Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport — Synopsis
The light phones creator, Joe Hollier & Kaiwei Tang once started their presentation with this formula.
“Your Time = Their Money”, that means the amount of time you’ll give, the equal amount of money they will earn.
Today, we’re living in the ‘Attention Economy’, where on the Audience-Time Bidding executes. The media company which will grab the interest of more audience will be able to earn more. Well, this formula is good and OK, but What’s not OK, is the digitally addicted peoples, who mindlessly uses technology like a digital zombies.
Author noticed that, ‘Touch Screens’ revolutionized our lives in many ways. Then author thought to teach the principles of Digital Minimalism and rescue them. Author says, people joins Facebook because they live in different cities to get connected with friends, but they’re unable to maintain the uninterrupted conversation with the friends, with whom they’re sitting on a single table. They give more importance to their smartphone’s notifications.
HBO’s popular show ‘Real Time with Bill Hayer’ once said ‘Checking your Likes is the New Smoking’.
Today parents give android screens to their kids to sit and don’t disturb, but they don’t know about the thing which they gave to their children is more addictive than drugs.
In on of the recent research, the researchers found that the single biggest factor which’s shaping our lives today is…’Screens’. And the screens addictive property isn’t an accidental but a very careful engineered design which grabs our attention every time. That’s the reason, most of the apps color will be red, blue, green, which attracts us. Before, Facebook’s notification was of blue color to match with the Facebook’s color palettes, but they saw that many people isn’t clicking on it. So after completely understanding the color psychology, they turned notification logo as Red, which positively resulted in gaining people’s attention.
Humans are wired to be social.
As Aristotle said, “A Man is by Nature, A Political Animal”. We try to maintain our social life by not differentiating amid conversation and digital conversation.
An ideal conversation have an eye contact, good voice tone and facial expressions whereas digital communication can have fake emoji’s, emotionless chatting, posts. A connection can be a supporter to conversation, but can’t be an alternative to it. People think that by staying away from social media will let them disconnect, but the truth is, when they have less technology, they’ve more relations.
Believe it or not, but Data clearly states that, “More Digital Connectivity leads to Isolation”. Some researches shows that, people spend their one minute on social media in every five minutes interval. Also, smartphone usage has been doubled in the last few years. Now, Time has come to reduce or remove our digital madness. Otherwise, In Future, you’ll notice signboards which’ll say, ‘Smartphone Addiction is Injurious to Mental Health’.
DIGITAL MINIMALISM
Its a philosophy which’ll help you to choose digital tools which can add value to your life. To be a digital minimalist one has to follow and teach others too, these techniques to diminish or destroy digital madness.
USE DIGITAL TOOLS PURPOSELY
Whenever you take your phone, first contemplate about the motive and after completing your purpose, keep the phone where it was before, which’ll assist you to get rid of the distractions loophole.
Author says, ‘Humans, deep-down are, Craftsmen’.
Humans try to write poetries with programming or try to create a plane by the pins. They try to do everything by which they can show to the world, their creativity. So, use technology to create something creative.
SET LIMITS TO USE DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
- For Instance, For devoting some hours with the family, by keeping your phone in the drawer or in airplane mode
- You can go for an evening walk, by keeping your phone at home
- Once in a week, delete unused applications, photos and documents
- Take lunch by putting your phone aside
- Uninstall those apps which can be opened in the laptop/computer.
- Stay away from fake news
- Be a member of those Whatsapp Groups from where you’re getting valuable information, pdf’s, study material, book reviews, etc. and leave all other useless and time wasting groups
Digital Minimalism doesn’t mean leaving all the digital technologies, but by monitoring your activities and using it for your benefits.
