🧹Spring Clean Your Workflow

🦋The birds are chirping, the sun is shining, and your digital workspace is an absolute disaster. Don’t worry, you’re not alone—between cluttered inboxes, forgotten subscriptions, and documents multiplying like rabbits, it’s time for a spring cleaning intervention.

This week, we’re Marie Kondo-ing your workflows with AI tools that tidy up your tasks, declutter your digital junk, and freshen up your workspace—no mop required. (3-minute read).

🏔️ Week’s Highlights:

• Tool Spotlight: ClickUp – Organize your projects before they swallow you whole.
• Clean Email – AI-powered filtering that actually fixes inbox chaos.
• Sherpa’s Shortcuts – Purge your email & free up storage like a pro. (+Bonus freebie)
• The Ridgeline – AI just gave you 310 hours back—use them wisely.
• 😜 Tools Gone Wild – When AI takes “spring cleaning” too far…

AI tool spotlight:

Tool Sherpa explores the flood of new AI apps and carefully selects only proven tools.

🔍 ClickUp: The Ultimate Chaos Manager

Why It Matters:
Your to-do list is longer than a CVS receipt, and sticky notes aren’t a system. ClickUp turns scattered tasks into structured workflows with AI-powered automation, so you can spend less time organizing and more time doing.

But wait, there’s more. ClickUp isn’t just a project manager—it’s a productivity hub that replaces multiple apps in one sleek system. Think task tracking (like Trello), docs & wikis (like Notion), and time tracking (like Toggl)—all in one place. Plus, ClickUp’s AI assistant helps prioritize, summarize, and automate work, something most project managers don’t do.

Who Should Use This:
• Freelancers drowning in deadlines – ClickUp makes tracking tasks painless.
• Small teams juggling projects – Assign, automate, and collaborate in one place.
• Anyone who needs fewer tabs open – Stop flipping between apps—ClickUp pulls everything together.

Best Use Case:
Imagine you wake up, check ClickUp, and your tasks are already sorted, your priorities are set, and your AI assistant has nudged teammates for updates. Magic.

Pro: Automates task assignments, client follow-ups, workflow prioritization, and meeting summaries. Many users report saving 5-10 hours per week.
Con: Feature-packed—takes a bit to learn.

Pricing: Free plan available; paid starts at $7/month. 👉 Try ClickUp Here

🥾Clean Email: Your Inbox Detox

Why It Matters:
Your inbox is a digital landfill of promo emails, old receipts, and “thought I unsubscribed from this” gunk. Clean Email sweeps out inbox clutter automatically—sorting, unsubscribing, and archiving junk before it takes over your life.

But here’s where Clean Email stands out:

• Smart AI-powered filtering: It doesn’t just bulk delete—it learns your email habits and auto-sorts messages into categories like Finance, Work, and Promotions.

• Privacy-first unsubscribing: Instead of sharing your data with marketers (like some "unsubscribe" tools), Clean Email removes you from lists privately.

• One-click bulk cleanup: Delete thousands of old emails instantly, while keeping what matters.

Unlike Gmail or Outlook’s built-in filters, Clean Email is proactive—it keeps your inbox decluttered automatically so you never fall back into email chaos.

Who Should Use This:
• Freelancers: Who hate email – Get to Inbox Zero without spending hours.
• Small teams: With overloaded inboxes – Auto-sort, auto-archive, and auto-label what matters. Receive a daily summary of emails you skipped.
• Anyone: Tired of inbox chaos – Instantly batch-unsubscribe with one click.

Best Use Case:
Instead of scrolling past thousands of unread emails, Clean Email auto-sorts your inbox daily, deletes junk, and keeps only what’s important.

Pro: Filters dramatically reduce inbox clutter.
Con: Doesn’t work for desktop-only email clients.

Pricing: Free trial; paid starts at $9.99/month. 👉 Try Clean Email Here

^{*Tool Sherpa AI may receive a small commission for purchases—at no extra cost to you.}

Sherpa’s shortcuts 🪓

Sherpa-approved hacks to save time and streamline your workflow in today’s most popular AI apps.

Hack #1: Auto-Delete Old Emails

Problem: Your inbox is stuffed with years of old emails that you’ll never open but also never delete.

Solution: Set up auto-deletion rules in Gmail & Outlook so clutter disappears before it piles up.

