Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
Situation
- Tech companies encourage behavioral addition by tapping into intermittent positive reinforcement and the drive for social approval.
Complication
- The urge to check [social media has become] a nervous twitch that shatters uninterrupted time into shards too small to support the presence necessary for an intentional life.
Resolution
- Embrace digital minimalism: A philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else.
- Small changes are not enough to solve our big issues with new technologies.
- Give your brain the regular doses of quiet it requires to support a monumental life.
- The best way to fight the tyranny of the digital
in your life is to embrace a philosophy of [intentional] technology use based
in your deeply held values. Ask 3
questions:
- Does this technology directly support something I deeply value?
- Is this technology the best way to support this value?
- How (and when) am I going to use this technology going forward to maximize its value and minimize its harms?
- Digital declutter
- Step away from optional online activities for thirty days and instead explore and rediscover high-quality activities and behaviors that you find satisfying & meaningful.
- Next, reintroduce optional technologies into your life, starting from a blank slate. For each technology you reintroduce, determine what value it serves in your life and how specifically you will use it so as to maximize this value.
- Solitude
- Solitude is about what’s happening in your brain, not the environment around you; it is a subjective state in which your mind is free from input from other minds.
- Solitude requires you to move past reacting to information created by other people and focus instead on your own thoughts and experiences — wherever you happen to be.
- When you avoid solitude, you miss out on the positive things it brings you: the ability to clarify hard problems, to regulate your emotions, to build moral courage, and to strengthen relationships
- What Thoreau sought in his experiment at Walden was the ability to move back and forth between a state of solitude and a state of connection.
- Digital Minimalist Practices
- Disable notifications (or simply use Do Not Disturb mode by default with exceptions for critical people in your life)
- Remove social media apps from your phone (you can still access through your computer browser). Better do not sign up in the first place.
- Leave your phone at home (or at least in your glove compartment)
- Take long walks by yourself without your phone
- Write letters to yourself (journaling, esp. when encountering a complicated decision, demanding circumstances, a hard emotion, or a surge of inspiration
- Don’t click “Like” – ever! Also, stop leaving comments on social media posts. Instead engage in conversation-centric communication.
- Schedule specific times for texting.
- Hold conversation office hours by putting aside time on set days during which you’re always available for conversation (for example, during your commute or regular coffee time).
- Embace slow media: Consume news & information only from high-quality sources/writers, actively seeking out the best arguments against your preferred position. Moreover, ritualize your consumption at specific locations & times.
- Reclaim high-quality leisure.
- Prioritize [physically and/or intellectually] demanding activity over passive consumption
- Use skills to produce valuable things in the physical world (ex: fix or build something every week)
- Seek activities that require real-world, structured social interactions (ex: join a group)
- Schedule in advance the time you spend on low-quality leisure
- Follow seasonal and weekly leisure plans. Seasonal (Jan 1; May 1, Sept 1) plans include a small number of objectives and habits you intend to honor. At the beginning of each week, put aside time to figure out what actions you can do during the week to make progress on these objectives, and then, crucially, schedule exactly when you’ll do these things.