Books/Digital Minimalism

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Subtitle: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

Author: Cal Newport


How I got here?

I had 4 messaging apps (with umpteen groups in each), 3 email accounts and 5 social media accounts (maybe more) that continuously put me on a slot machine cycle of constant updates and interruptions. This in addition to the constant noise and visual distraction of an open plan office caused a drastic reduction in productivity. To get anything done, I had to work from home, holed up in a room with the internet turned off, kind of following the principles from Cal Newport's previous book called Deep Work.

Definition

Digital minimalism is a philosophy that helps you question what digital communication tools (and behaviors surrounding these tools) add the most value to your life. It is motivated by the belief that intentionally and aggressively clearing away low-value digital noise, and optimizing your use of the tools that really matter, can significantly improve your life.

The book's premise

The book talks a lot about how social media interactions are a large volume of low-value inputs which don't benefit us but the companies that made them which trade in our attention. We should learn to not become fodder to the attention economy but try to leverage the new social media tools to useful ends. A lot of people in the author's experimental group only found about 30 minutes of useful interactions per week on social media. Especially in commercial surveillance capitalist social media, finding useful and relevant information that adds value to our lives is like trawling through garbage to find useful things.

ReviewInteractions with other people in social media and instant messaging services are shallow. They lack the human connection of voice/video calls or face-to-face communications in real life. Even the information we get through the attention-grabbing media like twitter or breaking news is not of high value either for the cost that it demands in terms of our attention and time. You're usually better off getting your news from the next day's newspaper.


The author looks at the adoption of technology by groups like the Amish who are usually treated by the rest of the developed society as technophobes. The author debunks this myth by citing research of people who spent time with the Amish on how they made their decisions related to technology. One would be surprised to realize that the Amish are not technophobic but very intentional in the use of their technology. They put each technology through a testing phase where they evaluate the pros and cons of using it. Even if the pros are significant, they still evaluate it in terms of how disruptive it might be to the social cohesion of their community. For example, cars and cell phones were avoided, but diapers and chemical fertilizers were adopted by the Amish. The author then cites some examples of non-Amish people who are very intentional in the use of their technology. Some people who don't use smartphones, never had social media accounts etc.


The like button by Facebook is a convenient tool for their analytics but bad for our interactions. It's one level below text messages (comments in this case). It was marketed as an efficient way of showing your approval for a post, but the efficiency comes at the cost of lowered human interaction.

There is an important difference between the maximalist way of looking at things and the minimalist's way. Since resources were scarce throughout human evolution, the default mode for people is to be maximalist. We try to have all the things that we can. A minimalist on the other hand looks at a thing and tries to evaluate whether the thing is worth their time and effort. Henry David Thoreau is a classic minimalist. When living a minimalist life close to nature at Walden, he writes his philosophical and economic thoughts on this subject in a book of the same name. He calculates that in order to sustain his current lifestyle, he has to work for one day a week and that's what he does. He looks at the other farmers around him and sees that they are sacrificing their time and energy to obtain things which are not worth it. For example, to go to the market, you can either walk or take a carriage. Walking takes a few minutes longer, but the amount of time one has to work to afford a carriage far outweighs any time saved by using the carriage.

Digital Minimalism is being in control of your technology instead of acting like a drone and letting the technology take over. Intentionality in our use of technology is the most important takeaway from this book. Digital Minimalism is an essential prerequisite to Deep Work in today's world.

The author tried a 30-day detox program with a group of his 1600 twitter followers. People had various ways of keeping away from their addictive digital technologies. Using a particular service is more important to some people than others. In some cases, people were completely able to get off Facebook by just uninstalling the app from their smartphone. Others who really needed to use it for work purposes (well, these are Facebook advertisers) tried to be more intentional in the use of their social media accounts. One case study of a woman who split up her Twitter accounts based on her varied interests is discussed.

Once you are a digital minimalist, and got your work in order, you have to know how to make the best use of your leisure. The author studies a few self-made financially independent young people who have a lot of leisure time since they don't have to work jobs anymore. They spend a lot of their time doing physical work which is both very engaging and physically strenuous. They spend their time making things rather than spend it on digital distractions. Adding a social aspect to these activities is an added bonus.

Remember these:

  • Conversation over Connection
  • Intentionality over Consumption

There's a documentary about a couple of friends who call themselves "The Minimalists" that inspired the author to start on this journey of putting together a book on Digital Minimalism. It's worth watching.