All Episodes

August 6, 2024 • 50 mins

In today's episode, Laura and Sarah open with the state of their own digital clutter. Then, Amanda joins Sarah to discuss all things digital decluttering as well as her very simple yet powerful method of brain dumping via Google Sheet.

Some notes referenced:
Cleaner Kit App for photo cleanup
iPhone: swipe notifications --> options --> turn off
Amanda's brain dump acronym: 5-step FOCUS Method: Finish It, Outsource It, Cut It, Uncomplicate It, Scooch It

Where to find Amanda:
Indigo Organizing: https://www.indigoorganizing.com/about-amanda
Her Podcast: https://www.goodenoughish.com

In the Q&A, a listener writes in asking for advice in helping kids with learning disabilities - what resources and approaches were helpful to navigate these kinds of challenges?

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm Laura Vanderkamp. I'm a mother of five, an author, journalist,
and speaker.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
And I'm Sarah Hart Hunger, a mother of three, practicing physician, writer,
and course creator. We are two working parents who love
our careers and our families.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Welcome to best of both worlds. Here we talk about
how real women manage work, family, and time for fun.
From figuring out childcare to mapping out long term career goals.
We want you to get the most out of life.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
Welcome to best of both worlds. This is Laura.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
This episode is airing in early August of twenty twenty four.
Sarah is going to be interviewing Amanda Jefferson, who is
a decluttering expert.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
In particular, they're going.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
To be talking about digital clutter and how we can
get a grip on the various forms of digital cluttering
in our lives, how we can maybe limit what comes
in and organize what we need to keep. So, Sarah,
how is your digital clutter game looking these days?

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Eh? I think most people would expect my digital systems
to be better organized, and they actually are, particularly saving
of various files as well as photos. But I will
say I tend to rely on redundancy, Like if I
put a decent descriptor on something and save it in

(01:32):
a bunch of places, including like sometimes emailing it to myself,
I generally can find almost anything I need, so I
haven't felt totally motivated to fix it. But then I'm
also sometimes like disgusted by it all, like oh, this
is saved, and this desktop folder in this place in
Google Drive and also this. I'm like, I just want
to start fresh and not migrate the contents on my
laptop and like start over. But it is also very

(01:54):
hard to build your kind of laptop universe from scratch,
so I don't know. Maybe we'll learn about in this interview,
which I have not conducted as of this intro, But
I'm super excited because I have so many questions for her.
But maybe she'll know some tools to selectively migrate things
from like one device to another.

Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah, now, I'm sure she's going to have all sorts
of useful tips and tricks.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Amanda is a.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Decluttering expert for both digital and physical stuff. She works
in the Greater Philadelphia area, so I know a lot
of people will want to check her out. Yeah, my
digital clutter, it's I would say similar to you. I
don't have a problem finding things that I need. I
can almost always find an email, find a file. I

(02:40):
don't save things with any particular order. I just save
a lot of stuff, even on my desktop, that which
is fine. It's so the desktop looks ridiculous on my
primary working laptop. But I actually have two laptops because
people may recall, laptop number one is from twenty sixteen
and doesn't have the capacity to run things like Zoom

(03:05):
and squad Cast where we record, and Microsoft teams and
things like that very easily. And so I wound up
with another laptop, assuming that my twenty sixteen one was
going to die some sudden and horrible death in twenty
twenty two when I bought the other laptop. That has
not happened. It is continued functioning. It just not for

(03:28):
a lot of sort of higher tech modern things. So
I've been slowly migrating things onto the new one, but
not everything. And so a lot of my files are
on the old one, but like different things are on
the new one, and it's fine.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
Interesting like the Mac dump it all, because I feel
like whenever I get a new Mac, they're like, would
you like to dump everything from your old Mac. And
I'm like, fine, be grudging that. No, I wouldn't. I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
I wouldn't do that because a lot of it's junk.
I mean a lot of it's garbage. It's just or
even if it's fun, it was I mean it was
notes from like a recording session in twenty eighteen, Like
I don't really need that, or it was some random
article I wrote in twenty twenty, and I'm not going
to ever deal with it again. I mean, there's no

(04:14):
reason to dump it per se, given that it doesn't
take much space. But I wouldn't migrate it onto a
new active thing.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
I don't know. I guess that's I think, well, we're
going to get deep. But I feel like that is
a mindset of abundance and not scarcity. You're like, I
can make that again, It's fine. I can read another article,
like I kind of cause I do like every single day. No,
that makes sense. And also photo storage, which seems to
be like a big preoccupation. I'm like, AI, seems like

(04:42):
it'll be so good at that very very soon if
it isn't already that like I am not going to
do it myself.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
Yeah, So all my photos made it onto my new phone.
So I had this other issue with I had an
old phone and then a new phone that I got
in June, and migrating the information through my Apple was
more complicated than it should have been for various reasons
that were primarily my fault.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
But whatever.

Speaker 2 (05:05):
Eventually I was able to get the photos over to
the new place, but not any of my apps, which
you know, I've been slowly putting them back on as needed.
My contacts came over, so that's really all that mattered,
the contacts and the photos.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
I could rebuild everything else as I need it.

Speaker 2 (05:21):
But the photo thing, I mean, I have thousands and
thousands of photos. I pay for extra storage. I haven't
really gone through and deleted a lot of the ones
that are dupes or eyes closed or whatever. Sometimes I do,
but I haven't really bothered to put much of the
effort into it. But I've enjoyed seeing Apple's photo widget

(05:42):
on the new phone that they pull up videos where
they've pulled together, you know, a theme like visits to
Cape May over the.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
Years and I're like, oh, this.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
Is so cute, or like visits to the Zoo over
the years, or portraits together and it chooses like two
of my kids, and every time the two of them
are together, they've out. So clearly the AI is pretty
good at this point that they can create an all
Ruth and Henry photo album just through like knowing their

(06:10):
faces of the things. So I don't know, I feel
like we're not going to need much in terms of
searching on that or labeling.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
Well, I'm excited for this interview and hopefully she can
help me with my migration issues and maybe some easy
ways to keep things a little bit more organized. Excited,
All right, Well, let's hear from Amanda Jefferson. All right, Well,
I am here now with Amanda Jefferson of Indigo Organizing,
and we are going to talk all things digital clutter.
So welcome Amanda. Go ahead and introduce yourself. Tell our

(06:40):
listeners a little bit about you.

