Digital Minimalism in the Attention Economy
I wrote an article recently describing the concept of minimalism and what it means to live a minimalistic lifestyle. Leading on from that, I want to discuss something that has been an ongoing learning process for me over the past year or so. It is a method of integrating technology into your life called Digital Minimalism.
What is Digital Minimalism?
I read a book, over a year ago now, called “Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World” by Cal Newport. I am a fan of Newport’s other works such as “Deep Work” and “Be So Good They Can’t Ignore You”. When I saw his new release, I pre-ordered it right away as it was something I was struggling with at the time. The blurb alone, paired with my confidence in Newport as a writer, were enough for me to purchase the book.
Basically, Digital Minimalism is the counter-force against the digital distractions that have plagued our generation (millennials). Newport calls it “the attention-resistance” and that seems like a very appropriate term. With all the big social media companies vying for our attention with psychological hooks and other addictive strategies, it has become very difficult for us to be intentional with our time. Digital Minimalism offers a strategy and a lifestyle to take control of our attention and put it towards things that bring us value rather than succumbing to all the distractions.
The Attention Economy
I mentioned this in a previous article about Dopamine Detox and I will go into it again here for context on why Digital Minimalism can be so powerful.
The most valuable thing these days is not oil, gold, or any other physical material. The most valuable thing is attention. Your attention. If the social media companies can capture enough of your attention, then they have more to sell to the advertisers on the platform. That’s how these companies make their money.
Something shifty happened just before Facebook’s IPO. Facebook was predominately desktop at the time and in order to live up to their large evaluation they needed to up the engagement on the platform. The I-phone was ubiquitous at this point and Facebook noticed an opportunity here. While on the desktop, Facebook could only capture your attention when you were sat at home or at a coffee shop on your PC. Now that the I-phone was so popular and, along with it, the App Store, Facebook decided to invest heavily in the mobile version. Until that point, Facebook only earned a small percentage of their revenue from mobile, but today it makes up most of the company’s bottom line. So, what did they spend the money on? This is really where the attention economy took off. They were investing heavily in finding all the ways to make the mobile app stickier for users. In other words, they were engineering their products to be as addictive as possible. More eyeballs equal more money. This is very important to understand because we often are not aware just how powerful these companies are. When we are using these apps regularly, we are playing with a losing hand.
Facebook started the charge and now all the other companies have followed. Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Netflix, news sites, etc, are all constantly testing their products (apps specifically) to be as addictive as possible. This creates several problems for us, the users, as we lose control of our attention, to distractions. There is even statistical evidence emerging of increased rates of depression, anxiety and suicide. These increases in mental health problems, line up parallel with the increased adoption of smartphones among young people. Correlation doesn’t equal causation? I personally believe increased smartphone use and social media have a lot do with it.
Solitude Deprivation
If you think back, even one generation, you notice that they had a lot more time to think. Sure, you could be distracted at home with TV and radio but once you left the house it was you against the world. No mobile phone, no iPod, no apps. Standing in a queue, you had time to think. In a waiting room, you had time to think. Go for a walk, you had time to think. Now look at our generation. Standing in a queue, time to check Facebook. In a waiting room, time to watch a YouTube video. Go for a walk, time for some music or a podcast. We always have some type of input entering our consciousness.
In the book (Digital Minimalism), the author gives a nice definition of solitude:
“A state where you are free from the input of other minds”
This is an applicable definition because it can be integrated into life very easily. You can experience solitude in a crowded bus, a busy street or while driving. You don’t have to isolate yourself in the wilderness to experience solitude. As long as you have time to think your own thoughts and process things, then you are in solitude. These moments of solitude were built into life in the past. However, with a smartphone in every pocket, we have almost banished solitude from our lives entirely. We fill every down beat with something. It has created a chronic lack of solitude, known as “Solitude Deprivation”.
