Improving Your Online Profile Through a Digital Purge

Yesterday I made a spreadsheet. The result? Digital carnage.

There’s nothing quite like a ruthless digital hack-and-slash to get the blood pumping. Using the Pareto principle, commonly known as the 80/20 rule, I had a good, honest look at which of my digital accounts were actually useful, and which were leeches on my time and mental well-being. In case you’re not familiar, the Pareto principle states that 80% of your efforts go to 20% of your successes, and, vice-versa, 20% of your efforts produce 80% of your successes.

My results? Six accounts deleted, six more put in a holding pattern, and a migration of my beautiful customized personal website to a slightly less beautiful, but far more efficient WordPress template. If you’d like to see the actual process I used, here’s the Google Doc spreashsheet.

A few of the surprises:

1. The less-classy Deviant Art has been a much more effective venue for sharing my digital art than the much prettier Pinterest. Pinterest gone.
2. Twitter (@lintropy) gets a more positive response than any of my other social media accounts, so I’ll be budgeting time accordingly.
3. A defunct Facebook page for an writing project I created several years ago was one of my more popular accounts. I deleted it and invited its followers to check out my new, more general Facebook page.

If you feel the urge to purge, here’s a blank template of the spreadsheet I used. It’s immensely satisfying. I’d also love to hear about your own strategies for keeping your digital profile lean and mean in the comments below.