Speaker 3 (06:42):
Hey, I'm so excited to be here. Yes, I'm Amanda
from Indigo Organizing. I help people conquer digital clutter and
reclaim their productivity, and I do that in a bunch
of different ways, one on one coaching with people, I
have some online courses. I have a club called the
Get It Done Club, and I have podcast myself with
my co host book for you called the good enough Ish.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
Podcast The good enough Ish Podcast. Well, how did you
get into all this digital organizing? What is your professional background?
And I guess let our listeners know, we're always interested
in kind of what stage of life are you in?
Are there kids in the picture? Or just tell us
a little bit more about you? And where are you?

(07:23):
By the way, So.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
I'm in Westchester, Pennsylvania. I actually don't think I live
too far from Laura. She's in this same general area,
I believe, yes, absolutely m hm. So I lived just
outside of Philadelphia. I have one daughter, she's twelve going
on thirty five, and I have dogs, cats, a home
menagerie here. We live in beautiful Westchester. My husband is

(07:47):
Chile and so we could call Chile home away from home.
We go there once a year. And I got into
this because, so what I do now has absolutely nothing
to do with what I used to do, which was
I was in consulting corporate world nonprofit leadership. I was
the executive director of a nonprofit in Philadelphia, and while

(08:07):
I loved the work, it was also a really long commute,
stressful fundraising goals, people management that wasn't necessarily sort of
my bag, and I was sort of looking at alternative
ways of living my life making an income, and so
I got very intrigued by this idea of becoming a
professional organizer. And right at that time, Marie Condo started

(08:31):
training people to be con Mari consultants. So I sort
of embarked on a secret mission to go to New
York get trained by Marie and her team in Japanese translated.
And that was eight years ago. And for about four
or five years I helped people with their physical stuff.
I guess maybe about six years or so, and then

(08:54):
I just became the elephant in the room, just kind
of became everybody's tech. It was just like, oh great,
you know, thank you so much. The house feels so
much better. But do you ever help with emails? Do
you ever help with photos? Like I'm completely overwhelmed. And
as I get older, I'm almost fifty, the knees are
getting a little bit more, you know, crotchety, it's harder
to get up and down. So I just super interested.

(09:17):
I'm a tech nerd. I love anything that has to
do with tech and problem solving and figuring things out.
So last fall I decided to sort of like hang
my hat with physical stuff and try the tech world.
And it's amazing because there's not a lot of people
out there doing this. So I've got clients in Israel,
the UK and all over that are now working with
me to help simplify their digital life.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
That is so cool. I did not know you were
Condo trained. That was like a I think that was
on one of my someday maybe lists at one point
to go ahead and get that training done. But I
also think I've moved on from that idea. But I'm
I love that you did it, and I love the
idea of applying Marie Kondo like concepts because I have
I love her. I mean, how can you not digital stuff?

(10:00):
So this is getting even more exciting for me to
talk about all this digital clutter. So I get logistically,
a career wise, why you pivoted to digital clutter and
also why the demand would be there. I totally see
how as we get our physical spaces more under control,
or maybe even as we don't, we still care about
what is going on in our digital realms. But I

(10:24):
guess some people might ask, you know, who cares. They
might say, like, you know, it doesn't matter it's not physical,
it's not taking up any space, Like, why not just
have everything haphazard? I can search for whatever. Tell me
about how do you find or how have you learned
about how digital clutter impacts people and why do you
feel like it's important.

Speaker 3 (10:44):
Well, you know, there's not really a ton of data
out there right now about the huge impact that it
does have on us. There has been a lot of
studies about the impact that our physical clutter has on us,
but the Cleveland Clinic just recently came out and said
digital clutter has probably about the same effect because it's
so UCLA had actually done a study years ago that

(11:05):
there was a relationship in women between the number of
belongings that they had and their cortisol levels, their stress levels.
So there's actually a direct relationship between the amount of
stuff that you have and how you feel. And when
we're talking about digital stuff, we're talking about magnitudes of
like tens of thousands. When I hear from people, they're like,
it's so common for them to just be like, oh,

(11:27):
I have one hundred thousand emails, I have forty thousand photos,
and it's just I think now more than ever, it's unrelenting.
And now the marketers have learned that, like they can
get our attention more if they text us, and so
now they're texting us, and so we just have these
notifications that are coming at us from all sides. And
there's also some data that shows that we spend fifty

(11:49):
five minutes a day looking for things, and a lot
of times that is the email, the document, the kid's
health assessment that you need for the summer camp and
it's overdue for a week, and you just spend your
time feeling so frazzled because you can't put your hands
on the thing that you know is somewhere, but you
just don't know where. So I see that stress taking

(12:11):
over my clients all the time.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
So I hear it kind of in two ways. One
is not being able to find things, and number two
is just the sheer, I don't know, annoyance of having
the clutter itself, like whether that is a desktop that
is covered with stuff, as Laura has actually talked about
in our intro, I believe, or whether it is just
like having a Google Photo account where you keep getting

(12:34):
those emails that it's two full. Not that I would
know anything about that, right.

