Clutter:

Gets in your way.

Takes up time that you’d rather spend on other things.

Distracts you when you’re trying to get something done.

Lurks in your mind even when you can’t see it.

Displaces more important things in your house and your mind.

This is true of digital clutter as well as physical clutter. When I took my digital vacation a few months ago, I was able to focus more on reading and on thinking as well as working with my hands. I wasn’t a slave to a device; it no longer controlled me. The physical comparison would be how rearranging your clutter around your house controls your actions and keeps you from doing other things because all that clutter is in your way.

I’m old enough that taking a break from devices lets me go back to the way I used to be, before the Internet. But younger people don’t know what life was like before the Internet. Their reality is a life of being controlled by devices, and I mean controlled. Take a look at this article by a man who visits England every summer and purposely takes the long way home in the form of seven days on the Queen Mary, where it’s too hard to access the Internet.

He loves the break from being online. He loves being able to think, or read, or just sit. But as he nears the U.S., and Internet access becomes available again, his smartphone sucks him back online like an octopus pulling him under the ocean. Once again, he loses control of his actions.

Like physical clutter, digital clutter must be conquered if you ever want to get your life back…..or enjoy having a life for the first time in memory. Am I the only one who thinks the headline of this article, “The Fantasy of Being Disconnected,” is tragic? The author is a person who is completely controlled by digital clutter.