The Playbook for Digital Downsizing

Less is more.

80/20: Decluttering is about having a simple but effective system that is providing the most value. The Pareto principle (80/20 rule, the law of the vital few) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of effects come from 20% of the causes. That means that 80% of the results come from 20% of the efforts, roughly. Set a quota for the apps you can keep. Aim for 20%.

Least Valuable Players: Delete the apps that serve only one purpose and can be replaced by a more useful app you already have. Eg.: I only have the Flixter app to lookup showtimes for films, something that can be easily done via google search. Scrapped. Multiple image editing apps that does 90% the same thing, scrap them.

Monogamy: A lot like LVP’s, the apps that falls under the monogamy strategy are doing mostly the same thing, but serve a whole category of purposes. Monogamy is to keep only one app of the category and only if you need to. Eg: IMDb, Flixter, Letterboxd and Reelgood. They do mostly the same thing, so chose the one that you like best and stick with it. Exceptions are: When having more than one is beneficial for organization, eg.: Inbox for my personal email and Gmail for corporate. Or when migration isn’t an option. More on migration below.

Migrating Data: In some cases you might find that you have information spread out over similar apps. Like I do with Wunderlist and Todoist. I’m choosing Todoist for my listing purposes, so I have to migrate the still relevant info I have on Wunderlist to the app I am keeping. This can be easier said than done. Eg.: Dropbox and Drive: there’s so much data in both these apps I’m not sure migrating to use only one is an option. They have mostly the same features but both are bound by storage caps and have important differences in features. Some document formats will only open on one or the other. Nothing is set in stone in this strategy, analyze and ask yourself the reason to keep or delete and make your decision.

Blue Moon Apps: Let go of those apps you only use once in a blue moon. They cause clutter and if the frequency is low, you can just download them when you need and delete them afterwards (provided you’re at a place in space and time where data is cheap.) My example for this is Expensify. It’s very useful when I go on work trips but that happens only two or three times a year. I can safely let go of it. Others: TrainTime, Wifi Map, CamScanner to name a few.

Forsaken Apps: These are self explanatory but I’ll explain them anyway: The apps you have but never open. Don’t be a ghost user. Let them go.

Time Suckers: These will be the hardest. These are the ones we talked about earlier. The ones that got us hooked. The ones taking times out of our lives and providing little to no value in return. Think a lot about these apps, ask why and make your case whether to keep ’em or scrap ’em.

After running the plays, this was the scorecard:

I Have 136 apps on my phone broken down like this:

Apps to Keep: 34

Apps to Delete: 102

That’s 25% of the apps I had. I didn’t hit my target but as Lombardi once said “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”

Applying the minimalism concept to my digital life I was able to delete 3 out of every 4 apps on my phone and I plan to do this once or twice more to someday improve to only one page of apps.

Other Implementations:

Digital downsizing will also be beneficial to my desktop applications and web applications. Some of them will repeat across platforms eg.: Evernote and Calendars. The big question for them is: Do I need this application on this platform? The answer for Google Calendar for example is yes. But this isn’t true for all of them, eg.: Notes (Apple). I use it often on my computer but rarely on phone, so I will ditch it’s mobile version.

Applying this scrutiny to social medias is hugely beneficial and extremely hard. Even the amount of wearable tech and tracking devices and the IoTs all need scrutiny to question their values. These strategies can help us to use less of what we think we need and more of what is truly valuable.