The spring is a great time, isn’t it? :) At my house I always spend a lot of time cleaning the house, washing windows and doing some extra cleaning after a long winter. As a freelancer/creative I’ve started a tradition on cleaning up in my computer-related things this time of year as well. Except this, I also do a lot of stuff specially in spring which helps me stay organize in the whole year. Here are some of my tips on how you can do the same!

If you are a creative mind that often leaves you with quite a lot of files, folders, software you’ve tried and so on. The spring is a great time for cleaning up a bit all over the line. It usually gets hotter and sunnier, the snow starts to disappear(if you live in a colder area like me) and you often get some extra inspiration and energy. I think this is a great time to use some of that extra energy on cleaning up. Not only does it feel good to have things nice and tidy but it will also help on your productivity when you do this.

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I hope these tips I’ve collected can help you out a bit and if you have some tips of your own, feel free to add them in the comments:)

1. Look through files and folders

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Take the time to look through all those files and folders you’ve created the past months. Finished projects don’t need to be shortcut-ed on your desktop. Usually these folders can have a lot of reference material you don’t need anymore or files that were never used.

2. Update Data

Make sure all your contact info is correct in your portfolio, signatures and so on. You should also take some time to make sure that all your contacts are up to date both on your computer and your phone.

3. Uninstall software you don’t need anymore

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If you have tested out new software or used certain apps for various projects that now are finished, its time to uninstall them to make room for new ones. Your computer will thank you ;)

4. Check for updates on “everything”

Do various programs ask you if you want to update in the middle of you working with things so that you constantly click “remind me later” ? Now is the time to get it done. Check for updates on all software you have and get it over with. Not only will this stop “annoying” warnings and update-messages but it will also give you a more stable system. Win-win situation coming up.

5. Look for programs you need

Maybe you’ve spent a lot of time thinking of programs or extensions you should have installed but never took the time to. Use those extra minutes to find what you feel you need it being new skins, browser extensions or pure software. My advice is to also get a time management app if you don’t have one yet :)

6. Archive files and tag them

Picture by Billy Alexander

Look through files you have (that you still need) and arrange them into archives. Pictures and such should be tagged to find them easier later.

7. Earn money/share unused files

If you make drawings, write scripts, create logos, make buttons and such things there’s a good chance you have lots of these that never made it any further than the drawing board. Now is the time to look through them. If you think any of them can be of use to other creatives there are many ways to share them. If you have high quality photos taken by yourself that never came to use you can try upload them to stock-sites and earn some money of them. Or you can upload to other sites where they can be shared for free, like for example deviantART or Flickr. The possibilities are many. Wouldn’t it be great if others could make use of these files that you spent hours and hours making? There are many sites where these different kinds of work can be uploaded so try explore the options.

8. Update your portfolio

Picture by Asif Akbar

With all the projects you have finished it’s time to go ahead and update your portfolio. Many articles have been written with good tips depending on your niche so go ahead and google them if you need new inspiration on how to make your portfolio as professional and attractive as possible. My#1 tip on portfolios is to make sure you show the versatility of your work.

9. Unanswered mails

Do you have any unanswered mails that you havent had the time to respond to and such? Do it now. The sight of an empty inbox will leave you with a good refreshed feeling if you’re used to the mailbox being all filled up.

10. Unsubscribe to newsletters

During a year there are emails/newsletter subscriptions that you make or that you get automatically when you’ve ordered something. Some of these are actually useful while others are useless and annoying. Take this opportunity to unsubscribe to the ones that just annoy you.

11. Bookmarks

Cleaning up in your bookmarks can be quite a task but in many cases it can help speed up your browser and make things easier to find. Make folders for various links you need to keep, look through them and delete the ones you never use.

12. Paid subscriptions

Do you have any paid subscriptions that you don’t use or have been thinking of cancelling? Get it done!

13. “Read it later”s

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Maybe you have a button in your browser to store articles you want to read later or have a lot of bookmarks lying around that you’ve meant to read for ages. Clean them up aswell.

14. Clear out emails

I myself tend to keep all emails that I think can be useful to have later on. When I do the spring cleanup I take a look through my oldest emails and delete the ones I don’t need anymore.