Speaker 3 (12:39):
I think for a lot of people, it's just like
they don't even know what they don't know. They're just like,
I don't even really know where my photos are. I
don't know if they're backed up. I think they might
be in Google Photos. I think they might be in Apple.
I think I might be paying something extra, but I'm
not quite sure because we're sort of handed these. You know,
our phones are like fifteen hundred dollars supercomputers that we're
walking around with than our hands every day, but we

(13:01):
don't really necessarily know how to use them to make
our lives easier, which they absolutely can. So people just
sort of shrug their shoulders and say like, I don't know,
I don't really get it, so I guess I won't
really figure it out, you know. And so that's where
I come in.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, and you're bringing up the cost of all that
data and all those millions of items, Like it's true
at some point that storage is not free, and so
maybe there would be a financial benefit from addressing your
digital clutter as well, although I guess, yeah, it depends
on the scale.

Speaker 3 (13:32):
Yeah, well, there's even an environmental aspect to it too.
I mean, there it shows I read a'sistic the other
day that was something like, we don't reference ninety percent
of the things that we save three seconds after saving them.
And so those photos of the ardvark at the zoo
that your kid took seven years ago, they live somewhere.
They live on a server that's being cooled in some

(13:55):
sort of server farm somewhere. So all of that it
has it takes up space. You know.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
Yeah, that's actually fascinating to think about as well. Well,
we're going to take a quick break and then we're
going to get into your brain dump method. I love
methods like this. I'm super excited to learn a little
bit more about it. So we're going to tackle that
as soon as we get back. Okay, all right, we

(14:30):
are back, and we've kind of I think established, or
Amanda's established, why it's important to think about our digital
clutter and how it can impact us in various ways.
So now we're going to get a little bit I think,
into the how do we actually tame this clutter? And
we're going to actually talk about a number of specific
scenarios and I think that part will be really fun.

(14:50):
But first, Amanda, it sounds like you have kind of
an overarching method that you call the brain dump. Can
you tell our listeners all about this method?

Speaker 2 (15:00):
Sure?

Speaker 3 (15:00):
So my work is really at the intersection of tech
and productivity, and so it is really figuring out how
to harness the cool tools that are out there to
declutter not just our inboxes and our files, but also
our minds. So my love language is Google spreadsheets. So
when I was working with my clients and really helping them,

(15:21):
you know, they would come out was so overwhelmed. I
have a million things to do. I can't figure out
where to start. I taught them this thing that I
call the Focus method, and it kind of comes from
the idea of kN Mari in the sense of like
does it spark joy? And something I talk a lot
more about, which is is it fun and easy? Is
it something that you really enjoy doing and something that
you're really good at? And if it isn't, can we

(15:44):
find a way to sort of declutter it out of
your life?

Speaker 1 (15:47):
Right?

Speaker 3 (15:48):
So the focus method is an acronym and the F
stands for finish it. So that is just things like
it might be something that you absolutely love to do,
like gardenings, so let's keep that on the plate and
let's do that, or it could be you really just
need to take the cats to the vet and you
just need to finish that. Right. The O is outsource,

(16:10):
So is there a tool, a person, an app that
can do this for you? So I love grocery delivery,
for example, saves hours of time, and so I outsource
it to the lovely people who bring my groceries to me.
Cut it is just don't do it at all? Right?
Are you the leader of the girls Scouts and you
kind of secretly dread it and you really wish that

(16:31):
you had never signed up? Is there a way that
you could get out of that? Uncomplicated?

Speaker 1 (16:37):
Is you?

Speaker 3 (16:37):
And I am the queen of over complication? So uncomplicated
is really just about how can you make this simple? So,
say it's the holidays and you're dreading decorating your entire house.
Could you just put like a wreath on the front
door and call it a day? Right, something really easy?
And then the S is scooch it, and that is
can we move this down? Do we need to be

(17:00):
renovating our kitchen in the middle of a busy graduation season?
You just have to be careful with the scooch because
a lot of us tend to scooch and then scooch
and then scooch and then scooch right, so you have
to kind of decide is this a strategic scooch or
is this just something that I'm procrastinating on. So I'll
stop there in case you have any questions about the
actual focus and then I can talk about a spreadsheet
that I help people use to actually brain dump and

(17:22):
use the focus tool.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
Well, first I would suggest changing, you know, since I
am the authority on your method. I'm just kidding, but
I'm like, scooch. It could be like schedule it or
someday it. So you're either like giving it like a
specific timeframe or you're like, nope, it's going to be
like a someday like nebulous thing. So sorry, I just
had to share my brainstorm while you were talking because
scooch was a funny word, although it actually is very

(17:43):
memorable because scooch is like a good image.

Speaker 3 (17:46):
Where were you when I was trying to think about
good words for the focus method?

Speaker 1 (17:51):
I love that. That's so good.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
I'm using that.

Speaker 1 (17:54):
That's my unplanned contribution. But the method sounds really interesting,
although it sounds more like a life philosophy. Then it
does a digital decluttering strategy. So I'm super excited to
hear kind of how that relates to your brain dump
method and then your approaches to the digital clutter itself.

Speaker 3 (18:12):
Right, So what I have people do, and you can
actually go to my website into go organizing dot com
and you can download the worksheet and the Google sheet
and all of that, and I'll walk you through it.
But then what I have people do is I have
them go ahead and brain dump all of the different
tasks that they have on their brain into this Google
sheet and they can assign a category. So I usually

(18:32):
assign the four categories that my co host Brook foury
uses in her planner, which is home, work, self and others.
And you'll just brain dump everything and you'll ask yourself,
does this park joy? Is this fun and easy?

Speaker 1 (18:46):
Is it a should?

