at your door, and to always keep an open mind.
So to get you inspired, and of course, in honor of St. Patrick’s day, here are 7 quotes to lead you to that lucky pot of gold 🙂
