Pruning Your Digital Contacts: Or How I Reduced Stress And Distractions And Reclaimed My Time

Last night I finally bit the bullet and deleted over 50 contacts from my phone, instant messaging, email accounts, and digital profiles. This is something that I started doing last year and have been trying to make a yearly habit of doing. By removing all my useless and unmaintained contacts I am removing a giant black hole that sucks up tons of my time, causes distraction, and is constantly getting in the way of important tasks.

I would suggest you do the same for a the following reasons. It is a very cathartic action. Think of it as a digital spring cleaning. Out with the old and in with the new as it were. It takes away the visual clutter that causes needless distraction in everyday life. How many times have you gone to one of your digital profiles with a specific purpose in mind and ended up reading about things that people you havent talked to in years have done? The same happens when making phone calls, sending instant messages or emails. It's also a great barometer for helping you determine the contacts you want/need to keep. If you're on the fence about a contact, delete it. If the contact is important enough it will find its way back in to your address book. Lastly it will help you build stronger relationships with the contacts that are left after the pruning and give you time to build and cultivate new ones. You've just freed up a ton of time by getting rid of all those useless contact, how about you take some or even all of the time saved and put it back into your current relationships. Or use that time to go out and find and build new ones.

Go ahead click that delete button. You will be surprised at just how many hours you can get back. How many relationships you can make stronger. How many new relationships you can make. If nothing else I'm sure you will pleased with having an environment that is a little less stressful.

How has your life changed since you last did a digital contact pruning?