Speaker 3 (18:47):
Is it something that I want to do in my life?
And then you can there's a little drop down and
you can identify is it an F, is it a O,
et cetera. You can put the date that you're going
to work on it, you can put the exact next step.
Because a lot of times we'll say things like something
I have on my mind, this launch a YouTube channel.
Well that's not like a task, that's a huge project, right,
So what's the first step that you're actually going to

(19:09):
do and when are you going to do it? And
then it gets fun because you can sort the spreadsheet
by the priority, by the category, by the date, and
so you get the power of this sort of little
digital powerhouse to help you sort your brain and what
you can see. You know, I have some clients that
are super type A that are like, Okay, I did
the spreadsheet and everything is priority one, everything is finished,

(19:32):
and it's all due you know, next Friday, and there's
seventy five of them, so it's like, okay, let's reevaluate, right.
So it just really gives you a picture of like
what is truly mathematically possible?

Speaker 1 (19:44):
Right. I love that. I love the idea. I still
am like a little lost on like how that exactly
relates to digital cluttering. To me, that is like you're
using a really cool digital tool to clean up life
kind of stress over like overwhelm of tasks. But I
still there's so much value in that, Like I love
that idea. I'm all about like making lists and the

(20:04):
idea of having a list where everything lives in one
place is going to be easily referenceable from every single device,
and that's sort of ale. That is hot. I love that.

Speaker 3 (20:14):
Yeah, well, I think to me it relates in the
sense that so, like I said, my work is sort
of at the intersection of tech and productivity. So some
of the productivity tips that I have aren't necessarily always
going to be about tech. But it's about decluttering your mind.
And it's about not just digital decluttering, but also organizing.

(20:37):
It's about how can I use the tools that exist
in this world to actually make my life easier. And
so the average everyday person might not think, oh a spreadsheet,
like how is a spreadsheet can possibly make my life easier?
And this is one of the ways that I demonstrate
how it can.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
I totally love that, And actually there might be a
decluttering aspect of it now that I think about it,
because people have a tendency to try a whole slew
of different tools and then they end up with to
do lists in five different places. They have it on
to do list, and they have it in an email,
and they have it on a sticky note, and the
idea that actually, you know what, we're just going to
have one place, and it's going to be a very

(21:13):
simple place. A Google sheet that like really doesn't take
a huge on ramp to master. I think that's beautiful.
There's some simplicity there, so very cool.

Speaker 3 (21:22):
Yeah, it's a lot of fun and it can be
your master lift. It doesn't have to be, you know,
I don't think people are going to be able to
reference a Google sheet every day, but it's just kind
of like maybe quarterly it's like, ah, my brain is
on fire, let me like get all this down, and
then when you get a sense of what you have
to do next, then it gives you a good place
to start.

Speaker 1 (21:40):
Yes, And the fact is that it's like searchable and sortable.
It's really really fun. Have you seen people do cool
things with like color and I don't know, how have
you seen somebody's look And what is the highest number
of lines you've ever seen on somebody's life Google sheet?

Speaker 3 (21:55):
Me, I've seen like one hundred and twenty five. So
I went in there the other day actually added like
a whole bunch more rose, you know, formatted rose, because
I was like, oh my gosh, people have a lot
on their plate, right, Yeah, And I think it's very
similar to sort of what we do in con Mari
when we pile all the clothes on the bed.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
It's like just that shock.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
Factor of seeing like, oh, this is why I feel
the way that I do. This is why I feel
so stressed out because my brain is trying to process.
It's like that joke when they say like my brain
has too many tabs open. My brain has one hundred
and seventy five tabs open. That's why I feel the
way that I do.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
And then do you instruct people to look at it
at any specific cadence like once a week when they're
doing weekly planning or is it more just like it's
there for when you need it and feel called to
look at it or add to it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:44):
I think a lot of times when people do it
the first time, they really do use it as sort
of a real guide of like, Okay, let me organize
this so that I have ten things that are priority
one and I'm very clear on what the next steps are,
and then when I get through the it's like, okay,
what are the next ten?

Speaker 1 (23:02):
Right?

Speaker 3 (23:02):
So, usually my clients will use it as a tool,
maybe for a couple of weeks, until they feel like
they have clarity, and then they can kind of set
it aside and then maybe quarterly they'll come back to it.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Very cool fun aside, one of my friends actually has
a daily planning method on Google Sheets where she will
kind of like list out basically kind of keep a
time record. She has her like top task for the
day on there, and she even cuts and pastes like
a photo of the day into her Google Sheets, so
they become this beautiful life record. So shout out to Kay,
who is one of my good friends as well. Now,

(23:37):
but yeah, her method is super cool. I could see
that meshing super well with yours. It's like you've got
your long term and then you've got your short term,
and you could have an all Google Sheets life system
if you really wanted to.

Speaker 3 (23:48):
Oh my gosh, it sounds like Kay could definitely be
a kindred spirit of mine.

Speaker 1 (23:52):
One hundred percent. All right, Well, we're gonna pivot into
some common now. We're going to go back a little
bit out of the like corraling every priority and into
the like different digital realms that people tend to struggle with,
because there's a lot of themes that come up over
and over with in twenty twenty four, as this is

(24:12):
being recorded where people just feel like they have a
mess and cannot get a handle on things. So let's start. Actually,
I'm adding one I just thought of as I'm doing this.
Let's start with kind of like the most perhaps hated
or obvious of all email. So, how do you help
your clients that have incredibly unwieldy inboxes? What are your

(24:37):
philosophies around email? And yeah, I'm super interested in how
condo what a per email?

