Last year I decided to go inbox zero. For four glorious months I diligently read and deleted email, keeping that red notification bubble at bay, and generally felt a bit smug.
It lasted, until it didn’t. I took a few days off and suddenly the task seemed mammoth once more.
But as it is January, I’ve started all over again as part of a “new year, slightly new me” kick. There are a few more tech resolutions we might also put on the list this year.
Use better passwords
There is a reason why this appears on every tech resolutions list: it is important. Strong passwords are a big obstacle between your data and the people who want to misuse it. Do yourself a favour and stop reusing the same passwords and pins across all your services.
If you struggle to come up with memorable, unique passwords, create just one and use it to secure a password manager. That way you can delegate the creation of strong passwords to technology, which is far more likely to be random than a human being ever is, and make the service autofill your passwords – hidden behind your super-secret phrase, of course.
Respect privacy
This one should also apply to the big tech companies, but since we can only directly control our own behaviour, think before you share.
There are members of my family who do not do social media at all. There are others who choose not to share photos or information about their children online. Don’t be the person who ignores those decisions, or the one guaranteed to post the most unflattering photos or anecdotes of others online. Not everything is content, despite prevailing opinions to the contrary.
Respect your own privacy, too. Don’t give away your personal data to every service that asks for it, even if its seems like useless data. As Karlin Lillington wrote in this paper in November, it creates tranches of vulnerable, often highly sensitive data, and we don’t always know how – or by whom – it is being used.
Cut down on screen time
We know it’s bad for us and yet here we are, scrolling away through social media, online news sources and meme after meme.
You can use the tools that are built into your smartphone’s operating system to monitor how much time you are wasting on certain apps, and to disable them at key periods or after a certain amount of use. While these restrictions are easily circumvented – you know the password after all – it does make you think more about what you are doing on your phone.
Make your screen time work for you. Learn a new skill or language; take up a hobby that you can learn online but bring into the real world.
And make certain times of day screen-free – mealtimes are the obvious one, and last thing before bed, if you want to ensure you get a good shot at a decent night’s sleep.
Step back from social media
If 2024 and Elon Musk’s very active support of Donald Trump’s run to the US presidency should have taught us anything, it is that manipulation is rife. Rage-baiting, where accounts post controversial content just for engagement, is a real thing and we have all fallen victim to it at one point. Let 2025 be the year where that stops.
“Don’t feed the trolls” doesn’t mean you are building yourself an echo chamber. It just means that you won’t engage with people who deliberately try to provoke others for their own entertainment.
You aren’t obliged to engage on social media. You aren’t even obliged to partake in it. The downward spiral of X/Twitter might be the shove some of us need to step back from social media and make the platforms work for us instead of the other way around.
[ Social media taps into a dark human need to be mean to other peopleOpens in new window ]
Don’t be a troll
If you are going to keep hoping, though, perhaps it is time to rethink how we interact with others. Remember the whole “be kind” movement? The phrase may seem a little twee and simplistic but the basic idea is sound. Don’t say online what you wouldn’t say to someone’s face. What you think of as jokey and informal may not come across that way to the recipient.
And not everyone needs to hear your opinion on everything, which may feel ironic coming from someone who is paid to occasionally air her opinions, but there you have it.
Declutter
I had great plans for last year. I was going to declutter both my physical and digital world, and stick to it.
Instead I ended up making things worse. It started by following several Instagram accounts that taught me how to declutter (mostly unsuccessfully) and ended with me adding at least 10 more apps that promised to help me declutter my digital and physical life. That seemed counterproductive.
Now I have a schedule for digital decluttering. Emails are dealt with (and deleted) daily, photos are sifted through at least once a month, and unneeded files are purged from my downloads and device storage every six weeks.
Prevention is better than cure, though. WhatsApp chats, for example, no longer have permission to automatically save images and media to my camera roll. Internet history is disabled where possible or deleted automatically after a month where it is not, and I’ve stopped saving random screenshots to my desktop and phone “just in case”.
Unsubscribing from marketing emails has not only saved time, it has also stopped me from buying things just because it seems like a bargain.
It has made backing up devices quicker and easier, and I’ve managed to cut at least one of my cloud storage subscriptions because I’m not unknowingly hoarding duplicate photos and emails from 2007.
Physical clutter, on the other hand, is still a work in progress.
Cancel subscriptions
Speaking of subscriptions, how many does one person really need? When it comes to entertainment, we are now building up a critical mass – and paying for the privilege.
The original concept of digital subscriptions was a good one: we could pick and choose the content we wanted to access and pay for, and avoid the services we didn’t. That was simple when there were one or two streaming platforms but now it seems as if a new one is springing up every month. And if you add up all the different subscriptions, you are likely paying just as much, if not more, than you did for your pricey TV package a few years ago.
Take a good look at all the services you have signed up for, whether it is the monthly audiobooks, the child-focused apps and sites, or the streaming entertainment packages. If you aren’t using them regularly, stop wasting your money; cancel the membership, or even pause it for a while if possible.
Don’t get caught out by free trials either. While trying before you buy is a great idea, forgetting to cancel can be an expensive business.
Read the fine print before you commit to see how you go about cancelling; it should be as easy to cancel as it is to sign up. If you are going through Apple’s App Store or the Google Play store, you can usually cancel the service as soon as you sign up for the trial. That means you can keep your access to the service for the week but ensure that you won’t accidentally roll over to a paid subscription unless you really want the service.
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