Digital Bankruptcy
/In the final minutes of New Year’s Eve before our family and friends began to arrive at our home to celebrate the new year, I declared digital bankruptcy.
Since a bankruptcy is designed to relieve someone of their financial debts, it was time for me to do that with most of my digital debts.
Over the last few weeks, I have been preparing to get rid of most of my digital debts. These digital debts were nearly all my own making, so I only had myself to blame. But to blame wasn’t my intention. Nor was it to sit with each piece of digital clutter and determine what I was going to do with it. The time for that had passed. I resolved (or removed) many of these digital debts before the last day of the year, but when it came down to it, I was going to trash it one fell swoop.
The debts, as minor as they may have been, carried with them some weight. The weight of tasks left undone, ideas left unexplored, words left unread or unwritten. And after collecting these debts for some time, I found I was constantly aware of their collective weight.
Here’s what my digital bankruptcy cleared out:
282 Unread emails
243 Open Reminders
219 Open tabs on all browsers, all devices
156 My List / Queue / Next Up on all streaming platforms
98 Unheard podcast episodes
19 Unread text messages
Once I did it, I sat in marvel of how nice an empty inbox looked. And then gazed at my empty Reminders app (that has never happened!) and immediately felt apprehension, regret, and ultimately relief when I re-opened my podcast app, Overcast, and saw nothing there. Nothing at all. Sure, there are a bunch of episodes I’ll never hear, but there were also many that just had a minute left (my way of reminding myself that I wanted to listen again… something I rarely did).
The first day post-bankruptcy, January 1, was a perfect lazy day at home with my wife. There was also a terrific feeling that I couldn’t just easily open my Reminders app and see all the things I wanted or needed to get done. The feeling was, and continues to be, joyful!
Of course, I didn’t impose any rules that meant I couldn’t start adding digital debts right away. But I resisted adding any from memory. If it was a task left open or an unheard podcast episode, it was going to stay as such. It was cool to see podcasts pop in my feed as they were released. Since Overcast was empty, it made it very easy to see new shows arrive - and even easier to finally unfollow ones that I wasn’t listening to anyway. Same with email. I don’t get a lot of crap mail (differentiating it from junk mail, spam) but now I am on a mission to reduce what comes to me. There will be lots of unsubscribing in the weeks ahead. I generally add a lot of Reminders throughout my day (“hey Siri, remind me to ….”). But now without any in there I was surprised that I went the entire first day before I added any new ones.
Now, in the second day after declaring digital bankruptcy, I feel less worried about the unknown (well, once known but now forgotten) things. If it was important, it will find its way back to me.
Happy New Year. I’m celebrating a lot this year, including decluttering my digital life.