Speaker 3 (24:45):
So the thing that I do first with my clients
is help them divide their email into better buckets. So
about sixty percent of people use Gmail, so most of
the clients that I'm seeing are using Gmail. And Gmail
has this really cool feature called price already inbox. So
instead of when you log into your email you see
this huge blob of emails that it's really not clear,

(25:07):
like what's important, what needs attention, it will divide it
into four categories, which is sort of It starts with
the important and unread, and then you can have starred,
then you can add your own little section which I
always have people add action needed, and then it has
the everything else. And I help people understand sort of
how Google works, that Google is basically, Gmail and mail
in general is kind of this assistant that you've just

(25:29):
hired and you're trying to train them on how you
want them to handle your mail. So a lot of
people don't even understand, like, oh, that little flag there
that means that Google thinks that this is important. But
if I click that, then I'm training it to tell
to know that that email isn't important. Right, So we
go in and we just sort of understand the basics
of like, let's actually look at your email in a
totally different way. Let's do a little bit of training

(25:51):
and tell Google this is important, this isn't important. Let's
create an action needed section, Let's create an online order section.
Let me teach you how to drag and drop, And
we just kind of learned those basics, and then usually
at that point they're like they actually will say to
me like this is fun, this is really cool, you know,
and they start getting their labels colored and all of

(26:12):
that kind of stuff, and then usually I'll just instruct
them to kind of bite size it. One of the
fun things that you can do is you can search.
I learned this tip from Laura may Martin, who is
Google's in house productivity expert who just.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
Wrote a book and former best of both World's Guests
just a few weeks ago.

Speaker 3 (26:30):
Oh that's right, I forgot about that. I think that
might have even been why I reached out. And she
wrote a book name called up Time, and she has
a little tip of searching in the search bar the
word unsubscribe, and then that will actually show you all
of these newsletters that you can unsubscribe from, and you
can mass delete and mass unsubscribe and all of that stuff.
So usually with emails, that's where we start. Like I

(26:52):
kind of say to my clients, is almost like clean
before you cook. Like if you're going to cook a
big meal and the kitchen is a mess, don't go
in and just start cooking. You clean the kitchen up.
So let's get your email kind of cleaned and organized,
and then we're gonna start cooking.

Speaker 1 (27:08):
And inbox zero yay or nay.

Speaker 3 (27:11):
You know, I don't feel particularly passionate about in box zero. Interesting,
I'm usually at like inbox thirty.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
Okay, it's like one screen kind of a situation, correct, right,
I get that.

Speaker 3 (27:26):
I think some people are you an inbox zero person?

Speaker 1 (27:29):
I am, I mean, I don't live at inbox zero daily.
I probably live more. Actually I live anywhere from inbox
zero to inbox like four hundred, and I do like
massive cleanouts. The reason I like to periodically get from
thirty to zero is it tends to be once I'm
at that thirty piece, I'm just procrastinating those things and
if I just bulldoze through it, I can deal with it,
and I probably should once it's been sitting there for weeks.

(27:52):
So I do. I love my inbox zero.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
Yeah, it can be very satisfying. I use an email
tool called Superhuman, and when you get to inbox zero,
it shows a beautiful image, so it's very satisfying.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
I love that. All Right, we're going to take another
quick break and then we're going to go into the
next digital behemoth that everyone complains about or talks about.

(28:24):
All Right, we are back. We have tackled email, and
now I'm going to guess that you hear a little
bit about people's photo collections, am I right?

Speaker 3 (28:33):
Oh? Yes, it's funny because I know you're a physician,
so I'm sure when you're out in the world people
are like, hey, can you look at this rash? Or
like my shoulder is hurting. In my case, the people
will be like can you look at my phone? And
he help me figure out and photos is usually a
lot of the cases with that, and again it's just
people just not understanding where do these live and what

(28:54):
is the cloud? And are they being backed up? And
are am I own photos? So usually it's just trying
to get to an underst standing of helping people understand
the basics. So for example, if you have all Mac stuff,
knowing that your photo library on your Mac should match
your photo library on your phone, and then we can
work with them to declutter if you have two different

(29:17):
like mismat if you have an iPhone and a PC,
those are kind of mismatched, so like how are we
going to be saving things every backing up on Google Photos?
Helping people learn that you can use the smart tools
that exist in these things like facial recognition. So many
people don't know that you can actually find like pictures
of your dog that way, or pictures of your vacation

(29:38):
in Spain based on the date that you were there
and things like that. So teaching them kind of the
one oh one and then also helping them have a
bite sized goal to work towards so some people will say, like,
I want to organize my photos, which is a really
big task, but like, what if you just make a
photo album of your trip to Paris this year? Right,
and there you get the opportunity declutter and find favorite

(30:02):
photos and move things into folders and you kind of
get in the groove and in the momentum of it,
and then you can move forward and be like, oh, okay,
well how about a photo album of last summer? And
my favorite tool for photo albums that is so it's
like the Southwest Airlines of photo albums in the sense
that it's so easy as chat books. I'm sure you've

(30:23):
heard of them, Like they you don't have to do
the landscape and the portrait and the captions and the formats.
It's just one photo per page, delivered to your mailbox
and it's so easy.

Speaker 1 (30:35):
I like that. So maybe like instead of saying, oh,
I have to have every photo corral, you're like, I
do a seasonal chat book every season and I call
it a day. I think with photos, people get very
in the weeds about like perfectionism that I don't know,
maybe I'm wrong, but I think AI will be able
to clean things up. So nicely at some yes, very
soon point that our efforts like, oh that one's blurry,

(30:55):
let me delete it, Like that's just misplaced effort when
you have like fifty pictures or something like that.

Speaker 3 (31:02):
Right, my favorite app is called the cleaner Kit app,
and it's really cool because it will delete your duplicates.
It will delete screenshots, but it also will if you
took fifty pictures of your best friend in front of
a tree, it will be like, this is the best one.
Do you want to delete the rest? And that's exactly like,
let Ai do the work for you.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
That is amazing. Cleaner Kit. So does that work with
iPhone or it just works on your phone?

