I know this sounds silly to a lot of people, but I like my e-life to be like my real life. Organized and minimal! Disclaimer: I know not everyone has, or will make the time to do this kind of thing! I'm lucky that way I guess!
Almost a year ago I decided to make some major life decisions. Besides moving, I opted to pare down both my material possessions and my electronic possessions.
- I deactivated or deleted several of my accounts. Facebook was spared (which I drastically altered - more on that later) as well as Pinterest, and Twitter. (I didn't join Instagram until a few months ago!)
- I changed my e-mail address.
- I cleaned up my online albums.
- I cleared my iPod off totally, beginning fresh with a slimmed down music library.
- I moved hundreds of photos from my computer to other storage devices.
- Cut time online & turned off notification alerts.
When it came to Facebook, I was conflicted whether or not to check out. On one hand, it's a great way to keep up with friends and family - but on the other hand, I found myself often aggravated at people. It seemed like certain interactions made me feel sad or negative. Unfriending certain people who bummed me out would surely cause a nonsensical argument. I was on the verge of just deactivating my Facebook when I remembered Facebook has made it so easy to solve this very problem. The absolute first thing I did was remove people. A lot of people. Like a hundred. (Who really has that many friends?) The next thing I did was stop following communities I no longer enjoyed. A lot of brand pages went out the window here.
Now for the people I could not remove, I simply unchecked the "show in newsfeed" option OR set it to only show me life events. This way I didn't miss out on important milestones. As a bonus, I followed positive communities on Facebook. These steps filled my newsfeed with amazing energy and still let me keep in touch with people. I actually enjoy Facebook again! (I also suggest looking in to their "restricted" list feature, which I think is ingenious.)
As for Pinterest, I was never going to ditch it. I enjoy it way too much! It's my go to app for time killing. But it did require an overhaul. The best thing I did was creating a "Pin now, Read later" board. Which has been awesome to store those articles you want to read, but instead you pin them and never get around to because they get lost in another board. Later if you DO happen across that pin, you find the it is a dead end. Darn, just when you were finally going to catch up on those 72 must know beauty tricks... ;-)
If the pin turns out to be something awesome you want to keep, then move it to it's relative board. If not, delete it and be done with it. I also recommend occasionally reviewing your boards to keep them from becoming crowded with pointless shit you are never going to use/not interested anymore/whatever excuse. If you've had your Pinterest account for some time, you may be surprised at some of the things you saved.
Twitter. Oh Twitter. I am constantly considering the deletion of my this account. I'm not even sure why I keep it. I'm horrible about keeping up with it, and I don't even have notifications turned on. Again I reiterate, I have no idea why I keep Twitter active.
When it comes to my e-mail address, I guard it. I don't get a lot of shop emails (they just encourage me to spend, I don't want that.) I also don't use it to sign up for anything I'm unsure about. I use a Yahoo email address for that stuff. Guard your email, people!
Last on the list, I silenced alerts for basically every social app I have. Calls and texts are the only ones that actually "ding" at me. (I still get Facebook notifications, they are just silenced.)
So that's it for now. Those are just some things I've done to make my online time more enjoyable. Have you deleted any of your social networking accounts? Did you never look back or did you miss it??
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