8 Tech Resolutions for the New Year

At the beginning of a new year, we prepare -- or hope -- to become our better selves. Resolutions often focus on our diets and health, or balancing our families and careers, but you might want to consider adding some tech-focused resolutions to your New Year's to-do list.

 

Completing tasks like digitizing your photos and cleaning out your inbox will go a long way to make you more organized in 2013.

 

Check out some of these tech-related New Year's resolutions Mashable staff members are committed to accomplishing in the New Year.

• Clean your keyboard. After a year of eating at your desk, crumpling papers, opening boxes, who knows what junk and residue is in your keyboard? Use a duster to eliminate any nasty particles and buildup in your keyboard to make it look like new again.

 

• Digitize your photos. There's really no need to keep shoeboxes filled with photos anymore. Clean out your closet and transfer your images to digital files. You can store your photos online or even print them out in a photo album, which at least keeps them neater looking.

 

• Go through all your emails. This is a difficult one for many people. After signing up for sale alerts and being included in dozens of reply-all emails, perhaps your inbox seems unmanageable. Make a promise to yourself to take some time out each day to delete old emails.

 

• Set privacy filters on your social networks. We've read (and at Mashable, we've written) dozens of stories about privacy changes happening at your most used social networks. Take some times to make sure the information you're publishing to the Interwebs is stuff you want people to see.

 

• Clean up your digital trail. Remember that blog you started, wrote a few posts for, then never logged in again? Make sure if an employer Googles you, all content is appropriate and relevant. Deactivate any old accounts you no longer use, although keep in mind that information may not be gone forever.

 

• Delete apps you're not using . Go through your phone and delete any apps you haven't used in a couple months, so they're not taking up space on your device. Same goes for files on your computer -- delete what you don't need.

 

• Go paperless. This is the year! If you have a laptop, tablet and/or mobile device, you're well equipped to pay your bills and access important documents from anywhere. Scan old papers and convert your paper files into digital files for safe storage -- or at least, as a backup.

 

• Get outside. As much as we love our gadgets, getting fresh air and human interaction should be a high priority. Don't stay glued to your laptop or tablet all the time.

Posted in: 8 Tech Resolutions