Home > Work > Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
1 " This strategy is classic digital minimalism. By removing your ability to access social media at any moment, you reduce its ability to become a crutch deployed to distract you from bigger voids in your life. At the same time, you’re not necessarily abandoning these services. By allowing yourself access (albeit less convenient) through a web browser, you preserve your ability to use specific features that you identify as important to your life—but on your own terms. "
― Cal Newport , Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
2 " Jim Clark was interviewed at an event held at Stanford University. At some point in the interview, the topic turned to social media. Clark’s reaction was unexpected given his high-tech background: “I just don’t appreciate social networking.” As he then clarifies, this distaste is captured by a particular experience he had sitting on a panel with a social media executive: [The executive was] just raving about these people spending twelve hours a day on Facebook . . . so I asked a question to the guy who was raving: “The guy who’s spending twelve hours a day on Facebook, do you think he’ll be able to do what you’ve done? "
3 " Being less available over text, in other words, has a way of paradoxically strengthening your relationship even while making you (slightly) less available to those you care about. This point is crucial because many people fear that their relationships will suffer if they downgrade this form of lightweight connection. I want to reassure you that it will instead strengthen the relationships you care most about. You can be the one person in their life who actually talks to them on a regular basis, forming a deeper, more nuanced relationship than any number of exclamation points and bitmapped emojis can provide. "
4 " You cannot expect an app dreamed up in a dorm room, or among the Ping-Pong tables of a Silicon Valley incubator, to successfully replace the types of rich interactions to which we’ve painstakingly adapted over millennia. Our sociality is simply too complex to be outsourced to a social network or reduced to instant messages and emojis. "
5 " When an entire cohort unintentionally eliminated time alone with their thoughts from their lives, their mental health suffered dramatically. On reflection, this makes sense. These teenagers have lost the ability to process and make sense of their emotions, or to reflect on who they are and what really matters, or to build strong relationships, or even to just allow their brains time to power down their critical social circuits, which are not meant to be used constantly, and to redirect that energy to other important cognitive housekeeping tasks. We shouldn’t be surprised that these absences lead to malfunctions. "
6 " now checks AllSides.com once a day—a news site that covers the top stories, but for each story it neutrally links to three articles: one from a source associated with the political left, one from the right, and one from the "
7 " 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. "
8 " The Minimalist Technology Screen 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 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. "
9 " 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. "
10 " The most common response to these complications is to suggest modest hacks and tips. Perhaps if you observe a digital Sabbath, "
11 " Once we view these personal technology processes through the perspective of diminishing returns, we’ll gain the precise vocabulary we need to understand the validity of the second principle of minimalism, which states that optimizing how we use technology is just as important as how we choose what technologies to use in the first place. "
12 " Addiction is a condition in which a person engages in use of a substance or in a behavior for which the rewarding effects provide a compelling incentive to repeatedly pursue the behavior despite detrimental consequences. "
13 " suggests that you transform the way you think about the different flavors of one-click approval indicators that populate the social media universe. Instead of seeing these easy clicks as a fun way to nudge a friend, start treating them as poison to your attempts to cultivate a meaningful social life. Put simply, you should stop using them. Don’t click “Like.” Ever. And while you’re at it, stop leaving comments on social media posts as well. No “so cute!” or “so cool!” Remain silent. "
14 " Thoreau’s new economics was developed in an industrial age, but his basic insights apply just as well to our current digital context. "
15 " Laura also connects efforts to be a “conscientious consumer” with issues relating to social justice, which also play a big role in the Mennonite Church. "
16 " In my work on this topic, 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. "
17 " Thoreau’s obsession with calculation helps us move past the vague subjective sense that there are trade-offs inherent in digital clutter, and forces us instead to confront it more precisely. He asks us to treat the minutes of our life as a concrete and valuable substance—arguably the most valuable substance we possess—and to always reckon with how much of this life we trade "
18 " Many of the participants in my mass declutter experiment, however, reported that these feelings of discomfort faded after a week or two. Brooke described this experience as follows: The first few days were surprisingly hard. My addictive habits were revealed in striking clarity. Moments of waiting in line, moments between activities, moments of boredom, moments I ached to check in on my favorite people, moments I wanted an escape, moments I just wanted to “look something up,” moments I just needed some diversion: I’d reach for my phone and then remember that everything was gone. "
19 " 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. "
20 " Lincoln’s time alone with his thoughts played a crucial role in his ability to navigate a demanding wartime presidency. We can therefore say, with only mild hyperbole, that in a certain sense, solitude helped save the nation. "