15. Clean up your virtual desktop

The desktop itself can be quite cluttered after months of hard work. Remove all those shortcuts you don’t need anymore and all the files you’ve saved that should be somewhere else. Changing your wallpaper can also be quite refreshing. Start off the spring by giving yourself a new work environment. Find a nice new wallpaper that has a fresh feeling to it, maybe you even have some artwork of your own that you can use?

16. Defrag

You probably defrag your hard drive regularly, which you still should. But after having done all this cleaning up and moving of files you should finish it off by giving your drives a good old full defrag. This way files will be stored more efficient and the drives will work faster for you again.

17. Automate things

Picture by Sas Van Veen
This can be a lot of things that you’ve been meaning to do but never took the time to. Schedule backups or scannings, make a Photoshop action for something you do often or just some sort of adjustments you’ve wanted to do to your routines.

18. Change passwords

Every now and then you would for obvious reasons want to change passwords. Do it now. Make sure you know the passwords to all your services and store them safely.

19. Finances

If you have unsent invoices, get them out. Make a system in your finances with everything that involves. Put all your receipts where they should be, do you have overdue bills to pay yourself? And while you’re at it have a look at your expenses. Maybe you should set aside more money to save for something you need or for taxes. Are there areas where you can cut down on expenses?

20. Evaluate yourself

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Take some time to have a look at what you have done the past months. Write down things you feel have been succesful and things that haven’t been quite like you planned. This part of the process can be very valuable. Give yourself a pat on the shoulder for the good things you’ve done, and try to find ways to improve on the areas that weren’t as succesful. As a rule you would want to keep good habits and break bad ones. It’s that simple. But you need to think things through to be able to figure out how to do just this. Be honest to yourself and it will pay off in the year to come.

21. Set goals for the coming months

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Planning is essential. And it’s always easier to plan and know what you want when you aren’t in the middle of everything. Take the time you need to write down your goals and how you want to be the coming months. Goals like “getting more done” and “being better at taking care of yourself ” are good goals but remember to also have some more specific goals that can be measured. Then it’s easier to see if you really succeeded or not when you have your next evaluation.

22. Hardware needs TLC too

Picture by Ilco
It isn’t only the software part of your equipment that needs your care, this also goes for your hardware. Blow off you keyboard and clean the mouse. Make sure everything is clean and working properly. This is also the time for renewal if needed. If you have a hard drive that has been acting up recently you should consider getting a new one or at least getting it fixed BEFORE it crashes and takes with it hours of work you’ve done. If you have cables that aren’t working properly or other things that just have things about them that annoy you or don’t work properly – get new ones or get them fixed.

23. Finish things

Most of us have old projects lurking somewhere that we always are going to “finish next week”. Make that next week this week. Make new room in your mind for fresh new things by finishing off the old ones. Maybe its article ideas you’ve been meaning to send for reviews, pictures you’ve ment to print out or upload somewhere, art you’ve made that you want to submit somewhere or something else you haven’t finished. It may take a few hours to get on top of things but it’ll feel great when you’re done!

24. Throw away stuff that doesn’t work

Throw all those old and dry pens and markers that aren’t working anymore. The old mouse that will never be used again shouldnt be hanging out in your creative area. Same goes for broken cds, rulers and staplers.

25. Treat yourself with something new

Picture by Banjo Ari
Buy a new plant, a picture, blinders, a new pen you’ve wanted or something else for your workspace that you need and/or want.

26. Clean the office

Empty the recycle bin, change the curtains, clean all spaces of your office.

27. Get rid of old papers and magazines

Cut out articles you want to keep and throw what you don’t need anymore.

28. Redecorate if needed

Maybe the office space itself could do with some adjustments. Moving the desk a bit, painting a wall or getting a new cabinet can do wonders to both your creativity and your productivity.

29. Stock up

Picture by Ian Barnard
Make sure you have fresh new notebooks, paper to print on, enough pens and pencils, ink for the printer and other things that you use a lot of.

30. Take a break!

If you’ve spent hours or maybe days spring cleaning you should end the whole session with taking a time-out. Go for coffee or lunch somewhere or just do something you love to do and give yourself a pat on the back for cleaning well done!

