Last week was full of the usual good stuff. Lots of travel. New relationships. New contacts. New ideas. A few great conversations. A few reminders I probably needed.
But one of the most unexpected things I learned was not about real estate, AI, marketing or business.
It was about my cell phone.
More specifically, it was about the ridiculous number of photos and videos sitting on my phone.
If you are anything like me, your camera roll is part memory bank, part storage unit, part junk drawer. Family photos. Event videos. Screenshots. Listing photos. Receipts. Food pictures. Duplicate shots. Blurry pictures. That one good photo you took 14 times because someone blinked.
At some point, it all starts to add up.
Your phone gets slower. Your storage fills up. You start deleting apps you actually use. Then, eventually, you convince yourself the answer is a new phone with more storage. I have been there.
Then someone shared this simple little hack that made way too much sense
Every day, search your photos by that day’s date. Not the year. Just the month and day, so if today is May 6, search “May 6” in your photo library.
Your phone will pull up every photo and video taken on May 6 across every year your library goes back.
Then just clean up that one day.
- Delete the duplicates.
- Delete the blurry ones.
- Delete the random screenshots.
- Delete the videos you will never watch again.
- Keep the ones that actually matter.
That is it.
Tomorrow, search May 7. The next day, May 8.
Do that every day for a year and you have worked through your entire photo and video library without turning it into some overwhelming weekend project. That’s why I liked it.
It’s small. It’s simple. It’s doable. And it turns a massive cleanup into a daily habit.
Here’s another daily habit I swear by
It also reminded me of Admiral William McRaven’s 2014 commencement speech about making your bed. His point was simple: making your bed every morning gives you the first completed task of the day.
It creates a small sense of pride. It builds momentum. And if the day goes sideways, you still come home to a made bed and a reminder that tomorrow can be better.
Maybe this is the second step after making your bed.
- Make your bed.
- Open your photos and clean up today’s date.
It may sound small, but that’s the point. Most of us will never sit down and say, “Today is the day I am going through 40,000 photos and videos.”
But five minutes a day? That feels possible.
And once you complete one small task, it becomes a little easier to complete the next one.
That’s usually how discipline works. Not in giant dramatic declarations, but in small actions repeated consistently.
One bed made.
One day of photos cleaned up.
One little piece of digital clutter removed.
And maybe that is the bigger lesson.
Now, you let me know: Where else could this same idea apply? Could you look at the contacts you added to your database on this same date in prior years and use that as a reason to update, clean up or reconnect?
Could you do the same thing inside your CRM, if your platform allows you to search by date added?
Could you clean up the thousands of Instagram accounts you follow that never actually show up in your feed, no longer matter or no longer match who you’re paying attention to?
Sometimes the best hack is not adding another app, buying more storage or upgrading the system. Sometimes it’s taking one small, repeatable action and using it to make everything feel a little lighter.
