⏳ Digital Minimalism (Part I): Bimonthly Self-Reflection

3 min readOct 30, 2019

Digital Minimalism (Part I): Bimonthly Self-Reflection

(Photo was taken by M. Di Marino in Positano)

Every two months I take one or two days off during the week and I travel to a nearby city.
In fact, I’ve set up my calendar to remind me to take that important trip. I take a look at my projects (personal and professional) and ask myself all the crucial questions: what have I done in the last few weeks, how have I accomplished these tasks, what are the results and what should I stop doing? Am I repeating patterns? After these two days, I can make adjustments.

According to the definition, human self-reflection is the capacity of humans to exercise introspection and to attempt to learn more about their fundamental nature and essence.
In an era when we’re always under electronic siege and receiving hundreds of messages on dozens of platforms; it’s crucial to adopt this habit.

Time of self-reflection is time to readjust yourself

I have been introduced to the Quarterly Time a concept by Michael Hyatt. But Call Newport, the author of Deep Work, describes in his latest book Digital Minimalism the importance of practicing monthly self-reflection.
In his book, he insists on the weekly offline walk, in order to take a break of our week and pay attention to our emotions: what hurt us and why?
How do we handle this problem? The goal is not to overthink but to analyze and take a step back.

Forget the stupid year resolutions

I have always found these start-of-the-year resolutions stupid because we can start changing habits without waiting for January. It’s not the motivation or the execution that is most important for a resolution but to be disciplined, one must be resilient.
By practicing self-reflection continuously one can adjust gradually.
One does do not need to wait a year, some resolutions take up to 3 or 4 months to become a habit.

Self-reflection requires internet disconnection and being outside your normal environment

It is impossible to work on oneself while being connected to the Internet.
More than anything, it is imperative that no notifications or messages interrupt us in this reflection.
Yes, it is possible to keep your phone on to receive urgent calls, but the rest must be disconnected at least a large part of the day.
By being out of your environment: home, city, etc. you force your brain to do a synthetic exercise in a new environment.
This facilitates the emergence of new ideas, much like what happens to us while playing sports, when the mind is cleared by exertion.

Self-reflection is a personal process of introspection but must be followed with action

Regular organized Self-reflection can be likened to a kind of agile process.
Agility is not to change our goals according to trends or other's agendas but it is to adjust our tactics to achieve personal and professional life goals.
Most of the time, people working in technology, use tactics that support strategy do deliver the desired results. Instead of wasting time and money, we need to adjust quickly even if it means questioning ourselves or being outside our comfort zone.
This is what I like about practicing self-reflection: it allows the changing of habits and of life patterns to achieve one’s goals.

Self-Reflexion is an audit

Like a web SEO audit, you’ll understand your current situation and the next steps you need to take. This gives you your road map to implement strategies and tactics. You don’t need to describe any KPI (key performance indicator)
but it would be useful to measure your progress. As an example consider if you start working out or doing a fitness program, you can start with 2 times/week in the next month but the goal is to get the habit to go 4 times/week at the end of the next 2 months.

👊 Finally, you should make time for self-reflection as a habit. Yes, you can do that during the weekend, but I found that during the week it is more efficient!
Try to take at least one full day for uninterrupted self-reflection.

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