These were my 30 tips for the spring tasks. Obviously you would want to keep on top of things and organize more than once a year. But if you take the time for a real spring cleaning where you do everything that’s needed and clean up in all those things that have been unfinished for so long it will be easier to keep it up on a regular basis. Make sure you do these “spring cleaning” routines again in not too many months. If you do these things only a couple of times a year at least have routines that make them easier to follow-up.

As always you can leave feedback or your own tips in the comments section below. Thanks for reading and good luck! :)

First of all, for those who don’t have a clue about SEO practice should understand that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is actually more than just a simple technique to increase traffic and sell products or services. In fact SEO represents a science. The most important and effective science existing on the internet.

Of course, SEO is not the only solution for getting tons and tons of traffic to your site, but without a doubt, SEO is the most effective one. Why am I saying that? Well…let’s just take things as they are: You for example get traffic from a website with related content to yours. The traffic which comes from that website is pointing to the impression of your post on that writer who linked to your page which means that user may or may not like what it will find there so as a result the user may or may not come back to your site.

Things are pretty different with SEO because it helps you to build constant growing traffic which also helps you to gain credibility and trust from your visitors. Gaining trust is very important because is the one that helps you to build a real community so, as a result you will get RSS Readers, more Twitter followers and people who are interested in buying your products or just interested in the information or services you are offering.

Why SEO traffic is better than any other type of traffic?

1. It helps you to get more money

For publishers that use Affiliate programs or PPC campaigns, it was scientifically proven that traffic which comes from search engines is more likely to click on your Ads than other source of traffic.

2. It helps you build a community

As I said before, traffic that comes from SEO methods is sort of permanent because is the one that places users in the place that they want to be, your site.

3. Get more RSS Readers, Twitter Followers, Facebook fans for your website page

SEO articles are the ones that build credibility and trust so, as a sign of respect, the users will follow you on twitter, subscribe to your RSS feeds and of course they will know that on your website they will find the information they need and start gaining social media power.

How can u do that?

Well, I’m not going to explain every single part of SEO aspects in this article just because they have been already covered by some other authors in previous posts.

So, for starting you may go and read the 3 Smart Ranking SEO Tips You Better Be Aware Of, How To Create Popular Blog With Keyword Research, Heatmaps And SEO?.

As you might see, I’ve selected these two articles as an example of knowledge you should master before starting to optimize your website. Why these two? Well, as you probably know, content is the most important thing you have to build when you think about SEO because it is the source of attracting people to your site.

When people make a search they always do it in order to find the information they need and search engines like Google and Yahoo! help them to find it. What you are looking for is that search engines will find that information on your website. In order to do that, you need to have the information.

Yes, is pretty simple to create some random simple articles and to say that we have content. Is it enough? No, because search engines place all the results after their relevance and also quality.

How does search engines work?

As I said before, search engines place the results considering 3 important criterions: Quality, unique content and relevance of the content written. If you have both, I’m pretty sure you will get what you want which is of course traffic.

1. Quality

a. First of all, to create quality you need to be focused on what you do and to be serious with your domain of activity. Is pretty hard to cover all domains of activity (actually is impossible) so that’s why I recommend you to create a niche based website and start learning about your niche so that you will become an expert.

b. You definitely have to love what you do because once you do it just for the writing, you will get bored and as a result you wouldn’t be able to continue what you do.

2. Unique Content

Is without a doubt the hardest part of creating SEO content. If you would have done this 6-7 years ago, probably it would have been lot much easier, but nowadays because of the mass of information available on the internet is pretty hard to create 100% unique content so that’s why you should try hard to write your content using your own keywords and try to avoid the duplicate content because it is like it doesn’t exist for most important search engines.

3. Relevance

If you stick to your niche and follow the first 2 steps – Quality and unique content, the relevance will be as it doesn’t need to be done by you. I’m saying this because if you do have Quality content and Unique content, users, bloggers and website owners will notice it immediately and you will get back links, recommendations probably reviews. These things will place your article in first spots of web search results so that you will get tons of traffic almost immediately.