The Menubar Challenge

(via Harry Vangberg)

There is a tried and true uncluttering trick for your home and office used by many professional and highly paid “Organizational Consultants”. It involves taking everything you own, save for the bare essentials, and moving it into storage. For a set period of time, retrieve items from the store when needed. Anything not accessed after said set period of time you likely do not really need and should be disposed of.

If this works for “stuff” in your home, why not on your Mac? Let’s start with the Menubar. Remove everything from the right hand side. Yep, all of it. Now, set a time period. When you find yourself missing something, like the battery status or clock, instead of putting it back in there, ask yourself if there is another, less “always on”, way to to get that info. A widget in Dashboard perhaps. If the answer is sure that you really need that icon or info in the menubar then put it back. If you pass the set time period and have not put everything back, then you likely did not need it there.

Once again, this is an exercise to challenge you to think seriously about what you really need and what you don’t. I’m not saying that having stuff there is somehow wrong. I’m saying that you should always be ready to ask the question and be equiped with the data to give yourself an honest answer.