1. In Gmail:

   • Click the search bar and type:
     older_than:1y -label:important

   • Click Select All > Delete (or create a filter to auto-delete emails this old moving forward!)

2. In Outlook:

• Access Folder Properties:

  • Right-click the target folder (e.g., Inbox) and select Properties.

• Configure AutoArchive:

  • Go to the AutoArchive tab.

  • Choose Archive this folder using these settings.

  • Set Clean out items older than to your desired timeframe (e.g., 30 days).

  • Select Permanently delete old items.

• Apply Settings:

  • Click OK to save.

  • Repeat for other folders as needed.

Note: Outlook’s standard rules don’t support automatic deletion based on email age; AutoArchive is the recommended method.

• 💡 Sherpa Tip: Want to free up even more space? Search for:

• larger:5M (Big attachments you don’t need)

• unsubscribe (junk you forgot to cancel)

_{*Not supported for all OS versions.}

Hack #2: Use OneDrive’s AI-powered ‘Files On-Demand’ to Free Up Space

Problem: Your computer is running out of space, but you don’t want to delete important files.

Solution: OneDrive’s AI-powered ‘Files On-Demand’ keeps files accessible without hogging local storage.

1. Open OneDrive Settings

2. Select Files On-Demand

3. Right-click files and choose “Free up space” to keep them online-only

4. Access them anytime without cluttering your hard drive

💡 Sherpa Tip: Set large files you rarely use (like videos or old projects) to online-only and save tons of space instantly.

👉 Explore Outlook

👉Check Gmail

👉Learn More About OneDrive

💡Bonus Freebie: Tidy Your Cloud Storage with TreeSize

Why It Fits: Cloud and local storage fills up fast, but figuring out what’s hogging space is a nightmare. TreeSize Free scans your hard drive or cloud folders and visually maps out what’s taking up space so you can delete junk files fast.

How to use:

Download: TreeSize Free (Windows-only).

Scan: Your hard drive or cloud storage folders.

See: Which files are massive bloat and clear them in one click

🔗 Check it out here (Free for Windows)

The Ridgeline 🏔️

News on how AI is rewriting the rules for solopreneurs and small teams. Let’s chart the trail:

AI doesn’t take coffee breaks, but you should—here’s what’s been happening while you were actually working.

🎉 Teen Hackers Build a $2M AI Side Hustle: Two 18-year-olds built Cal AI, a calorie-counting photo app that scans your food and guesses the damage. Over 5 million downloads later, they’re probably eating better than we are. 👉Read about it here

⏳ AI Just Gave You 310 Hours Back: Adobe’s latest report says AI tools save solopreneurs six hours a week—that’s 310 hours a year (nearly 8 work weeks) you can spend not drowning in admin work. 👉See the numbers

🦖 Founders Who Stop Learning Go Extinct: Juggling your startup and self-improvement? Turns out, not learning is the fastest way to become irrelevant. Keep growing—or risk becoming the business world’s next Blockbuster. 👉Here’s why it matters

🤖 AI Wants to Remember Everything You Do: A new wearable records your life and summarizes your day—great, unless you actually want to forget those awkward Zoom rants. Privacy concerns? Oh, just a little. 👉Judge for yourself

👍 The LinkedIn Hack That Gets You 100 Likes Every Time: Want more engagement on your posts? Psychology tricks can get you 100+ likes per post. Just remember, it won’t fix your bad takes. 👉Steal the playbook

☕ Final Sip:
If AI keeps advancing, soon it’ll be the one complaining about us not being productive enough. Brace yourselves.

###

Tools gone wild! 😜

Let’s end with a laugh — when AI tools take a detour off the happy path.

AI Declutters a Desk…By Deleting Everything

A startup recently tried AI-powered document sorting to "intelligently organize" its shared drive. The AI was supposed to clean up redundant files, categorize important docs, and archive old ones. Instead?

🚨It wiped everything.
Invoices? Gone. Contracts? Gone. A decade of work? Poof.

Turns out, the AI interpreted "optimize storage" as "eliminate anything not accessed recently." Auto-sync had replaced them with…nothing.

Lesson Learned: Sometimes, AI takes “spring cleaning” too seriously. Always test auto-delete features before letting AI go full Marie Kondo on your life.

🧭 What’s Next?

This week, we tackled digital clutter head-on—from AI-powered task management to inbox detoxing. Next time we’ll be back with all sorts of digital hacks and AI tricks.

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— Your Sherpa Team