Digital Minimalism

I call it digital minimalism, and it applies the belief that less can be more to our relationship with digital tools. — Cal Newport

Part 1: Foundations

A Lopsided Arms Race

People don’t succumb to screens because they’re lazy, but instead because billions of dollars have been invested to make this outcome inevitable.

Let’s face it, checking your “likes” is the new smoking

If lots of people click the little heart icon under your latest Instagram post, it feels like the tribe is showing you approval — which we’re adapted to strongly crave.* The other side of this evolutionary bargain, of course, is that a lack of positive feedback creates a sense of distress. This is serious business for the Paleolithic brain, and therefore it can develop an urgent need to continually monitor this “vital” information.

Digital Minimalism

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.

The Principles of Digital Minimalism

Principle #1: Clutter is costly. Digital minimalists recognize that cluttering their time and attention with too many devices, apps, and services creates an overall negative cost that can swamp the small benefits that each individual item provides in isolation.

Principle #2: Optimization is important. Digital minimalists believe that deciding a particular technology supports something they value 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 #3: Intentionality is satisfying. Digital minimalists derive significant satisfaction from their general commitment to being more intentional about how they engage with new technologies. This source of satisfaction is independent of the specific decisions they make and is one of the biggest reasons that minimalism tends to be immensely meaningful to its practitioners.

The Digital Declutter

“Ignorance is truly bliss sometimes.”

The author proposes to quit digital connection for 30 days.

This detox experience is important because it will help you make smarter decisions at the end of the declutter when you reintroduce some of these optional technologies to your life. A major reason that I recommend taking an extended break before trying to transform your digital life is that without the clarity provided by detox, the addictive pull of the technologies will bias your decisions. If you decide to reform your relationship with Instagram right this moment, your decisions about what role it should play in your life will likely be much weaker than if you instead spend thirty days without the service before making these choices.

After that 30 days,

For each optional technology that you’re considering reintroducing into your life, you must first ask: Does this technology directly support something that I deeply value?

Part 2: Practices

Spend Time Alone

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.

Consolidate Texting

Put aside set times on set days during which you’re always available for conversation.

There are two major motivations for this practice. The first is that it allows you to be more present when you’re not texting. Once you no longer treat text interactions as an ongoing conversation that you must continually tend, it’s much easier to concentrate fully on the activity before you.

It might also provide some anxiety reduction, as our brains don’t react well to constant disruptive interaction.

Reclaim leisure

Aristotle tackles a question as urgent then as it is today: How does one live a good life?

“The best and most pleasant life is the life of the intellect.” He concludes, “This life will also be the happiest.”

A life well lived requires activities that serve no other purpose than the satisfaction that the activity itself generates.

We might tell ourselves there’s no greater reward after a hard day at the office than to have an evening entirely devoid of plans or commitments. But we then find ourselves, several hours of idle watching and screen tapping later, somehow more fatigued than when we began.

Leisure Lessons:
— Prioritize demanding activity over passive consumption.
— Use skills to produce valuable things in the physical world.
— Seek activities that require real-world, structured social interactions.

THE LEISURE RENAISSANCE
A foundational theme in digital minimalism is that new technology, when used with care and intention, creates a better life than either Luddism or mindless adoption. We shouldn’t be surprised, therefore, that this general idea applies here to our specific discussion of cultivating leisure.

The premise of this chapter is that by cultivating a high-quality leisure life first, it will become easier to minimize low-quality digital diversions later.

Conclusion

This history places digital minimalism in a somewhat grandiose position, but as we explored in the preceding chapters, implementing this philosophy is largely an exercise in pragmatism.

Digital minimalists see new technologies as tools to be used to support things they deeply value — not as sources of value themselves. They don’t accept the idea that offering some small benefit is justification for allowing an attention-gobbling service into their lives, and are instead interested in applying new technology in highly selective and intentional ways that yield big wins. Just as important: they’re comfortable missing out on everything else.

Those who are committed to the digital status quo might attempt to cast this philosophy as somehow anti-technology. I hope I’ve convinced you in this book that this claim is misguided. Digital minimalism definitively does not reject the innovations of the internet age, but instead rejects the way so many people currently engage with these tools.

Summary

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.

The key message

Use only tech/online only with things that strongly support things you value

Actionable advice

- Find and program good quality leisure
- Remove all social media apps from your phone

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