Not the dramatic kind. Not quit your job unsubscribing. The small kind. The ten or fifteen minutes a week kind that, compounded over a year, gives you back a noticeable portion of your attention.
- Email
- Promotional lists you signed up for to get the 10% off
- Newsletters you have not opened in two months
- Calendar invites for recurring meetings nobody runs
- Phone
- Apps with red badge counts you never tap
- Notification permissions for anything that is not a person
- Push notifications from news apps, including the one you like
- Browser
- Saved tabs you have not opened in two weeks
- Bookmarks from sites that have not updated in a year
- Subscriptions
- Streaming services you used twice last quarter
- Software you bought for one project that ended
Pick three this week. Not all of them. Three. Subtraction is a practice, not a sprint.