Eric Badan's Key Ideas from Digital Minimalism
by Cal Newport
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Make Technology serve only a supporting role in your life
“How do you simplify your digital life?” became very quickly the question of our generation. Between packed calendars, fulled out E-Mail inboxes, and the constant pull of social media and news it can feel like you really can't control your online time.
There is a particular rapid process to help you break your online bad habits and values - the digital declutter.
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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 activites and behaviours 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.
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#1 Define your Technology rules
The first step is defining which "new technologies" fall into this "optional" category.
Make sure to evaluate the right technologies. Text messaging, Instagram or Facebook are examples of the types of technologies you need to evaluate; your microwave, fridge are not.
After the evaluation decide which of them are sufficiently "optional" that you can take a break for 30 days during the declutter process.
Consider the technology optional unless its temporary removal could harm your professional or personal life.
Example: If you stop checking your work email, it would harm your career.
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#2 Take a Thirty-Day Break
The second step is to follow your new technology classification, by disconnecting, for 30 days, from your "optional" technologies.
You will find life without optional technologies challenging at first. But these feelings of discomfort fade after a week or two.
The goal is to spark a permanent transformation of your digital life and aggressively explore higher-quality activities to fill in the time left vacant by the optional technologies.
At the end of the declutter you should already have rediscovered the type of activites that generate real satisfaction, enabling you to craft a better life.
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#3 Reintroduce Technology
The final step is reintroducing optional technologies back into your life.
The goal is to start from a blank slate and only let back into your life technology that passes your strict digital standards.
To allow an optional technology back into your life, 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 it's not, replace it with something better)
- Have a role in your life that is constrained with a standard operating procedure that specifies when and how you use it
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IDEAS CURATED BY
Curious about different takes? Check out our Digital Minimalism Summary book page to explore multiple unique summaries written by Deepstash users.
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