Digital Minimalism
By Cal NewportA Lopsided Arms Race
The purpose of this chapter is to essentially make the case that we are addicted to our technology and it is not our fault. These companies are spending billions of dollars researching the best way to make their products as addictive as possible, meanwhile we are just trying to go about our lives.
Addiction is a condition in which a person engages in use of a substance or behavior for which the rewarding effects provide a compelling incentive to repeatedly pursue the behavior despite detrimental consequences.
Digital Minimalism
What we need to combat these addictive technologies is a philosophy of technology use. Something that starts from first principles and allows us to easily determine what technologies we should be using and how we should be using them.
Digital Minimalism A philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected optimized activities that strongly support the things you value, and then happily miss our on everything else.
The Principles of Digital Minimalism
Principle 1: Clutter is costly
Cluttering you time and attention with too many devices, apps and services creates and overall negative cost that can swamp the small benefits that each individual item provides in isolation.
Principle 2: Optimization is important
Deciding a particular technology supports something they values is only the first step. To truly extract its full potential benefit, it’s necessary to think carefully about how they’ll use the technology.
Principle 2: Intentionality is satisfying
One can derive significant satisfaction from committing to being more intentional with how they engage with technologies. This source of satisfaction is independent of the individual decisions they make and is one of the primary sources of meaning derived from digital minimalism.
The Digital Declutter
- Set aside a thirty-day period during which you will take a break from optional technologies in your life.
- During this thirty-day break, explore and rediscover activities and behaviors that you find satisfying and meaningful.
- At the end of the break, reintroduce optional technologies into your life, starting from a blank slate. For each technology you reintroduce, determine what value it serves int your life and how specifically you will use it so as to maximize this value.
Consider a technology optional unless its temporary removal would harm or significantly disrupt the daily operation of your professional and personal life. Don’t confuse convenient with critical.
Make use of operating procedures when confronting a technology that is largely optional, with the exception of a few critical use cases. Specify how and when you will use the technology.
View the 30 day declutter not as a detox but more like the beginning of your new relationship with technology. This process is required to truly identify what things bring value to your life.
Reintroduction
Do not reintroduce all your optional technologies. Ask yourself, does this technology directly support something that I deeply value? The digital minimalist deploys technology to serve the things they find most important in their life, and is happy to miss out on everything else.
The Minimalist Technology Screen
For an optional technology to be added back into your life, it must:
- Serve something you deeply value.
- Be the best way to use technology to serve this value.
- Have a role in your life that is constrained with a standard operating procedure that specifies when and how you use it.
Optimizing Technology
Value: Staying in touch with friends. Optional Technology: Staying up to date on social media apps. Optimized Technology: Setting up a schedule where you regularly call or text your friends.
Value: Checking the time. Optional Technology: Checking your phone. Optimized Technology: Buying a digital watch to check the time so you don’t get sucked down a rabbit hole each time you check your phone.
Spend Time Alone
Everyone benefits from doses of solitude, and those that avoid this state will suffer more.
Solitude can be banished from even the quietest settings if you allow input from other minds to intrude. This can even include the voice from a podcast or the words from a book. However, smartphones are the primary technology that deprives us of solitude. We should strive to spend some time away from our phone each day.
Walking
Walking is a fantastic source of solitude. Walks are great for thinking about tough problems or reflecting on some aspect of your life that needs more attention. Going on “gratitude” walks is another good practice which involves just enjoying the good weather and scenery.
On a regular basis, you should go for long walks, preferably somewhere scenic. You’ll notice you are happier and more productive when you are walking regularly.
Journaling
When confronted with a tough decision, a hard emotion or a surge of inspiration write it down and you will find that often through this process alone you will have gained clarity.
Don’t Click Like
The like and other engagement mechanisms of social media, give the impression that you are up-keeping social relationships but in reality you are just running on dopamine hits. Instead of liking pictures of your friends baby, would it not be better to call and ask how she’s doing?
Conversation-Centric Communication
Prioritize high bandwidth forms of communication like phone calls or in-person conversations over low bandwidth forms like comments and likes. One may still use social media app for logistical reasons, gone will be the days of scrolling and sprinkling likes.
If you adopt conversation-centric communication, you’ll still likely rely on texting to gather information or to coordinate social events but you’ll no longer participate in open-ended text based conversations throughout the day. The socializing that counts is real conversations and text is no-longer a sufficient alternative.
Practice: Consolidate Communication
- Keep phone on do not disturb by default.
Practice: Conversation Office Hours
- Tell your friends and family when you are regularly free for calls.
- Say, on your commute home from work for instance.
- People will know they can call you at that time and you won’t be busy.
- Regularly sit at a coffee shop and tell your friends when you will be there. If they are free, they can stop in and visit.
Reclaim Leisure
A life well lived requires activities that serve no other purpose than the satisfaction that the activity itself generates.
The mind does not need rest during the waking hours. It is capable of continuous difficult activity.
Leisure Lessons
- Prioritize demanding activity over passive consumption.
- Use skills to produce valuable things int he physical world.
- Seek activities that require real world, structured social interaction.
You can’t build a billion dollar empire like FaceBook if you are wasting hours every day using a service like FaceBook.
- Schedule the time you use for low quality leisure.
Practice: Leisure Plans
Seasonal Leisure Plan
- Put together three times per year.
- Contains objective and habits.
- Deadlines are useful here but leave scheduling details to the weekly plan.
Weekly Leisure Plan
- For each objective in the seasonal leisure plan, figure out what actions you can do during the week to make progress on these objective.
- Schedule exactly when you will do these things.
- Keep track of you adherence to this schedule.
Join the Attention Resistance
- Use website blockers and apps to control you access to distracting technologies.
Practice: Delete Social Media From Your Phone
Dumb Phones
- Light Phones: light weight versions of regular smart phones with just the features you need.