Humans spend a record amount of time on their gadgets, especially with the pandemic and so many jobs and educational opportunities moving to remote activity. In fact, in 2022 the average American spends over 7 hours on a screen every single day. Spending even a fraction of that time viewing your work setup could absolutely drive you crazy, even more, if it isn’t properly organized.

With a change is seasons comes a change of pace, and preparations to end the year on a high note. Here are some quick and easy ways to declutter your digital life, to keep your workspace efficient. After all, a streamlined process leads to productive work and innovation.

1. Create Hierarchy in Your Project Management System

If your project management system was thrown together quickly while your business scaled, or if you haven’t quite gotten your organization perfected within the space, spend some time here first. If you have projects set up that belong within bigger projects – like several campaigns under one client – then consider creating a workflow with your client as a project, and managing nested projects for that client under it.

Scheduling about an hour of workflow organization time into your workday can help you better manage your time later when you need to find information on past work. It can also help you to better understand your communication structure with each client, instead of within each project as a separate entity.

2. Establish Hierarchy With Your Files

If you have professional assets within a drive system (Google, Dropbox, hard drive, thumb drive, etc.), you will want to ensure you have a hierarchy set up to ensure you can find and identify each asset quickly. Even if you use digital asset management for nonprofits or any other organization type, you need to organize your assets in a way so you and your teammates can find any information instantly.

For example, if you handle social media professionally, perhaps you have a folder of every visual asset for the month of September in one folder. Maybe each folder is set up into days or weeks, or according to social platform. It is up to you to come up with a hierarchy that you understand, and that you can later help your client understand. This can become especially helpful if you are moving up in or moving on from the company in the future.

3. Clean Out Your Mailbox

Tools like unroll.me have been created to succinctly unsubscribe from any newsletters and outreach options that may be cluttering your inbox on a regular basis. No longer want solicitations from your alma mater? (Does anyone?) Just check the box to unsubscribe! Really not trying to get any more promotional emails from the place you ordered office furniture from? Get it out of there!

If you do not have an unroll.me account or other option, block about 20 minutes during one of your workdays to manually unsubscribe from emails that no longer serve you. Yes, it can be a time-consuming project, but even 20 minutes can make a huge difference and cut down on annoying extra emails you just don’t have space for.

While you are at it, feel free to type in search terms and email addresses you can delete prior communication from. Mass delete what you can with a special focus on sent messages and your spam folder. This way, you won’t have to worry about reaching the capacity in your inbox, which can drastically slow down your communication time and present obstacles during busier times in the office.

If you are interested, make space in your schedule to exercise steps in the inbox zero method on a regular basis.

4. Create Labels in Your Gmail Inbox

“Trash,” “spam,” and “sent” are all commonly viewed in your label area, but are you utilizing this feature to the best of its abilities? What if you could open your inbox, click a tab at the left and see all of your relevant work emails? What if you had a tab set up for updated Google alerts on specific keyword searches or brands you work with? Do you get self-care subscriptions, journal prompts, or feel-good items in your inbox that you want to keep in one spot to indulge in after a busy day’s work?

You can create up to 500 labels in that left margin. Not that any one person needs that many options, but you can create labels based on different accounts at work, projects, and new client inquiries, instead of trying to balance everything in one place. With Hive’s custom, in-app Gmail integration, you can seamlessly recognize the fruits of your organizational efforts within your custom workspace.

Other fun ways to organize your inbox space can be found here.

5. Prioritize Bookmarks

Many of us use bookmarks to keep our most used projects and systems at the top of the search bar. Every quarter, take about 15 minutes to refresh the list of your top bookmarks, if not more often. This is a simple, yet effective, way to identify the priorities you need to satisfy in the immediate future.

6. Simplify Your Phone Screen

Your icons are what you see every day. If you use your cell phone for work – which many people do at this point – you will want to keep your work apps separate from your personal items. (No one needs Angry Birds in the same folder as their Google spreadsheets for that new client they are onboarding.)

You want your phone’s background, esthetic, and organization to be appealing enough to lift your senses when you look at it. A cluttered phone background will not do that for you. Thankfully, with today’s smartphone or mobile plan setup, all you have to do is click on an icon, wait until the icons on your screen start to shake, and drag the icon to where you would like it to be.

Try keeping it minimal and just putting your feel-good apps on the first page. Rearrange your work icons on a page you have to swipe to, so work isn’t top of mind when you access your phone. It’s amazing what a refresh on your home screen photo and organizing your icons into categories can do for productivity.

Set alarms for when push notifications are allowed to grace your screen. This will help you set boundaries around work hours as well.

There are plenty of updates you’ll want to make to your tech and your approach to work heading into fall. These are just some of the simplest options for when you have a few minutes here and there during the madness of your everyday.