Other Ways of Subtracting
Here are some other ways to subtract before you add. Feel free to add your ideas that I didn’t mention into the comment section below.
Unsubscribe from annoying newsletters. Not this one, but if you never read my newsletters, I’d rather you unsubscribe.
Delete online accounts that you don’t use or, better yet, avoid opening a new account on distracting sites in the first place.
Have only one tool for a role. If you have a multi-functional tool, great. However, you don’t need multiple tools that do the same thing. For example, you don’t need five different to-do list apps.
Strengthen Your Toolkit
Depending on what you do and what matters to you most, you can add additional tools to your toolbox to further increase your productivity and performance.
A common mistake people made was to first purchase or download the tools and then come up with how they’re going to use them.
The worst thing that can happen is when these overcrowded snippets get slipped into your projects and daily to-do list. It becomes the distractions itself and ultimately leads to you feel overwhelmed and burnout.
Weekly organization. Every week, I go through my inbox to remove items I no longer need and move items into projects, to-do lists, or reference folders accordingly. I also go through the reference folder to see if there is anything I want to address in the coming week. If yes, I will move them to the inbox or to-do list.
Monthly organization. Every month, I go through my project list to realign them with my goals. There is nothing to tidy up monthly since I’ve done that every week except for resetting my priorities.
Quarterly organization. Every three months, I go through my desktop and Download folder on my laptop to clear files that I longer need.
If You Want To Win, Develop a Winning Environment
As more and more people are working online today, learning how to design a good digital space gives you an advantage. If you’re a knowledge worker, this skill becomes crucial to your day-to-day productivity and performance.
Personally, I see technology — the Internet and digital tools — as a great advancement in human evolution. But like anything that creates leaps and bounds of progress, it has the potential to destroy us if we’re not being careful.
Whether you like it or not, the environment — both physical and digital — you’re in is going to shape you and your life outcomes. The goal is not trying to escape from them. Instead, learn to make the best use of what you’ve got to develop a winning environment for yourself.