Boost Your Side Hustle Productivity With a Digital Declutter
Is your inbox overflowing with unread emails? Have you subscribed to loads of great freebies to help you on your side hustle journey, but now the amount of incoming messages is overwhelming? Finding a specific email is almost impossible as you have to wade through copious amounts of junk to locate it. The answer? A regular digital declutter.
Signing up to lead magnets can be a great way to help boost your side hustle. There are so many content creators offering fantastic information for free (obviously me included - start finding time for your side hustle today with my free handy guide). The only downside is that it usually means subscribing to their email list. Whilst you can immediately unsubscribe you might be missing lots more great help in the form of their weekly emails, blog posts or podcasts. Therefore automatically unsubscribing might not be a good idea either.
The problem is that you then let it run for a while and forget about it, allowing your inbox to get fuller and fuller. If you’re anything like me there are probably lots of email sequences being sent out to you as you sign up for loads of lead magnets. But if you find that you’re not reading any of them, it’s probably time to unsubscribe.
Before you start your email digital declutter though, check whether their information might be helpful for your own content creation. I subscribe to emails from several time management coaches and find what they send me useful when it comes to creating my own content. Obviously I don’t copy them, but I take their idea and apply it to my niche i.e. finding time for a side hustle. My tip is to create some inbox folders for different categories. I must admit, this is a work in progress for me, but something which I have done on Instagram where I save posts into various collections e.g. hooks, calls to action, time management tips.
I suggest building a regular ‘digital decluttering’ slot into your calendar, even if it’s just once every couple of months. In that way you’ll be prompted to take a good hard look at your inbox and decide what to keep and what to let go. Be brutal. If you haven’t read an email in a couple of months, no matter how useful it might be, you’re probably not going to get around to looking at it. You can always sign up to the freebie again in the future where the same welcome sequence will probably still be in place. And if you need more help with managing email whilst building a side hustle take a look at this post this post all about email management for side hustlers.
Social media is a great tool for connecting and promoting a side hustle (and if you don’t already follow me over on Instagram - where you’ll get daily tips for finding time for your side hustle, here’s where to find me), but it can also be a vortex of distraction. Unfollow accounts that don't interest you anymore. Think about the posts you just scroll on past. And as funny as all those dog videos are (guess what I spend my time watching), do you really want to look back and think that you spent a large part of your time looking at other people’s four-legged friends just because they’re cute. Maybe just keep a couple of your favourite ones to indulge in occasionally.
The other area to consider when doing a digital declutter is your personal computer. Whilst signing up to loads of freebies clogs up your inbox with unwanted emails, your hard drive can get cluttered with all of those freebies. Mine is full of content I’ve created in the past, photos I’ve downloaded from my phone and stuff I don’t even remember putting on there or know why I thought it was a good idea at the time.
Going through your saved documents on your pc is going to take a while, so it may be better done in short bursts over a couple of weeks. It’s worth thinking about creating folders for stuff you do want to keep so you can find it again in the future. Then take a look at each saved document and either delete it or put it into one of the folders that you’ve created.
In the future, when you save or create a new document make sure you put it in one of your folders so you can find it easily when you need it. As with unsubscribing from emails it’s worth creating a regular slot for decluttering your pc. Once you’ve got a system in place it won’t take so long as the first time you tackle it.
The upside of all of this work is that as the digital clutter diminishes it will be easier and quicker to find what you’re looking for, whether that’s on your pc or in your inbox. Then you will find yourself not only with more time, but also with more headspace. This newfound brain space is going to help you have the mental capacity to come up with more creative ideas and strategies for your side hustle. In other words, you’ll have more time for your side hustle, which is why you’re here.
If you’d like more help finding time for your side hustle then take a look at my course ‘How to Find Time for a Side Hustle’. For just £49 you get six bite-sized lessons to help you to create and protect time to work on your side hustle, so your dream can become a reality. Click here to find out more.