Digital Minimalism

Initial Skim

Purpose: What is this book about? What problem is the author trying to solve?

It showcases the cost of using digital social platforms and makes a case for a digital minimalism.

Structure: How is the book structured to make its argument?

• Why is it hard to consume in non-invasive amounts?
• Digital Declutter. Evaluate the benefit and cost of each platform by temporary abstinence.
• Filling the "void" and reclaiming a more fulfilling life. What activities are deeply satisfying?

Core Ideas & Notes

Lopsided Arms Race

Willpower, vague resolutions are not sufficient by themselves to tame the ability of new technologies invading our cognitive landscape. Addictiveness is designed and cultural pressures supporting them are too strong. The average modern user sepnds around two hours per day on social media and related messaging services. Those people are not weak willed or stupid. They are fighting a battle against billions of R&D investments.
This is unlikely to change as minimizing distraction and respecting users' attention would reduce revenue.

Philip Morris just wanted your lungs, the App Store wants your soul. - Bill Maher

Addiction

The severity of addiction to social media tends to fly under the radar as withdrawal symptoms tend to be low.

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.

A main addicting factor is the unpredictable feedback in form of likes. The removal of feedback wouldn't diminish the value most people derive from the platform. They are primarily a one-way transfer of information, a broadcasting of life news. The likes make it feel like the tribe (of friends) is showing approval, a deeply and convoluted desire.

Digital Minimalism

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.

Stop worrying about missing out on small things and focus on large things you already know for sure make a life good.
The philosophy follows three core principles:

1. Clutter is costly. Focus time and attention on a selection of devices, apps and services.
2. Optimization is important. Think about how to use a technology to retrieve its maximal value. Technology is a tool you can deploy selectively.
3. Intentionality is satisfying.

Digital Declutter

The book suggests a rapid transformation with enough conviction so that the results are likely to stick.

For a thirty-day period, take a break from all optional technologies in your life. Optional is, if a temporary removal does not harm or significantly disrupt daily operation. Don't confuse "convenient" with "critical". Define how and when you use the others.

Detox, rediscover and explore activities and behaviors you find satisfying outside the shiny digital always-on world. This part is crucial as it will help you make smarter decisions at the end.

Reintroduce technology. Most will likely offer some value, but do they directly and most efficiently support something that you deeply value? For everything essential, evaluate how you can maximize the value and minimize the harms.

I find technological guardrails most efficient here. In general, avoid usage on the phone as most social engineering goes into those services. Adapt a blocked by default philosophy.

[[Digital Dopamine]].

Solitude

A subjective state in which your mind is free from input from other minds.

This can be experienced in busy coffee shops and banished in the quietest settings if one allows inputs from other minds to intrude like a conversation or reading a book. Solitude requires you to move past reacting to information created by other people. Besides the default mode of sociality, it is argued to be necessary to flourish as a human being.

Practice: Leave your Phone at Home

Most worries about missing out on something are blown out of proportion. Most improvements through the presence of the phone either don't matter or make things only slightly more convenient. Newport argues that smartphones are the primary enabler of solitude deprivation.

Communicate Face-to-Face

Digital communication tools are social fast food. The main issue with them is, that they tend to take people away from real world socializing that is massively more valuable. We are naturally biased toward activities that require lower initial energy, but are less rewarding in the long term.

Downgrade digital communication to a logistical role with two goals:

• set up and arrange conversation
• transfer practical information such as a meeting location

Avoid participation in open-ended, ongoing text-based conversations.

Newport acknowledges, that this will reduce the number of people one has an active relationship with as real conversation takes time.
Our society is too complex to be outsourced or even based on instant messages and emojis.

Consolidate Texting

We must not be "on call" for texts. Keep the phone in Do Not Disturb mode by default except for phone calls from a selected list. Schedule specific times for texting.

Reclaim Leisure

We might tell ourselves there's no greater reward after a hard day than to have no plans or commitments. But we then find ourselves, several hours of idlle watching and screen tapping later, somehow more fatigued than when we began.
Rouse the motivation to spend that time doing something, even if it's hard. Doing nothing is overrated.

Prioritize demanding activity over passive consumption.

Use skills to craft and produce valuable things in the physical world.

Playing games or sports can be supercharged socializing - interactions with higher intensity levels than usual.
Successful social leisure activities share two traits:

• They require spending time with other people in person
• The activity provides some sort of structure for the social interaction. Rules, insider terminology, rituals, a shared goal.

Other examples would be volunteer activities, working with a team on a group project, Crossfit.

Embrace Slow Media

Slow Media cannot be consumed casually. Focus on the highest quality sources. Breaking news is almost always much lower quality than the reporting once it has had time to be processed. For most it is counter-productive to expose oneself to this stream. One can ritualise the news consumption by defining and arranging a time and place for it.
[[Personalized News Feed]]