In conjunction with the premise behind yesterday’s post, I’ve been reducing my screen clutter.
This has been an ongoing project, but I’ve ramped it up a bit in the last two or three weeks.
I’ve unsubscribed from email lists that I tried out that turned out to be meh. I’ve unsubscribed from most retail. (It’s clogging up my inbox and encouraging me to buy stuff I don’t need.) I’ve unsubscribed from email lists that I used to love but I’m in a different place now.
I finished all of my games in Words With Friends and let friends know I wasn’t going to start new ones, at least for now.
I did delete that photo game app after the contests I was in were over.
A few games on my iPad were easy to get lost in. I deleted them.
Is deleting email and playing Twenty how I want to spend my life? Twenty was great when I had hours on a plane. (I have trouble reading on planes, unfortunately.) But when I have other things to do? It’s just escapism. It allows the butt-couch cement to set.
I was grown up when email came to be. I remember when it was exciting to get mail. Now, the account that I have strictly for personal correspondence is usually free of new mail. The account I use for my online accounts, subscriptions, and anything else internet-based? It gets plenty. (And not as much as some others I know.) Whittling it down.
For example … in the last four or five months, I’ve subscribed to a whole bunch of photography-based lists.
It turns out that some of them are actually about running your photography business. Unsubscribe. That’s not me right now. Whether it becomes me later or not is irrelevant.
Others send lots of email but not a lot of content. Unsubscribe. It’s not that I expect to get people’s knowledge for free, but if you’re going to offer—deliver.
There have been a couple of times that I’ve been looking to go to my get-out-of-living-free cards, and they’re not there. So I went and did something else.
It’s not that having mindless or silly or “unproductive” time is bad. But when it’s the go-to, when it gets in the way of doing things I actually do want to do but they take a bit more energy, then they’re a problem.
It happened often.
(Having energy left when I get home from work helps a lot.)
So. Out with some of the time-suckers. They’re not all gone, but time is better-managed. (If I could figure out how to keep in casual contact with people without Facebook, I’d ditch that, too, but there are too many positives. Just need to manage the mindless scrolling.)