Be deliberate

If you’re like me, in the past couple of weeks you received a ton of emails from all the services you are (or were) signed up to. And if you’re like me you used that as a reminder that you have a ton of crap laying around in your digital life that doesn’t need to be there.

My digital cleanup was already underway, 2017 has been a good year on that front but there’s always something else you can throw away, especially when it comes to digital stuff.

In the process of shutting down accounts and unsubscribing from newsletters I started thinking about the way we interact with the digital world. We tend to sign up to newsletters on a whim, we give away our emails in exchange for what’s usually a meaningless digital freebie we probably don’t need and will never use. And that’s mostly because the digital life rarely feels cluttered. But it is. At least mine is, or was.

I’m currently subscribed to two newsletters. I want to receive both. I want to read them both and I wait for them to arrive in my inbox. This is something you don’t normally feel about a newsletter. The feeling is usually goddamn another newsletter... and not YES! Craig’s newsletter is in my inbox. Newsletters live in my inbox but I have a separate Paper Doc where I save the urls of everything I'm subscribed to. I don’t need to do it but it’s an extra step I impose to myself. It’s my attempt to be deliberate and mindful in this digital world.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, take 5 minutes to unsubscribe from a bunch of newsletters, shut down a few accounts you don’t use. You’ll instantly feel better.