Simplify Your Digital Life

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31 Days and 31 ways to simplify your life, whether or not you have ADHD :)
31 Days and 31 ways to simplify your life, whether or not you have ADHD 🙂

You know, I think that, as a whole, we ADDers are messy people.

But we’re creative too, and I think that creative types tend to be messy too.

Our messes are part of our ADHD in a way. Poor short term memory, always anticipating the next thing – there are so many reasons that we find it hard to keep things under control.

And it’s not just our homes.

Our cars can be messy, and the inside of our purse, and even our electronic devices can get cluttered.

I know my laptop, iPad, and cell phone could benefit from a good straightening and decluttering.

My son recently installed a new operating system on his laptop and accidentally deleted everything on it. He said it was the best thing that could have happened.

All of his old files were gone, he had tons of space, and his computer ran faster.

I don’t recommend that drastic of a step, but it did prompt me to clear out a lot of the files on my laptop.

I don’t know that there are any apps or programs out there that would help with such a process, but there is a cool app that helps you get things done for you automatically, electronic wise.

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It’s called “If this, then that” or IFTTT for short, and here are some of the ways that you can use it:

  • Set it to save a copy of a photo you post to Instagram to Dropbox
  • Add photos you like on Instagram to your phone
  • Let you know when it’s going to rain or snow
  • Text or email you with the final score of your favorite teams
  • Message someone at home when you’re almost there
  • Track your Google calendar and notify you when there are new entries

I think that the uses of IFTTT are only limited by your imagination.

IFTTT uses what they call recipes.

A recipe is basically saying “if I post a photo to my Facebook wall, then also save it to my Dropbox account”. It tells IFTTT what to do.

There are two kinds of recipes: IF recipes and DO recipes.

IF recipes are like the one above; they run in the background. I have one set to let me know when it’s going to rain.

DO recipes require a tap from you and usually work with another app. You simply connect the two from within the IFTTT website. The DO app is in addition to the IFTTT app. Both are free.

For instance, connect your gmail account to IFTTT and add in the email address of the person you want to notify that you are on your way home. (There is a way to send a text instead, but I’m a little confused on that one.)

Luckily for me and maybe you, there are tons of IFTTT recipes already on their website that other people have thought of and created. They even have one that lets you call yourself so that you can get out of a meeting. 😉

They have a lot of good categories too, like health and fitness, productivity, shopping, and news alerts. If you have one of those new smart devices for your home, like the thermostats you can set from anywhere, you can use IFTTT for controlling them. Note: they don’t call them categories and they are kind of hard to find. They seem to pop up at the bottom when you view certain recipes.

Take a look at IFTTT and see what you think.

You may spend some time playing with it, but once you get it up and running, it can really make things easier.

Lacy Estelle

Lacy Estelle

Lacy Estelle is the writer of Lacyestelle.com and the Podcast host for An ADD Woman.

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