Information Clutter

Organizers talk a lot about physical clutter.  The stuff that fills up the space in your home, car, desk, etc.  But there is something else we talk about that doesn't get as much notice most of the time... information clutter.

One source of information clutter is your email.  Buy something online and the next thing you know you're on 6 mailing lists for sister sites.  I get "helpful" emails from my bank, retailers, alumni clubs, the church, etc, etc, etc.  It's a lot.  I try to unsubscribe from those I don't truly want to read.

In fact, if you are looking to save a little money then removing the temptation of the "HUGE SALE 50% OFF EVERYTHING" email from all your favorite online retailers is a great place to start.

But my current source of information clutter is on my smart phone.

Today I got a Twitter direct message. Here's a list of all the ways I was notified of the message:
1. a text message from Twitter
2. a text message from Twitter through my "handsent" application
3. an email from Twitter to my gmail app
4. an email from Twitter via my "universal inbox"
5. a notification from my Twitter app
6. a notification from my TweetDeck app
7. a notification from my HootSuite app

Um, yeah... the message was not that important.  One of those would have been sufficient.  Two at most.  

So this afternoon I'll be updating my twitter settings to remove a few of those. I'll start with email & text notification since on my phone twitter can notify me directly I don't need those additional outlets. 

The point is, clearing all those notifications from my phone took me probably 1 minute.  Not much time.  But if I get 10 messages a day, that's 10 minutes of time just spent clearing something I've already read.  What clutter!

Where can you cut information clutter from your life?