#notes/technology #notes/mental-health

Digital Minimalism : Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

by Cal Newport

Summary

A New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today bestseller "Newport is making a bid to be the Marie Kondo of technology: someone with an actual plan for helping you realize the digital pursuits that do, and don't, bring value to your life."--Ezra Klein, Vox Minimalism is the art of knowing how much is just enough. Digital minimalism applies this idea to our personal technology. It's the key to living a focused life in an increasingly noisy world. In this timely and enlightening book, the bestselling author of Deep Work introduces a philosophy for technology use that has already improved countless lives. Digital minimalists are all around us. They're the calm, happy people who can hold long conversations without furtive glances at their phones. They can get lost in a good book, a woodworking project, or a leisurely morning run. They can have fun with friends and family without the obsessive urge to document the experience. They stay informed about the news of the day, but don't feel overwhelmed by it. They don't experience "fear of missing out" because they already know which activities provide them meaning and satisfaction. Now, Newport gives us a name for this quiet movement, and makes a persuasive case for its urgency in our tech-saturated world. Common sense tips, like turning off notifications, or occasional rituals like observing a digital sabbath, don't go far enough in helping us take back control of our technological lives, and attempts to unplug completely are complicated by the demands of family, friends and work. What we need instead is a thoughtful method to decide what tools to use, for what purposes, and under what conditions. Drawing on a diverse array of real-life examples, from Amish farmers to harried parents to Silicon Valley programmers, Newport identifies the common practices of digital minimalists and the ideas that underpin them. He shows how digital minimalists are rethinking their relationship to social media, rediscovering the pleasures of the offline world, and reconnecting with their inner selves through regular periods of solitude. He then shares strategies for integrating these practices into your life, starting with a thirty-day "digital declutter" process that has already helped thousands feel less overwhelmed and more in control. Technology is intrinsically neither good nor bad. The key is using it to support your goals and values, rather than letting it use you. This book shows the way.

My review

TL;DR: overall, I do recommend the book, but not as an all-time lifesaver, but rather as something to help you reflect more on your own phone use. there are exercises to help kick start that reflection, but for the best experience read this as a philosophy book, not a self-help book. If you're interested in learning how to be more intentional with your free time, this book is for you regardless of your digital habits. More thoughts 👇

I don't agree with everything that this book said, and I don't like it when digital vs analog arguments meanly pit digital vs analog activities against each other as if that's the solution to things, a totally binary view of how the world works... for example, there's a whole part of a chapter arguing that board games are more fulfilling social interaction than online video games, but it hits only the surface level of those types of arguments and doesn't dive deeper into building friendships or relationships or community in either case. these are both valid social activities that each provide a different kind of social meaning, depending on how much you engage and how frequently. also, they're completely different kinds of gaming. saying one is better than the other is weird to me. I call bullshit on those black and white arguments and this book is full of them.

however, the text provides philosophy, history, psychology, and other contexts for various human needs that are extremely interesting and worth reading. you won't agree with everything and you might actually think it's insulting in some ways, but there is still a lot of value to be found in here.

Even in the binary arguments pitting this vs that, the author still often recognizes that you can use digital means to support your non-digital lifestyle. for example, use Facebook to find events so that you can go to them and meet new people. use text to logistically communicate with your friends so you can enjoy experiences together. to be clear, this is not an anti-technology argument.

many of the exercises in the book are things I do regularly, not one time as needed, but seasonally and in cycles. since the author has different values than I do I didn't agree with all the reasoning, but it was validating to see stuff I do used as a "recommendation," and if you read this book I suggest thinking of how you can integrate these exercises into your technology routine too. not as a one-time thing, but maybe twice a year?

