Is your email inbox overflowing? Do you have so many Facebook or Twitter messages that you just never login anymore?
This is a frustrating feeling and I totally understand. I often have an email inbox or other social media account that is overflowing. But thankfully, prevention makes it’s easier to keep up with all the emails and social media accounts.
If you don’t keep your priorities in check and stay on a good schedule, it’s easy to get run over with all the digital accounts, photos, and emails. Here are some techniques to help keep you from getting overwhelmed.
Where to Begin
If you get too far behind, set aside 15-20 minutes (early in the morning or late in the evening) where you can exclusively focus on organizing your messages.
Separate the messages that need prompt responses from the other messages that can be looked at later.
Unsubscribe from all commerce or shopping newsletters. This not only helps to avoid the temptation of buying the daily deal/sale but it keeps your inbox clean.
Archive and store emails and photos that you can view later, so you can get to them quickly. It keeps you focused on what’s important and what needs to be dealt with right now. It’s just a mess to sort through if you don’t have some sort of system.
Keeping it Current
Once you get caught up, it’s easy to set aside 2-3 minutes a day to “file away” messages and photos for your response later. Creating a simple and easy routine that works with your daily schedule is easy and doesn’t take a lot of time.
Surprisingly, a good time to catch up on emails and social networking is while you’re in the bathroom or standing in the grocery line (and not playing angry birds). Hey, you gotta use what time you’ve got! We all hate wasting time, so this helps use every opportunity available to respond to emails.
Between Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, Digg and the loads of other social sites, it can get overwhelming very quickly.
Going Forward
The simplest way to avoid becoming a digital hoarder is to be selective with your contacts and the people you network with.
Keep things simple by deleting any outdated or unused accounts. You’re not doing anyone else favors by following or liking them just because they do it to you.
It’s more beneficial to spend good quality time answering and responding to a smaller amount of people, than to reciprocate actions but never respond.
Delete the accounts you don’t have a quality relationship with, so you focus on the ones that are loyal followers. Create an invisible line between your business and personal accounts.
When it’s time to work, then focus on your business emails and media. Then later you can focus on all the personal networking and emails.
This method helps to focus on relaxing when it’s time to relax or working when it’s time to work. Keeping them separate mentally, can really help streamline your digital media and avoid becoming a digital hoarder.
The Bad Side
If you’ve seen the show Hoarding: Buried Alive then you can see the affects that holding on to that much stuff can do. The same can be true with digital hoarder, it can start taking on a life of it’s own.
Being disorganized with your online accounts can cost you time, peace of mind and can destroy your career.
I have missed important emails, and excellent opportunities because I wasn’t filtering my messages or taking my digital hoarding seriously. By starting small, keeping everything current and learning to be selective with who and what you subscribe to, you can keep your digital life under control.
How do you deal with digital hoarding?
Photo Credit: EvelynGiggles
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I'm an ex-small business accountant who aims to help freelancers get out of debt and organize their life. And through the recently launched 