It is only when you take a break from constant distraction, that you become aware of your previous state of mind. The best word I can use to describe it is “fried”. When you are always receiving ping notifications and constantly filling any moment of “boredom”, your brain has no time to process what’s going on. We were designed to have moments of stimulus, followed by moments of solitude so that we can process what happened. Now we have all the stimulus with very little processing. If we think of a computer with 50 tabs open at the same time, we get an image of what our brain is feeling. We are frying the circuits of our brain and this creates a background hum of anxiety that pervades our lives. No wonder meditation has become “trendy” all of a sudden. Meditation has been around for 1000’s of years but has only hit the mainstream in the last decade. Why? Because we are searching for solutions to quiet our monkey minds. In the past meditation would have been sought out for spiritual reasons. Now it is marketed as an anxiety reducing activity. We are an over-stimulated society fueled on coffee and notifications and we have no space to process what’s going on.
Papering Over the Void
I have a headache. Ok, here’s a pill for that. Hey Doc, I’ve been feeling depressed and anxious lately. Ok, here’s a great new pill that just came out. Doctor, I failed all my exams, I have no money and I’m losing my house. You’re in luck, we now have a drug for that too. Apart from that last example, this is an accurate reflection of our society. We want the pill, the quick fix and all the results without any of the work. Instant gratification gone crazy. The pharmaceutical industry is in the game of covering up the symptom rather than addressing the cause. This can be applied to our digital lives too.
Perhaps we finish work and feel like we don’t have anything to do. We then take the path of least resistance and watch TV or play around on our phones. Before you know it, 3 hours have past and its time to go to sleep so that you can wake up on time for work the next day. It can be very easy to slip into these patterns. Go to work, come home, stare at a screen for a few hours and then go to bed. If we didn’t have these screens to distract us, we would probably be pretty bored. The screens have enabled us to paper over the void of boredom in our lives.
Let’s use another example. You have just gone through a breakup with your partner. You spent most of your time with this person and now he/she is gone. If we didn’t have so many distractions, then we would address the problem of loneliness. We would call friends, go out more and even start dating again. Instead, with all our distractions, we might watch a lot more movies, spend more time on social media, etc. We are covering up the void with all these distractions and the root cause never gets addressed.
A Digital Declutter
It is quite simple to introduce Digital Minimalism into your life but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. The first step in the process is called “A Digital Declutter”.
This step requires taking 30 days away from all optional technologies in your life. Optional basically means anything that will not cause significant harm to your personal and/or professional life. For example, I live abroad, and WhatsApp is how I communicate with the majority of people in my life. This technology, for me, is not optional. Also, if you decide to cut off email for 30 days you might have some problems with work. So, again, this technology may not be optional. An optional technology would include things like Netflix, social media, TV, podcasts, excessive texting, etc. If you stop using social media for a month you may experience some inconveniences, but it will not be the end of the world. This would be an optional technology. So, for 30 days you use only the technology that is essential for your personal and professional life.
Why not just cut down? This is a good question. The reason for the digital declutter is because these technologies have become so addictive that it is important to take a longer period of time away from them. If you just decide to cut down, the addictive pull will likely lead you to fall back into old habits. You go through somewhat of a detox process in the beginning, where the addictive triggers begin to fade away.
During these 30 days you aren’t just stopping your digital activities. You will now be presented with “the void”. You have removed all the distractions and you now must face what is left in front of you. Maybe you realize that you have a lot more free time. Before, you would just turn on the TV or watch a YouTube video. This is now a great time to find new, more fulfilling, activities. What you choose is obviously going to be different for everyone. You may reignite an old hobby that you haven’t had time for. Maybe you start something new. When I went through this process, I began looking for more analog (non-screen) activities to fill my time. I started to learn the ukulele and I began training Muay Thai. These two things alone added a lot of value to my life and were definitely an upgrade on wasting time online.
I also stopped texting as much. Instead, I would call the person and have a real conversation. All our social media communication and texting is like pseudo conversation. We think we are being social, but it is not registering in our brains. We think, “Wow I’ve talked to so many people on Facebook and I’ve been texting all day”. This leads us to believe that we have fulfilled our needs as social beings, but our brain is crying out for real conversation. It’s not surprising that, despite being so connected, loneliness is becoming a real problem in our society. We are connected via the internet, but we aren’t really connecting.
