My Optimal Digital Lifestyle

By michael

I’m trying to figure out my optimal digital lifestyle. By digital lifestyle I mean the part of my life that is spent at the computer or with my phone.

I interface with digital technology almost daily because it’s part of my profession as a software developer and it’s a large part of how I identify myself, I’m a techie. I love offline activities, but tech, the internet, digital content and activities are a large part of who I am…but I want to be more mindful about how I approach my digital self.

I’m doing this to get a handle on my digital clutter, make better use of the digitial content I’ve collected and have a more meaningful online presence.

My digital lifestyle consists of content and systems. The content is everything I consume and have online. The systems are the ways I utilize and interact with the content.

My digital content comes from sources like:

  • Email
  • YouTube videos viewed and created
  • Saved links and posts on YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest
  • Online courses
  • Github repositories for my software projects
  • Google Drive for online storage
  • Google Photos

The content consists of:

  • Personal and professional emails
  • Emails to remind me of something to do
  • Inspriring art photos
  • Cool art photos
  • Software projects
  • Memorable photos I’ve taken
  • Photos for reference
  • Reminder photos (what’s my cars license plate number, where did I park it)
  • Cool, inspiring, informative YouTube videos
  • Music
  • Recipes
  • Exercises and workouts
  • Travel tips, places to go
  • Tutorials, things to learn

Digital systems include:

  • Mindful time at the computer/phone and consciously stepping away
  • Figuring out ways to utilize the content instead of just collecting, ie, all those Pinterest pins waiting to inspire artwork.
  • Building my online presence to create monetization stream(s)
  • Scheduling tasks to make forward progress towards goals. Split time between building online presence and products.
  • Ways to bring digital content meaningfully into offline time, ie, podcasts while walking.
  • Generate content ideas to create. Blogs to write, videos and images to produce.

I feel the first step is to collect everything so I try to organize. It feels overwhelming, but it has been over 30 years of stuff between online storage and external drives. So the lists above will be growing and modifying as I learn more about what I have and how I want to use it.

I also want to state that this is MY OPTIMAL digital lifestyle…not THE OPTIMAL digital lifestyle. Everyones will be different and optimal doesn’t necessarily mean current.