Digital minimalism is a book written by Cal Newport. Cal newport is a computer science professor who happens to write self-help books. He is most well known for his book Deep work, but he has also written other books. I reviewed his other book So Good They Can’t Ignore You in a previous post.
digital minimalism
I wanted to read this book because it is a best seller and some of the podcasts I listen to mentioned it as well. It is a popular topic in society too. We all want to reduce our time on our devices, but how can we do that.
Cal Newport dives into this topic in this book and also provides some pretty good techniques to decrease your use.
Even though this book is titled Digital Minimalism, it really only focuses on your mobile device and social media apps on that device.
He starts this book the same way that he starts So Good they Can’t Ignore You. He starts it with a hypothesis, and then he seeks to support that hypothesis. In So Good They Can’t Ignore You it was more of a negative hypothesis that wasn’t ever challenged in the book. It follows the same format, but the hypothesis is better in this book. The hypothesis is that your phone and the apps on the phone are destroying your life, and you can improve it by reducing your time on your phone and using social media.
His writing style is confusing in this book and his other books because he jumps around. He jumps around between theories and then tips to implement. You have to jump around the book to get all of his tips.
Ditch Your Phone
His first tip is to get off your phone and apps for 30 days. After those 30 days, you should only reintroduce the necessary apps back into your life in a minimal fashion.
Embrace Solitude
He provides support for this by speaking about solitude. One of the core people that Cal speaks about is David Thoreau. David Thoreau is well known for his book Walden. That book focused on solitude and connecting with nature. Cal theorizes that we are losing this solitude now because of phones. We can’t stand to go a few seconds or minutes without checking our phones. This is a low level of satisfaction and never truly satisfies us. The devices are built to distract us and get us addicted. We can no longer emotionally soothe ourselves or find pleasure in silence. In that silence is where some of our greatest thoughts come from. Cal speaks about Abraham Lincoln’s solitude to highlight how the greatest thinkers and leaders need solitude to come up with ideas and solutions for the world’s problems.
You Are Making Facebook, Apple & Google The Largest Companies On The Planet
The only thing that using your phone and apps will do is make money for the largest companies in the world – Google, Facebook, & Apple. He notes how the largest companies in the world Google, Facebook and Apple are all built upon us spending more time on our phones. The less time you spend on your phone the less money they make, so of course they all spend huge amounts of money to make our phones psychologically addicting. This is why you must abstain from using your phone. Trying to limit your device usage with willpower will fail because of the psychological tricks these companies use.
More Tips From Cal
Cal provides some tips to decrease usage:
- Go on long walks without your phone
- Leave your phone at home more often
- Delete all social media apps from your phone
- Force yourself to use your computer for any social media usage
- Don’t check email as often (batch your usage)
- Don’t check text messages as often (batch your usage)
- Join social groups that force you to interact with others (crossfit, meetups, etc.)
- Schedule leisurely technology usage to a minimal amount each day
- Replace your previous social media time with something more useful
- Buy a dumb phone
- Have solitude in your life (this means no social media, podcasts, music etc.)
Some of the tips are really interesting. Deleting social media apps on your phone seems to be the huge thing that I would find the most useful. I don’t have that many apps on my phone, but the ones that I do have are addicting. The ones that are the most addicting have notifications. I try to turn most notifications off and this is something that Cal speaks about as well. Having the apps on your phone allows the social media companies to constantly hit you up with notifications. This means you open the app up more often and spend more time in the app. Once you are in there, then there are other things that keep you connected. Social media companies encourage people to like and comment because they know this will make people more connected.
Stop Liking And Commenting
Cal encourages readers to not comment or like anymore because this is a low form of social engagement. He instead encourages readers to have real conversations with people they care about. It doesn’t matter how important your friend’s social media post was; you shouldn’t like or comment because this keeps you in the ecosystem. Instead, if someone has an important event like a wedding or birth of a child, make that person something or give them a call.
Cal also recommends having deep conversations with people that matter to you. This is true social engagement and can’t be substituted with social media.
Don’t Be Afraid Of The Difficult
Cal also recommends filling up your schedule with difficult tasks. Here Cal begins to talk about people involved in the financial independence movement. People in the financial independence movement are young people that retire early. Just because they retire early, does not mean they just sit back and chill. No, these people actually fill up their schedules with hard tasks which are sometimes physical. Cal recommends that readers should replace their social media time with hard and difficult projects. Our brains need challenges in order to feel fulfilled. I agree with Cal on this recommendation. I think people should learn about “living their best life” in whatever that is. Whether they want to increase financial independence or increase their social network. Maybe you want to learn a new skill or new language. If you put down your mobile device, you will have more time to accomplish tasks that mean more to you than clicking like on a photo. Why not take advantage of new-found time.
He also has some other recommendations like writing letters to yourself and fixing things in the physical world. I think those are a little bit over the top to cure digital minimalism, but you can check out the book to see if they are the right fit for you.
In conclusion, we all need to take a break from our phones. If you want to learn some good tactics of how to decrease your social media use, pick up a copy of digital minimalism today.