So, just like minimalism for your stuff, Digital Minimalism is a process of removing the distractions so that you can discover your values. Hopefully, during these 30 days away from distraction, you have found some things that you care about. As an example, maybe you rediscovered an old hobby such as baking or playing an instrument. When you reintroduce technology after the declutter, you will use it to augment your values. If you care about music, you will maybe use YouTube to find songs to play on your guitar. If you care about fitness, you could use an app to help you with your workouts, etc. Now technology is serving your values and is playing a secondary support role. Beforehand, technology may have been the end in itself. You may decide to reintroduce social media after the declutter. However, this time, instead of aimlessly scrolling through your feed, you are logging on to do very specific things like check a group or make a post, etc. You are now being very intentional with how you use these services.
Reintroducing Technology
Once the 30-day digital declutter, it is time to intentionally reintroduce some of these digital services back into your life. Some people may decide to quit social media altogether because they didn’t miss it. However, that is not necessary. Its up to you how you proceed in your digital world.
The author, Cal Newport, provides 3 questions you must ask yourself before you let a technology back into your life:
1. Does this serve something that I deeply value in life?
2. Is this the best use of technology to serve this value?
3. How, specifically, am I going to use this service to get the most value?
We can use an example to illustrate this reintroduction process. Let’s say we are considering reintroducing Facebook after the 30 days. Does this serve something I deeply value in life? Yes, I value my social life. Is this the best use of technology to serve this value? Well no, it would probably be better for me to call my friends on the phone and visit them in person. But I really like seeing what my friends are up to as it helps me keep up to date. Ok, so the best way to support your social life would be to call and visit your friends. You also like to keep up to date via Facebook. Ok, so Facebook passes step number 2. One last question. How, specifically, am I going to use this service to get the most value? I will log on, once per week (on my desktop), to check what my friends have been up to. I don’t need it on my phone. Now we have reintroduced Facebook but not in a general way. We have identified which value it serves and how we will specifically use it to get the most value for us.
Certain technologies might not make the cut. If we are considering reintroducing candy crush, then it may not get past the first step as it doesn’t support any of our values. Some technologies may pass the first step (supporting a value) but fall short at the next step (best use of technology to support the value). Imagine now that we are considering Twitter. We value our social life, so it passes the first step. However, on reflection, we don’t actually connect with our friends via Twitter. We just follow celebrities and get a constant stream of news. Is this technology the best way to support your social life? Probably not. Bye Twitter!
The end goal is to have technology augment and support your values in life. We have removed the distractions for 30 days, gotten clear on what we care about, and then added back specific digital services, in specific ways, to support those values. This is not a one and done kind of thing. Once you finish the declutter you declare that “I am now a Digital Minimalist!” No. You will slip back into old patterns from time to time (I definitely did) and you will constantly be refining how you use technology as your values in life change over time.
Nothing is inherently good or bad, but everything has positive and negative aspects to them. It’s the Yin Yang relationship. We live in a world of duality. Hot/cold, up/down, happy/sad, good/evil. It is a polarizing existence, so we need to evaluate the trade offs with each decision. Is social media good or bad? It includes positive and negative, but it isn’t inherently good or bad. Using it to connect with friends in a foreign country can be a positive thing. However, using it everyday comparing your life with everyone else’s can be a negative thing. I like to think of the digital services in terms of a “net value add”. If, considering the positive and negative aspects, it comes out as a net positive, value add activity, then I will keep it. For example, Facebook for me has some positives as I can connect with friends abroad and join groups such as the expat group here in my city. I have noticed that spending too much time on Facebook creates a net negative in my life as it destroys my attention and activates the comparing mind. I find that once a week to check in with the platform provides all the value while negating the negatives.
I hope that this article has provided some context as to why we should be intentional with our technology use. Technology is not as innocent as it may seem. These companies have massive amounts of resources dedicated to capturing our valuable attention. This is creating a new wave of addiction in the modern world. Addiction to our devices and addiction to distractions. Once we take some time away from these services, we can get clear on our values and use technology in a way that serves us. Digital Minimalism has really helped me use technology intentionally and to avoid the potential drawbacks that come along with our devices. Our attention is the most valuable thing we have. It is important that we direct it towards things that we care about rather than becoming slaves to a screen.
