We updated the article in 2026 - we went through the text, links and illustrative images.
New year, new resolutions. We want to be more efficient and cheerful. How about cleaning not only the closet and the kitchen, but also the online environment, where we often spend half a day.
Unfollow or unfriend
I've had enough of the mess on social networks, which I still go to occasionally. I thought about what bothers me. I'm not interested in rantings or frog wars about vaccines. The company has singled out profiles that are on the right or on the left and comment on everything happening, incite more hate, they simply have to go beyond me. That's why I started gradually unfollowing:
- profiles that deal with hate in comments
- profiles that deal with lies and half-truths
- spamming profiles that spread hoaxes
however, it was still not enough
- unfollow also went to profiles that constantly deal with politics
- I even unsubscribed from such a slice as startup, as they have slipped from startups to politics. Delete
- I also canceled the ptophiles that I am no longer interested in. Over time, you simply don't enjoy certain topics anymore and they just take up unnecessary time. Delete.
Friend, not friend. gone
Juraj Bednár wrote an interesting article about the current issue of social networks. Social networks – where next?
Unsubscribing from newsletters
During the year, we shopped online much more than before. I have accumulated many newsletter subscriptions. If you've already bought a car, you'll just be turned off by the fact that there are new, nicer, better and cheaper cars with better equipment. The same applies to phones, laptops, skis and clothes. Don't remind yourself of it unnecessarily.
If, like me, you haven't done this newsletter cleaning task in a few years, it's a good couple of hours worth of work.
There is bound to be someone here who has a professional deformity like me and keeps many newsletters just to see how your favorite brand communicates. How do they have a technologically correct newsletter, how do they use wording or graphics.
Calibrate your social media ads
The same goes for the ads you see. As in the previous point, you can flag the ads that screw you up and repeat for remarketing.
Removing Youtube channels that are recommended to you by Youtube
When I was choosing a car, I watched and subscribed to channels related to cars. But I really don't need to see other car reviews in the recommended videos.
Clean up your desktop and downloads
I've been planning this for months. I have most of the important information in the cloud, so it will go quickly. A friend told me an ancient trick. You take all the files and directories from the desktop and throw them into the new mess directory. Only if you already have brothel 1 to brothel 20, choose classic sorting instead.
Blocking the Facebook feed on a work laptop
I've been using it for years News Feed Eradicator for Facebook plugin for Google Chrome.
Cleaning bookmarks
If you save interesting websites to a service such as pocket, so you definitely have a million super articles stored there, which they sometimes want to get to. Maybe some are no longer relevant.
Cleaning notes
I use mac notebooks, someone uses evernote. If full-text search did not work in these services, I would probably have more order there. Unfortunately, sometimes I have a number in the speed without noting who it is. Or the shopping list from last February. Clean up.
Cleansing Asana
We in the company use asana as the brain of the company. CRM, project management, HR, company wiki. My ideal idea would be about a month of cleaning and reorganizing. Gradually…
Cleaning applications on the phone
I think that IOS has some function for this, that it automatically unloads unused applications. I swapped the apps I don't want to use on the home screen with the ones I do.
We're getting to automation and workflow improvements
Prepare the organizational structure of the documents for the year ahead
I make received and sent invoices every month. Therefore, I prepared a 2021 invoice directory in advance in Google Drive and created directories by month and subdirectories received, issued, credit notes, statements in them. I will have the same structure all year.
Recurring invoices
If you send an invoice for your services every month, set up automatic generation of invoices with specific items as well.
Automatic sending of reminders
If the invoice is overdue, the super invoice generates an automatic email with a notification for the customer.
Creating bookmarks for frequently visited services and websites
Currently, every morning I check how much snow there is around Bystrica. So I created a snow directory in my bookmarks and I have it at hand. In addition, I have all google apps services, super invoice, everhour and asana there. The advantage of bookmarks is that you can direct them to an exact URL address, so when I press asana, it throws me into the exact workspace and project where I want to go first.
Improve your English and your written output in it
Netreba nič viac, len službu a plugin Grammarly.
Conclusion
There are also more radical solutions. Delete social network apps from your phone, delete your accounts, limit the time spent in front of screens, etc. However, I want to continue to use these services, only more efficiently and remove everything negative.
And what about you? Do you have any hacks of your own that you practice at the beginning of the year?
