1. Clear Out Your Email Inbox
It’s common to let unimportant emails pile up, unread, in your inbox. The danger of this is that you might miss an important email when it does come in, as it gets lost in a high number of unread messages. You might also find that the stack of unread messages weighs on your subconscious; it’s yet another task you need to get around to sooner or later.
The good news is that it usually only takes five minutes to scan your unread emails and put them where they belong: archive, trash, or spam. You should also take this opportunity to unsubscribe to any newsletters you don’t want to receive anymore. That way, you’re less likely to find yourself buried under junk emails in the future.
2. Organize Your Apps
If you’re someone who likes to try out a lot of new apps, your phone might be cluttered with all the ones you don’t use anymore. When you find yourself with time to spare, review your Home screen and delete any apps you no longer need.
You could also rearrange your iPhone apps to make your favorite ones more accessible. An organized Home screen makes it easier to find apps when you’re looking for them.
3. Check Your Notifications
Almost every app on your phone begs for your attention through notifications. If you don’t dismiss them, these notifications stack up in the Notification Center, making you less likely to notice the important ones.
Swipe down from the top of the screen to access your Notification Center. Tap on a notification to open the relevant app or swipe it left and tap Clear to dismiss it. Tap and hold the X button and choose Clear All Notifications to dismiss them all at once.
4. Update Your To-Do List
There are a lot of great to-do list apps, but all of them get cluttered if you don’t spend time updating your tasks. Make sure you tick off any items you’ve already completed, change the deadline for ones you need to delay, and delete the jobs you don’t need to do anymore.
Another productive way to spend time on your device is to empty your head of everything you need to do and put it into a to-do list. That way you can’t forget them. Be sure to assign deadlines or reminders for any time-sensitive tasks.
5. Sort Through Your Photos
One of the luxuries of a smartphone is that you’ve always got a camera on you to snap new pictures. The downside is that this can result in a bloated library filled with countless similar photos from when you were too eager with the shutter button.
There’s nothing better to do when you’re bored on your phone than sorting through your photo library. Take a little time to delete pictures you don’t need, edit the ones that need a touch-up, highlight your favorites, and create albums for different memories. We’ve looked at how to organize iPhone photos if you need some tips.