Speaker 3 (31:26):
I believe it works with all phones. I could be
wrong because I am an iPhone user. I and most
of my clients are iPhone users as well, but I think.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
So that sounds awesome, very cool. Do you have a
preferred digital storage place that you recommend for people or
do you kind of consider them all created equal, like
Amazon versus Google versus Apple, et cetera.

Speaker 3 (31:47):
Well, I'd like to choose tools that are a little
bit more agnostic to the actual sort of software company,
because everybody has their own things, so I Cloud wants
to sell you their drive. Microsoft wants to sell you
their drive. Google wants to sell.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
You their drive.

Speaker 3 (32:03):
Right, I like to use something that's like Dropbox that's
a little bit more agnostic, so that if tomorrow I
decide I don't want to have a Mac anymore, I
want to have a PC, it's a lot easier to
transition between those things, especially if you have mismatched software.
So if you have like a PC and an iPhone,
then you're going to want to have something like Dropbox

(32:23):
because iCloud drive is going to be really clunky to use.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
On your computer.

Speaker 3 (32:28):
So I usually try to meet people where they are
based on the software that they have. You know, I
don't want to be like, oh, this seems to be
working fine for you, but let's move you all the
way over to Dropbox. But a lot of times they're
getting frustrated and experiencing a lot of friction because they
have mismatched companies that they're trying to make friends, and
those companies don't want to be friends. They're competing with

(32:49):
each other.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
Very interesting, I like that awesome, Well that's photos. I
feel like maybe we've made a few people feel better
and I'd say that name of that Apple one more
time cleaner kit app, cleaner kit app. That sounds like
very useful information.

Speaker 3 (33:04):
And I can send you a link for your show
notes to.

Speaker 1 (33:06):
Loll Yes, definitely, Okay. The next thing I have on
here is notifications, And this I think is interesting because
this isn't just like data and it's not just like, oh,
our screen doesn't look pretty, but this is like fragmentation
of our time and attention. But it's also coming from
the digital realm, and I think it's also so fascinating.

(33:26):
I mean, I'm guilty of this myself. Like, if something
is defaulted to notify me, how many times do I
have to be annoyed by said thing before I'm like
turn that off? You know how to do that? Like
I'm not eighty years old. Well, and that's not even fair.
Many eighty year olds are probably very good at managing
their iPhone settings. But like, I can do this, but
yet I don't. So how do you help your clients

(33:47):
with notifications and maybe turning their phone into a less
intrusive device if that's something they desire.

Speaker 3 (33:54):
Yeah, it is like a matter of just sitting down
in the moment and doing it. Or when you get
that notific being like, ugh, I don't want to hear
from law and Taylor Loft, you know anymore. And then
just clicking and you realize that you can actually press
and hold click options and click turn off. You don't
even have to go into the notifications. You can just

(34:15):
tell it right then, I don't want to perceive notifications
at all ever from these people, right, so you can
turn that off there. But that's some of the things
that we recommend that people do. We have the Get
It Done Club that meets three times a week, and
we give them a list of like, here's some of
the things that you could do during this and one
of them is change your notifications. I have a lot
of clients who while I'm talking to them, they'll look

(34:36):
at other Apple Watch like every three seconds because it's
like New York Times, CNN, AT and T like the
fragmented attention is insane, right, and they're like, oh, this
watch is driving me crazy, not realizing. So a lot
of times I'll be like, let's go into your notifications
right now and turn it off. I'm one of those

(34:56):
like now or never type of people, like let's just
get it, and they're like, oh wow, and just turn
on your watch so that it's literally nothing but like
phone and text or just phone.

Speaker 2 (35:06):
Right.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
Yeah, I think about the specific things you want to
know about, and then you can also make use of
those focus modes so that like maybe during work hours,
like you don't even get your texts or whatever it
is that you need to regulate. I'm all about the
do not disturb during podcast recording sessions or else. I
don't know how I could focus.

Speaker 3 (35:24):
So yeah, I know I've got that on right now, but.

Speaker 1 (35:27):
I didn't know about the press and hold. So that's
huge because I always just go to settings notifications and
like toggle it off. So that's super cool. So when
an actual notification pops up, you can press and hold
it and you'll get the options to get rid of it.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
Yes, it's either a press and hold or it is
a like swipe. Actually it's a swipe. It's a swipe left.
So I just got this text from Sunnyside, so I
swipe left, I click options, and I get the choice
of turn off all messages notifications for this particular message.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
Amazing. Does that work for app notifications as well or
just text messages?

Speaker 3 (36:01):
I don't know. I think it should. Let's see, this
is an app notification. Yes, options, I guess it's it
got the same thing.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
That's huge. Okay, so hopefully everyone's listening. An even easier
way to when your phone annoys you to nip it
in the butt right then and there, all right. The
last realm we're going to talk about is calendars, because
digital calendars are so useful and yet they don't always
play nicely with each other. And I will admit I'm

(36:29):
like a very weird person and my rule my life
calendar is actually paper because I find it easier to
integrate all the various digital calendars that feed into me,
and I've like given up on like having one digital
place and instead I'm like, well, if it's in my
actual paper one, then I've acknowledged it's real. But I
am weird. So for those who prefer digital for their

(36:49):
kind of master calendar but might be dealing with like
the soccer calendar and the school calendar, and one's on
Outlook and one's on Gmail and whatever, how do you
help people clean this up? I find this very challenging.