I think you have to come into this book understanding that this author 1) doesn't see much value at all in social media. I disagree: for various reasons, I think social media has great value and outstanding impact and it is worth spending time to understand how people use it and why. you can't ignore it and then it'll go away. it will always be in our lives. And 2) doesn't value do-nothing time. I think I require spontaneous do-nothing time to function. maybe that's a wiring thing, and the author doesn't need it, but regardless it appears to be a core part of his suggestion to achieve his definition of digital minimalism.

The main idea is that one should use their digital resources as tools, as a means to an end, not as an activity during your leisure time. I think even there, there can be some balance (one reason that I use social media to experience the evolution of communication, memes, and messages across the internet). I'd rather be part of it than observe it or read about it. I'm not interested in the strict academic approach the book suggests, but I also understand much better now the psychology behind social media addiction and how for some people all or nothing might be the only way to prevent addiction. we are all a commodity in the digital attention economy.

this has given me lots to think about and reflect on, not just for myself but also how these new digital technologies have impacted the social structures of the world and how we exchange information. I am giving a higher rating for this, I love a book that gives me lots to think about.

Quotes (captured through page 187)

Because digital minimalists spend so much less time connected than their peers, it’s easy to think of their lifestyle as extreme, but the minimalists would argue that this perception is backward: what’s extreme is how much time everyone else spends staring at their screens. (Page 8)

the social critic Laurence Scott does so quite effectively when he describes the modern hyper-connected existence as one in which “a moment can feel strangely flat if it exists solely in itself.” (Page 17)

People don’t succumb to screens because they’re lazy, but instead because billions of dollars have been invested to make this outcome inevitable. (Page 20)

Technology companies, of course, recognize the power of this unpredictable positive feedback hook and tweak their products with it in mind to make their appeal even stronger. As whistleblower Tristan Harris explains: “Apps and websites sprinkle intermittent variable rewards all over their products because it’s good for business.” Attention-catching notification badges, or the satisfying way a single finger swipe swoops in the next potentially interesting post, are often carefully tailored to elicit strong responses. (Page 29)

more often than not, the cumulative cost of the noncrucial things we clutter our lives with can far outweigh the small benefits each individual piece of clutter promises. (Page 54)

As the author Max Brooks quipped in a 2017 TV appearance, “We need to reevaluate our current relationship with online information sort of the way we reevaluated free love in the 80s.” (Page 59)

The Amish prioritize the benefits generated by acting intentionally about technology over the benefits lost from the technologies they decide not to use. Their gamble is that intention trumps convenience (Page 64)

The sugar high of convenience is fleeting and the sting of missing out dulls rapidly, but the meaningful glow that comes from taking charge of what claims your time and attention is something that persists. (Page 68)

Don’t, however, confuse “convenient” with “critical.” (Page 76)

As Kethledge and Erwin explain, however, solitude is about what’s happening in your brain, not the environment around you. Accordingly, they define it to be a subjective state in which your mind is free from input from other minds. (Page 102)

In addition to direct conversation with another person, these inputs can also take the form of reading a book, listening to a podcast, watching TV, or performing just about any activity that might draw your attention to a smartphone screen. (Page 103)

"All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone,” Blaise Pascal famously wrote in the late seventeenth century. Half a century later, and an ocean away, Benjamin Franklin took up the subject in his journal: “I have read abundance of fine things on the subject of solitude. . . . I acknowledge solitude an agreeable refreshment to a busy mind." (Page 106)

To Woolf, in other words, solitude is not a pleasant diversion, but instead a form of liberation from the cognitive oppression that results in its absence. (Page 108)

Calmly experiencing separation, Michael Harris argues, builds your appreciation for interpersonal connections when they do occur. (Page 108)

To put this in context, previous technologies that threatened solitude, from Thoreau’s telegraph to Storr’s car phone, introduced new ways to occasionally interrupt time alone with your thoughts, whereas the iPod provided for the first time the ability to be continuously distracted from your own mind. (Page 111)

The smartphone provided a new technique to banish these remaining slivers of solitude: the quick glance. (Page 112)

