Digital Minimalism is a philosophy of technology in which you focus your online time on a few carefully selected activities that support the things you value.
Digital Minimalism: âA 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.â
Digital Declutter: A practice in which you define your technology rules, take a thirty-day break, and reintroduce technology.
Solitude Deprivation: A state in which you spend close to zero time alone with your own thoughts and free from input from other minds.
The Social Media Paradox: Social media makes you feel both connected and lonely, happy and sad.
The Bennett Principle: A practice in which you prioritize demanding activity over passive consumption, use skills to produce valuable things in the physical world, and seek activities that require real-world, structured social interactions.
âPeople donât succumb to screens because theyâre lazy, but instead because billions of dollars have been invested to make this outcome inevitable.â
contention
Note: 2. an assertion, especially one maintained in argument.
After reviewing the relevant psychology literature and interviewing relevant people in the technology world, author Adam Alter discovered that: * Our new technologies are particularly well suited to foster behavioral addictions; and * In many cases, these addictive properties of new technologies are carefully engineered design features.
Tech companies encourage behavioral addiction through: 1. Intermittent positive reinforcement; and 2. The drive for social approval.
âMinimalists donât mind missing out on small things,â writes Newport. âWhat worries them much more is diminishing the large things they already know for sure make a good life good.â
Principle #1: âDigital 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.â
Principle #2: âDigital minimalists believe that deciding a particular technology supports something they value is only the first step. To truly extract its full potential benefit, itâs necessary to think carefully about how theyâll use the technology.â
Principle #3: âDigital 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.â
Hereâs how Newport describes what he calls, The Digital Declutter Process: Put aside a thirty-day period during which you will take a break from optional technologies in your life. During this thirty-day break, explore and rediscover activities and behaviors that you find satisfying and meaningful. At the end of the break, 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.
âTake a thirty-day break from any of these technologies that you deem âoptionalââmeaning that you can step away from them without creating harm or major problems in either your professional or personal life. In some cases, youâll abstain from using the optional technology altogether, while in other cases you might specify a set of operating procedures that dictate exactly when and how you use the technology during the process. In the end, youâre left with a list of banned technologies along with relevant operating procedures. Write this down and put it somewhere where youâll see it every day. Clarity in what youâre allowed and not allowed to do during the declutter will prove key to its success.â
Note: Step 1 in the Digital Declutter Process.
The goal of a digital declutter, however, is not simply to enjoy time away from intrusive technology.â
âDuring this month-long process, you must aggressively explore higher-quality activities to fill in the time left vacant by the optional technologies youâre avoiding. This period should be one of strenuous activity and experimentation. You want to arrive at the end of the declutter having rediscovered the type of activities that generate real satisfaction, enabling you to confidently craft a better lifeâone in which technology serves only a supporting role for more meaningful ends.â
Note: Step 2 in the Digital Declutter Process.
After reintroducing technology, ask yourself, * Does this technology directly support something that I deeply value? * Is this technology the best way to support this value? * How am I going to use this technology going forward to maximize its value and minimize its harms?
Note: Step 3 in the Digital Declutter Process.
To allow an optional technology back into your life at the end of the digital declutter, it must: * Serve something you deeply value (offering some benefit is not enough); * Be the best way to use technology to serve this value (if itâs not, replace it with something better); and * Have a role in your life that is constrained with a standard operating procedure that specifies when and how you use it.
In Chapter 4, Newport introduces a problem called Solitude Deprivation: A state in which you spend close to zero time alone with your own thoughts and free from input from other minds. To combat Solitude Deprivation, practice leaving your phone at home, taking long walks, and writing letters.
âSocial media is either making us lonely or bringing us joy.â
âThe small boosts you receive from posting on a friendâs wall or liking their latest Instagram photo canât come close to compensating for the large loss experienced by no longer spending real-world time with that same friend.â
According to Newport, to succeed with digital minimalism, you have to confront this rebalancing between conversationâthe much richer, higher bandwidth communication that defines real-world encounters between humansâand connectionâlow-bandwidth interactions that define our online social livesâin a way that makes sense to you. (Note: Newport borrows the above distinction from MIT professor Sherry Turkle.)
The philosophy of conversation-centric communication argues that conversation is the only form of interaction that in some sense counts toward maintaining a relationship. This conversation can take the form of a face-to-face meeting, or it can be a video chat or a phone callâso long as it matches Sherry Turkleâs criteria of involving nuanced analog cues, such as the tone of your voice or facial expressions. Anything textual or non-interactiveâbasically, all social media, email, text, and instant messagingâdoesnât count as conversation and should instead be categorized as mere connection.
Note: A quote from Cal Newportâs Digital Minimalism.
To subscribe to conversation-centric communication, avoid clicking the âlikeâ button or posting comments on social media, consolidate texting, and hold conversation office hours.
âA life well-lived requires activities that serve no other purpose than the satisfaction that the activity itself generates.â
âIf you begin decluttering the low-value digital distractions from your life before youâve convincingly filled in the void they were helping you ignore, the experience will be unnecessarily unpleasant at best and a massive failure at worse.â
To follow what Newport calls, The Bennett Principle: 1. Prioritize demanding activity over passive consumption; 2. Use skills to produce valuable things in the physical world; and 3. Seek activities that require real-world, structured social interactions.
The âattention economyâ describes the business sector that makes money-gathering consumersâ attention and then repackaging and selling it to advertisers.
To join The Attention Resistance: 1. Delete social media from your phone; 2. Turn your devices into single-purpose computers; 3. Use social media like a professional; 4. Embrace slow media; and 5. Dumb down your smartphone.