Speaker 3 (37:02):
It is challenging, and usually I just have people kind
of go all in on one place, so I check
everything on my Google calendar, and so I have my
personal email, I have my work email, and they all
feed into so that I can actually see my personal
and my work calendar kind of overlaid on top of
each other. And then I subscribe to the cheerleading calendar

(37:26):
and the school calendar, and I have all of those
pulled in as well, so that I can see all
of them at one place, and I can toggle on
and off if I want to. But I have a
lot of people who will like be in their Apple
calendar and then add something there and then be confused
about why it's not going over to the Google calendar

(37:47):
because they added it under their Apple iCloud. So a
lot of times it's just like a basic understanding of
like where does this event live, where is it coming from,
and how can I get this one calendar place all
set up so that I am truly seeing everything. And
so that's a lot of the heart of a lot
of the issues that I deal with my clients is

(38:08):
just not like a clear understanding of concepts that are
fundamental to making these things work, like the difference between
the leading or archiving, or what is the iCloud and
what you know, all that kind of stuff. So usually
it's just them sharing their screen and me digging in
and figuring out, Okay, where is all this stuff and
how can we get it all in one place.

Speaker 1 (38:28):
That's awesome. Yeah, it's true, and it can become super
confusing because if you've got these old legacy calendars and
let's say one is syncing with iye caount, but like
your Google is pulling in your eye clouds, so you
think that the Google has that calendar directly, but it's
actually like indirect and then you end up with like
duplicates and anyway, I can see why sometimes you probably
need to drill down and actually look at it. But
this also seems like a solvable problem. Like if you

(38:49):
actually sit down and you're like, Google calendar is my
main thing, and how do I need to get all
my things into that probably doable with the exception of
I know, some corporate calendars don't sink because of privacy issues, right,
So that.

Speaker 3 (39:03):
May be a case where you kind of have to
have your personal calendar that has everything going on, and
then you have your corporate calendar. But a lot of
times there is like an export import that needs to
take place. I had a client that was sort of
accidentally putting a lot of stuff on her Apple calendar,
so we just did an export, imported that all over
to Google Calendar, and then she was forbidden to ever
put anything on her Apple calendar again.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
You know that everything else stayed in the same place,
so beware. I guess we're saying, or you're saying, amazing, Well,
this has been super useful. I think there's been some
nuggets of gold in this conversation in terms of ways
to make things easier that really don't take that much time.
So thank you for that. Before we get to our
Love of the week, where can listeners find you?

Speaker 3 (39:44):
So they can find me at Indigo Organizing dot com.
And they can find me also on my podcast website
at goodenoughish dot com.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
Amazing. All right, Love of the Week, I will go
first to let you like process your thoughts because I
had my planned. I think one of my my favorite
digital uses is just group texts, Like I don't know
how I would have stayed in touch, and I don't
do social media, so group texts to me are like curated,
like these are the people I actually want to have

(40:13):
these conversations with and I have different ones for like
different realms of life, Like I've got like my college
friends and my running friends and my like trying to
get pregnant in twenty twelve friends, and like my family
and whatever. And I realize how much joy it brings
me to be able to share different things in different
contexts and kind of be able to keep up with
these threads of people in that way. It works really

(40:34):
really well for me. So super simple. But that's one
of my favorite uses of modern technology. Oh, I love that.

Speaker 3 (40:41):
I was just fortunate to do a wellness retreat in
MAYORCA a couple of months ago, and I met twenty
two amazing women and we're now on a WhatsApp group
chat together and we just had a zoom reunion yesterday
because we were able to coordinate it on this chat.
And it's like sparking so much joy, it's amazing love.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
That is that your love of the week or do
you have another one?

Speaker 3 (41:01):
I have another one. So my love of the week
is the Apple Reminders app, specifically the shopping list function.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
I use this all day long.

Speaker 3 (41:10):
You know, I have my Apple Watch, or even if
you don't have an Apple Watch, you have your phone.
You can just say to Siri, like, hey, Siri, add
milk to the shopping list, and it will add milk
to the shopping list. Not only to the shopping list,
but it'll actually categorize it under dairy. And so you
can say, add bread to the shopping list and it'll
categorize it underbreads. And then that list is shared with
my husband, so when he goes to the store, if

(41:31):
I haven't had a chance to make a list yet,
usually everything that we need is already on that list.
So my love of the week is my reminder's shopping list.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
Amazing and so easy to just add the minute you
see something's used up, so I can see how incredibly
useful that would be. Yes, Well, thank you so much
for coming on, Amanda. This has been so much fun
and I am like excited to put some of this
stuff into play myself. Awesome.

Speaker 3 (41:59):
I was so great talking with you. Thank you for
having me.

Speaker 1 (42:02):
Well we are back.

Speaker 2 (42:03):
Sarah did a great interview there with Amanda Jefferson about
digital decluttering, how we can get control of the digital
clutter in our lives. Lots of useful tips and tricks there.
So this week's question, this listener writes in. I wonder whether,
while keeping your own children's information private, you guys could
talk about general approaches to helping kids with learning disabilities,

(42:26):
finding tutors, deciding whether and when to switch schools, helping
your child with dealing like they are feeling like they
are stupid or behind. Also, how do you deal with
feelings about this as a parent. This person is an
English professor, and so, to be truthful, it's been a
little bit surprising, and she says a bit of a
hit to her ego to have a kid struggling with

(42:46):
learning to read. So, Sarah, what was your response with
that one? That's super interesting about the early reader thing.
I think I might have expected my kids to read
on the early side, because lore has it that I
did and my husband did. But Nope, most of them
have not, and at least one of them has needed
some very formal extra assistance learning to read. I have

(43:10):
one child with ADHD, and I will say as when
I read this every single time that I have sought
some sort of professional help, I was like, so glad
I did that.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
I could have done it even sooner. And I do
feel like, yes, there are times that you want to
let kids struggle and I really don't want to be
like a snowplow parent to make you know, oh, my
kid has to win every single thing and come out
on top every time and make everything easy. But you
have to figure out where that line is and when

(43:41):
it starts to be crossed, to figure out when they
would benefit from extra help. And then one thing that
helps me is to remember, well, why do all these
professions exist because lots of people need them, because it's
really really common to need extra support in various things.
So in honor of this question, I came up with
a list of various services I've used with kids in
the past. And I'm actually surprised at how long it is,

(44:04):
but I'm going to read it. So we have done
private psycho educational testing. We have hired a psychiatrist, we
have worked with a reading specialist. We've had a behavioral
tutor at work with one kid, I reading tutor, a psychologist,
a speech therapist. Well that's actually newer, but that's okay,
still on the list. And then I have switched to school.