What Thoreau sought in his experiment at Walden was the ability to move back and forth between a state of solitude and a state of connection. He valued time alone with his thoughts—staring at ice—but he also valued companionship and intellectual stimulation. He would have rejected a life of true hermit-style isolation with the same vigor with which he protested the thoughtless consumerism of the early industrial age. (Page 121)

the urgency we feel to always have a phone with us is exaggerated. To live permanently without these devices would be needlessly annoying, but to regularly spend a few hours away from them should give you no pause (Page 126)

A life well lived requires activities that serve no other purpose than the satisfaction that the activity itself generates. (Page 176)

Pete Adeney, Liz Thames, and Theodore Roosevelt all provide specific arguments for their embrace of strenuous leisure, but these arguments all build on the same general principle that the value you receive from a pursuit is often proportional to the energy invested. (Page 187)

Technology

I’ve become convinced that what you need instead is a full-fledged philosophy of technology use, rooted in your deep values, that provides clear answers to the questions of what tools you should use and how you should use them and, equally important, enables you to confidently ignore everything else. (Page 7)

We signed up for these services and bought these devices for minor reasons—to look up friends’ relationship statuses or eliminate the need to carry a separate iPod and phone—and then found ourselves, years later, increasingly dominated by their influence, allowing them to control more and more of how we spend our time, how we feel, and how we behave. (Page 35)

In my experience covering these topics, it’s hard to permanently reform your digital life through the use of tips and tricks alone.

The problem is that small changes are not enough to solve our big issues with new technologies. The underlying behaviors we hope to fix are ingrained in our culture, and, as I argued in the previous chapter, they’re backed by powerful psychological forces that empower our base instincts. To reestablish control, we need to move beyond tweaks and instead rebuild our relationship with technology from scratch, using our deeply held values as a foundation. (Page 37)

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. (Page 39)

optimizing how we use technology is just as important as how we choose what technologies to use in the first place. (Page 55)

You’ll likely find life without optional technologies challenging at first. Your mind has developed certain expectations about distractions and entertainment, and these expectations will be disrupted when you remove optional technologies from your daily experience. This disruption can feel unpleasant. (Page 80)

Does this technology directly support something that I deeply value? This is the only condition on which you should let one of these tools into your life. The fact that it offers some value is irrelevant—the digital minimalist deploys technology to serve the things they find most important in their life, and is happy missing out on everything else. (Page 86)

we should treat with great care any new technology that threatens to disrupt the ways in which we connect and communicate with others. When you mess with something so central to the success of our species, it’s easy to create problems. (Page 141)

Social Media

As an academic who studies and teaches social media explained to me: "I don't think we're meant to keep in touch with so many people." (Page 166)

The "Like" button introduced a rich new stream of social approval indicators that arrive in an unpredictable fashion—creating an almost impossibly appealing impulse to keep checking your account. It also provided Facebook much more detailed information on your preferences, allowing their machine-learning algorithms to digest your humanity into statistical slivers that could then be mined to push you toward targeted ads and stickier content. Not surprisingly, almost every other successful major social media platform soon followed FriendFeed and Facebook's lead and added similar one-click approval features to their services. (Page 163)

Communication

MIT professor Sherry Turkle, a leading researcher on the subjective experience of technology. In her 2015 book, Reclaiming Conversation, Turkle draws a distinction between connection, her word for the low-bandwidth interactions that define our online social lives, and conversation, the much richer, high-bandwidth communication that defines real-world encounters between humans. (Page 154)

Many people think about conversation and connection as two different strategies for accomplishing the same goal of maintaining their social life. This mind-set believes that there are many different ways to tend important relationships in your life, and in our current modern moment, you should use all tools available—spanning from old-fashioned face-to-face talking, to tapping the heart icon on a friend’s Instagram post.

The philosophy of conversation-centric communication takes a harder stance. It argues that conversation is the only form of interaction that in some sense counts toward maintaining a relationship. (Page 158)