Our ever-changing world of technology means we are awash with a seemingly endless stream of apps and social media sites. All of these claim to enrich our lives and make our day-to-day tasks simpler, but it’s easy to get bogged down and swamped under the volume of tech to keep up to date with, and posts to read, write and reply to online.

Stop for a minute and think how many social media groups do you belong to compared to the number of ‘real life’ local groups you belong to?

Alarming

We can’t attend every physical meeting, we haven’t the time, so why do we feel the need to join so many groups in cyber space and find it acceptable to be interrupted from our everyday activities every single time someone uploads a photo of themselves taking their dog for a walk, having a coffee or having a personal brainwave. I know, I was the one such poster the other day with a simple photo in the park and receiving an instant 35 ‘likes’!

That’s 35 people whose daily life had been interrupted by my post and that’s just those who had actually clicked to like it, let alone all those whose phones pinged, iPads groaned, and computers whirred.

Why do we do it? I wouldn’t want all the people I know knocking on my door all through the day just to let me know they’ve just watched an episode of Home & Away on TV.

Tick Tock

I have recently conducted a spring clean of my digital life. This was a deep clean, including the removal of saved internet sites I’d had every intention of visiting, but never got around to, as well as old emails clogging up my inbox, slowing it down.

I then turned my attention to my online presence, cherry picking only a very small number of groups/pages and then, even out of the chosen few, only switching on notifications from a handful of these.

I uninstalled apps on my phone that I’d not used in the last 3 months, freeing up storage space and speeding up its processing power to boot.

Now I’m not stating that all things in our digital world are bad, quite the opposite, lets operate some quality control. Let’s not be too greedy, over indulging and impacting rather than aiding our efficiency and effectiveness as ADIs.

Greenwich Mean Time

So, spend your time wisely, run a spring clean of any apps you’ve not used, groups you have not posted in, and choose only those that assist you in driving your driving school forward, rather than running it to a standstill.

Do an analysis of how many posts you read, apps you play with, photos you upload over a week. Reclaim the time and space to do something more fulfilling, like a walk with the dog. Then you can post on social media about how much time you have saved and…. Oh no wait… .