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Digital Minimalism

Digital minimalism
This philosophy is guided by the idea that we should be in control over what kinds of media we consume, not have our habits dictated to us by technology. This applies to the office as well as to the home: Having deep work at the office, but digital addictions at home, is hardly a victory.
Digital Minimalism | Scott H Young
Taking Leisure Seriously
Instead of defaulting into the low-quality obsessions that leave us wondering where the time has gone, we should cultivate high-quality hobbies that lead to lasting satisfaction. Re-evaluate your relationship to technology: First allow for a period of abstinence. Follow this by a selective re-introduction of only those tools and technologies that pass a more rigorous cost-benefit analysis than you typically impose.
Digital Minimalism | Scott H Young
Addiction and Modernity
They go hand-in-hand. Addiction seems to be the inevitable consequence of our culturally-created environment changing faster than our biologically-hardwired brains.
Digital Minimalism | Scott H Young
Digital addiction
It is probably not possible to safely evaluate your media consumption, while you’re in the midst of it. Steppring away for a month may be necessary to see your habits objectively.
Digital Minimalism | Scott H Young
The Distraction of Digital Technology
Email, chat apps, social media, and other tools can be just as productive as they can be distracting. How do we get the most out of the good parts of technology while protecting ourselves from the bad? To be a digital minimalist means you accept the idea that new communication technologies have the potential to massively improve your life, but also recognize that realizing this potential is hard work.
Digital Minimalism 101: How to become a digital minimalist
How technology became so exhausting
We spend all day staring at screens, read books on Kindles or iPads, and come home to relax by watching a movie or TV. Digital technologies lump together the good with the bad.
Digital Minimalism 101: How to become a digital minimalist
Digital minimalism defined
As Cal Newport defines it, Digital minimalism is: “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.”
Digital Minimalism 101: How to become a digital minimalist
Elements of a digital minimalist lifestyle
Choice and intention. You’re still using technology, but only what you want and only in ways that connect to your values. Optimizing the tools you use. What you allow into your life needs to work for you. This means separating the good from the bad. Accepting you won’t be everywhere all the time. Tech companies survive on FOMO (Fear of Missing Out). But digital minimalists are happy to miss out on the things they know don’t bring value to their lives.
Digital Minimalism 101: How to become a digital minimalist
How to do a Digital Declutter
Set aside a 30-day period during which you will take a break from optional technologies in your life. Work email is not optional. Twitter probably is. During this break, explore and rediscover activities and behaviors you find satisfying and meaningful. And after the 30 days are up , reintroduce the optional technologies you want back into your life. Determine the value it brings you and how specifically you can use it to maximize that value. Bing optional technologies back by first creating rules on how exactly you’ll use them and when.
Digital Minimalism 101: How to become a digital minimalist
Maintaining a Digital Minimalist lifestyle
Ways to rediscover non-digital activities you love that will support your newfound digital autonomy. Spend Time Alone without your digital technology . Try leaving your phone at home while you go for a walk, journaling, or simply spending more time alone. Don’t Click Like or allow yourself to be always available. Reclaim Leisure. One of the reasons we lean so heavily on digital technologies is that we’ve lost our hobbies and leisure activities. Join the Attention Resistance. Reduce the number of entry points. Try deleting social media off your phone or treat it like a professional task—something you do as needed and not more.
Digital Minimalism 101: How to become a digital minimalist
Digital minimalism
Digital minimalism is a "philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimised activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else." - Cal Newport Use technology to "support" your personal goals, rather than letting it "use" you.
Digital Minimalism: How To Declutter Your Online Life
The principles of digital minimalism
Clutter is costly. Digital minimalists recognise 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. Optimisation is important.To truly extract the full potential benefit of a technology, it’s necessary to think carefully about how you’ll use it. Intentionality is satisfying. Digital minimalists derive significant satisfaction from their general commitment to being more intentional about how they engage with new technologies.
Digital Minimalism: How To Declutter Your Online Life
Our relationship with technology
"The underlying behaviours we hope to fix are ingrained in our culture, and […] they’re backed by powerful psychological forces that empower our base instincts. To re-establish control, we need to move beyond tweaks and instead rebuild our relationship with technology from scratch, using our deeply held values as a foundation. " - Cal Newport
Digital Minimalism: How To Declutter Your Online Life
How to declutter your digital life
Put aside a 30-day period during which you will take a break from optional technologies in your life. During this 30-day break, explore and rediscover activities 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.
Digital Minimalism: How To Declutter Your Online Life
Cut down on your digital dependence
Schedule your internet and email use. To train yourself, try waiting five minutes after a buzz, beep, or ding before reaching for your device. Then increase this to 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and so on. Develop a ranking system for your email. Sort into categories like (a) important and urgent, (b) important but not urgent, and (c) neither urgent nor important. Give yourself clear “online hours.” Set an alarm for when you’ll shut down every night.
Is digital minimalism the answer to our distracted lives?
Digital minimalism
It means using technology with more intention and purpose. It's a “philosophy of technology use” rooted in reclaiming control and intention back from the devices and platforms that have hijacked it. You figure out what's valuable to you. And then you happily miss out on everything else.
Cal Newport on Why We'll Look Back at Our Smartphones Like Cigarettes
Techno-maximalism
It promtes the basic idea that technological innovations can bring value and convenience into your life . It just looks at the positives. And it's view is more is better than less , because more things that bring you benefits means more total benefits.
Cal Newport on Why We'll Look Back at Our Smartphones Like Cigarettes
Putting FOMO (fear of missing out) into perspective
If you want to maximize the amount of value you feel in your life, you want to put as much of your time and effort as possible into the small number of things to give you these huge rewards. When you think about it that way, fear of missing out looks like, just mathematically speaking, a really bad strategy.
Cal Newport on Why We'll Look Back at Our Smartphones Like Cigarettes