(44:25):
So that is a lot. And by the way, don't
try to guess which kids which you might even be wrong,
you probably are wrong. So keeping that part private, I've
used a lot of resources and I have yet to
regret a single one of these interventions. So I feel
like if your gut is telling you that your kid
needs more support in an area, than you should go
for it and be happy that they are available. Now,

(44:47):
I say this from a place of privilege, and I
know that a lot of these took throwing significant money
at the problem, and not everybody is able to do that,
and that is terrible. I will say for my job,
I know that they're a lot of times. You can
get a lot of these resources in a low cost
manner if you qualify for them. It just takes longer

(45:08):
and perhaps more legwork, which again is a shame because
some of the people that need it are going to
be less equipped to find it. But the school system
does have a lot of this kind of stuff, from
testing to extra tutoring, and they in general are kind
of obligated to meet various needs of kids. So if
this is not something you're able to attack from a
private standpoint, then there are still probably a lot of

(45:31):
resources to investigate. And I'll say that I do think
pre kids me would be surprised to hear this list
would she even judge post kiss me for this list.
I don't know, maybe, but you know what, she'd probably
be surprised about a lot. So there we have it.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
Yeah, I would say, you know, we've definitely used tutoring
as well, and there's lots of places you can find
tutors these days. You can use them online, especially if
you're talking about I mean, I think this is a
younger child, so that may be less of a good
option for there, but as your kids get into middle
school and high school, you could avail yourself of the
world of online tutors. So we have definitely used online

(46:11):
tutors for math. We have used them for writing help,
which is theoretically I'm a professional writer, but sometimes people
take it better from other experts, not your parents. We've
done foreign language tutoring, which actually there's a world of
options there, as you might imagine, I would definitely recommend
looking into that. You can often find reasonably cost people

(46:33):
who live in countries where they would speak whatever language
your kid is studying, So look into that as an option.
And because more of this is available online these days,
especially for older kids, the costs in many cases will
be over a range, and so you can choose the
range that meets with your budgetary needs, and it might

(46:55):
be more flexible as well, because obviously, if you are
driving a kid to a tutor, that takes time out
of your day and their day that they can't be
doing something else. But if it is online tutoring, maybe
it could be a little bit later, and since you
don't have to drive there, it might be more you know,
it might fit better with a busy family schedule. But
we have not regretted trying tutoring in the situations where

(47:18):
we thought it would be helpful.

Speaker 1 (47:19):
So definitely that.

Speaker 2 (47:20):
Now the ego part, because Sarah I didn't talk about that,
but let's address that one, because I mean, I think
one of the upsides of having lots of kids is
you very quickly see that they aren't you, like I
think we might know that all intellectually. It can be

(47:43):
a little bit harder, perhaps if you only have one
child to understand that this kid is not an extension
of you in really any way, shape or form, like
they are their own person. And because I have five kids,
I can see the how different all of them are
from each other and from me and from Michael. And
maybe there are sometimes little bits that you can pick
up like, oh, I recognize that little thing from me

(48:04):
or from a grandparent or whatever else, but it is
mixed with ninety five percent other.

Speaker 1 (48:10):
Stuff that is just all them.

Speaker 2 (48:14):
So given that this is an entirely separate person from you,
it is not anything to do with you being an
excellent English professor whether your kid can learn to read,
because they no doubt have other things that are awesome
that they can do and reading is maybe a little
bit more challenging for them. But maybe they can do
something that would have been harder for you. So maybe

(48:38):
just think about, like remind yourself of what your kid
does really well, Like you are a straight A student
and your kid gets mostly be's well, oh well, but
maybe he's really awesome at soccer, has a very close
group of friends that he's managing those relationships really well,
like very social. Maybe he reaches out to other kids,

(48:59):
like he's always the one who finds that kid on
the playground who needs someone to play with. Maybe he's
incredibly polite to the older people in your neighborhood, Like
there's something that your kid does awesome and that would
be great to focus your whatever parenting, like need to
feel like your kid is great on that and then
just really not talk about the other part quite as much.

(49:21):
I mean, get in the intervention if you can, but
there's really no point in harping on I got a's
why are you getting bs? I mean, that would just
be awful to even like have that in your brain.
Most of the time, like focus your ego on what
you are doing and on the fact that you have
an awesome relationship with your son, who is a different
person from you.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
I guess if that makes sense. Yes, And for every
perceived deficit that is different from what yours are, they
may have a perceived talent that's different from what yours are.
And that's kind of part of the fun of seeing
how they turn out and like being ready for and
appreciating those differences. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (50:02):
All right, Well, this has been best of both worlds.
Sarah has been talking with Amanda Jefferson about digital decluttering.
We will be back next week with more on making
work and life fit together.

Speaker 1 (50:14):
Thanks for listening. You can find me Sarah at the
shoebox dot com or at the Underscore Shoebox on Instagram,
and you.

Speaker 2 (50:22):
Can find me Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. This
has been the best of both worlds podcasts. Please join
us next time for more on making work and life
work together.
Advertise With Us

Popular Podcasts

1. On Purpose with Jay Shetty

1. On Purpose with Jay Shetty

I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!

2. Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

2. Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.

3. The Joe Rogan Experience

3. The Joe Rogan Experience

The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.

Music, radio and podcasts, all free. Listen online or download the iHeart App.

Connect

© 2024 iHeartMedia, Inc.