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How many apps do you have on your phone?
If it’s anything like OneTonSoupp on Reddit,
“My friends and I are debating. They say that there are too many apps on their phone and that their home screen now looks like the house of a hoarder. But I love all my apps. I have diffrent apps for the diffrent stores I shop at and I get rewards from that.”
Wait, isn’t just our physical house supposed to be compared to a hoarder… is our digital stuff being compared to one now, too?
Looks like it. After all, like our physical environment, our devices are an extension of our mind =(as noted in Annie McMurphy’s book, Extended Mind). So keeping them clean n’ fresh is key to feeling fresh ourselves.
As the Mindful Ambition says,
Keep what matters to you, and get rid of the rest.
Explaining that,
It’s simple in theory. But in execution, it’s difficult! Owning fewer possessions flies in the face of our natural behavior patterns. We acquire things, get more stuff, and hold onto it for years and years.
Now with the endless rise of digital apps and information overload, this has only transcended from the physical realm… into our digital one.
Image from ==Giphy==
Now that we’ve compared your physical environment to your digital one (sorry!), I had to ask myself:
Is there any way to stop cluttering my digital space?
Personally, as a solopreneur Graphic Designer, there are countless new ways of doing things, and lots of apps that claim they can automate my work. Yet, I never have enough time to go through them, yet… I know that I need to.
While there may be new apps on the rise seemingly every day, here are 3 strategies I’m using that may help you, too.
Decluttering my email inbox w/ tags
When looking at a shiny new app, I don’t have time to research how it’ll help me, so I’ll just input my email and see if their weekly emails might change my mind.
The thing is, if both of us use email similarly… I never read through them.
It’s funny, isn’t it? I see the shiny wrapping of an app that I think will help, but then I store it away in the form of email after email, get tired of looking at them, and then delete the emails anyway.
With my Proton email I’ve discovered a cool way of helping me organize, and that’s through tags.
Screenshot from Author
When an email comes in I’ll just give it a quick label. Often this gives me the initiative to batch read that specific category/tag and know if I need something. Then the rest is history!
Stick to one app per category
Do I need a highlighting app? Ok I see it’s free, dang this other one is pretty good too, why don’t I use them both?
No OJ! Stick to one and try it out.
Not only will 2 apps take up twice the space, but will I really have time to see what works?
I’ll admit though, recently an app called Readwise was suggested to me and I might have downloaded it… along with the other highlighter app I was using called Excerpt.
Screenshot from Author
The thing is, I’m planning on making the switch when I earn enough to afford the cool features of Readwise. So for now, I keep it in a hidden compartment in my apps.
Image from Author
That doesn’t make me guilty, right?
Researching on my laptop
It’s so simple to click install, isn’t it?
When looking at ProductHunt, when I see perfectly designed mock-ups with a color palette I love… it’s hard to resist.
That’s why researching apps on my computer not only makes it easier, but helps me keep better judgement at what apps I really need.
Anyway, I think iPhone’s in part were made to be easier to both download and buy apps. So instead of accidentally thumbing the “buy” button, I can give a quick click off of the page.
Takeaway
After using these techniques and the Mindful Ambition’s advice, my iPhone has become a minimalist extension of my brain rather than a maximalist.
Now I stick to getting what I need to done, and not feeling overwhelmed at all the apps I would need to check.
My work as a Graphic Designer might be on the internet, but I can still find strategies to minimize the amount of information overload and find a balance of having what I really need.