By: Deidre Doezema-Burkholder
My sister-in-law confuses me. She likes to run…without music. I do not understand how she is able to do it. I must have music in my ear when I’m attempting to run, jog, exercise. I have used several different apps in the past to help get myself in better fitter shape.
Just as I’ve used different apps I’ve also had different products too.
Before I had a piece of technology to help it was the classic pencil and paper. Log your food and log your work out. Then I got an iPod Touch and my world changed. All of a sudden I had apps that would help me. Log your food in this app. Watch how to do weights on this app. Track your bike ride on this app. Apps, glorious apps, everywhere! Then I realized, as I was losing the pounds on myself, my iPod was starting to become bloated.
I see a lot of mobile devices in my line of work. People mention that after a while their device starts to feel slow. Sometimes it is due to age, but 8 out of 10 times their devices is bloated with data.
For example, if you have an iPhone 6 that has 16GB of data storage, a few of those gigabytes are set aside right away for the software to run your phone. So now that brings us down to about 12GB of space. That is still a lot if you maintain the space properly.
Devices work best when they have breathing room. I usually recommend a minimum of 2GB of free space. Photos and videos take up a lot of room. A LOT OF ROOM. It is probably one of the things I see the most; 600 photos or more taking up space. Out of those 600 photos, probably only 120 of them are actually wanted.
Cleaning up your photos gives back precious space. Delete them from the phone or what I like to do is download them into my computer and delete them there, I find it to be faster that way.
Music can clog up your memory as well. When is the last time you took a look through your play list? This is another thing I try to keep up on. I actively keep 3 playlists on my phone. One for the gym and two for the car. With the addition of iTunes radio and other music streaming services you may not realize that you are not using your playlist anymore. If you’re not using them, get them off the device!
Then there are apps. As I write to you today, I have 50 apps on my phone. I like to review the apps on my phone every couple of months. There are apps I’m more likely to use in the summer than the winter. If I’m going on vacation I have more travel apps on my phone than when I’m just doing my usual business. Sure there are a lot of apps that you use frequently, and I’m not saying you have to take things down to a bare minimum, but I’m suggesting that maybe you don’t need to have every app on there. I use a guideline I made up myself. If I haven’t used the app in about 1 month, then I don’t need it on my phone.
Also a reminder, all of this memory clogging is true not just for our mobile devices but for our actual computers too. Your laptop or desktop machine store massive amounts of data.
Quick! When was the last time you went through and deleted emails? Not just the spam or the junk but emails. Imagine if all those emails were printed out and lying around the house. Can you see that in your house? The nice thing is that usually with your computer you have the option of upgrading your hard drive to add more space. Your computer likes some breathing room just like you.
Our phones, and our computers, are a machine, just like our body, and it needs to be taken care of to run at its peak. Sure, on vacation we like to let ourselves go a little bit and enjoy the trip – taking pictures and downloading new apps – but we don’t live everyday life that way. Watch what you put into your phone and make sure to trim the fat when it’s needed!
Deidre owns and operates Organisum: Technology Services, a business serving the West MI area. In her free time she likes to hike & bike local trails with friends and family when she isn’t pinning, instagram’ing or Netflix’ing.
