Digital Minimalism

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Highlights

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. (Location 109)
As whistleblower Tristan Harris explains: “Apps and websites sprinkle intermittent variable rewards all over their products because it’s good for business.” (Location 351)
The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, … was all about: “How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?” And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. (Location 357)
It tends to be these early, pre-feedback-era features that people cite when explaining why social media is important to their life. (Location 363)
you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.” (Location 402)
We didn’t sign up for the digital lives we now lead. They were instead, to a large extent, crafted in boardrooms to serve the interests of a select group of technology investors. (Location 409)
What he needs—what all of us who struggle with these issues need—is a philosophy of technology use, something that covers from the ground up which digital tools we allow into our life, for what reasons, and under what constraints. (Location 439)
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. (Location 443)
Even when a new technology promises to support something the minimalist values, it must still pass a stricter test: Is this the best way to use technology to support this value? If the answer is no, the minimalist will set to work trying to optimize the tech, or search out a better option. (Location 448)
minimalists don’t mind missing out on small things; what worries them much more is diminishing the large things they already know for sure make a good life good. (Location 460)
Digital minimalists derive significant satisfaction from their general commitment to being more intentional about how they engage with new technologies. (Location 531)
“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.” (Location 573)
more often than not, the cumulative cost of the noncrucial things we clutter our lives with can far outweigh the small benefits each individual piece of clutter promises. (Location 619)
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. (Location 635)
The first is that most of these technologies are still relatively new. Because of this reality, their role in your life can still seem novel and fun, obscuring more serious questions about the specific value they’re providing. (Location 672)
These corporations make more money the more time you spend engaged with their products. They want you, therefore, to think of their offerings as a sort of fun ecosystem (Location 678)
“Amish communities are not relics of a bygone era. Rather, they are demonstrations of a different form of modernity.” (Location 694)
The Amish, it turns out, do something that’s both shockingly radical and simple in our age of impulsive and complicated consumerism: they start with the things they value most, then work backward to ask whether a given new technology performs more harm than good (Location 713)
cannot connect to the power grid. The problem is not electricity; it’s the fact that the grid connects them too strongly to the world outside of their local community, violating the Amish commitment to the biblical tenet to “be in the world, but not of it.” (Location 727)
Their gamble is that intention trumps convenience—and (Location 738)
The restrictions that guide each community, called the Ordnung, are typically decided and enforced by a group of four men—a (Location 745)
Unlike the Amish, however, the Mennonites include more liberal members who integrate with the broader society, taking on personal responsibility for making decisions in a way that’s consistent with their church’s principles. This creates an opportunity to see Amish-style values toward technology applied in the absence of an authoritarian Ordnung. (Location 753)
In our conversation, she emphasized the importance of being present with her daughter, even when bored, (Location 766)
After a moment of hesitation, she adds: “It makes me feel a little smug at times.” (Location 771)
The sugar high of convenience is fleeting and the sting of missing out dulls rapidly, but the meaningful glow that comes from taking charge of what claims your time and attention is something that persists. (Location 779)
The Digital Declutter Process Put aside a thirty-day period during which you will take a break from optional technologies in your life. During this thirty-day break, explore and rediscover activities and behaviors 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 and how specifically you will use it so as to maximize this value. (Location 800)
The second clear conclusion I reached is that the declutter process is tricky. A nontrivial number of people ended up aborting this process before the full thirty days were done. (Location 823)
An interesting special case brought to my attention by many participants during the mass declutter experiment is video games. These can’t be neatly classified under the “new technology” label as they’ve been around for decades before the digital network and mobile computing revolutions of the past twenty years. (Location 840)
consider the technology optional unless its temporary removal would harm or significantly disrupt the daily operation of your professional or personal life. (Location 854)
Don’t, however, confuse “convenient” with “critical.” (Location 862)
the inconvenience might prove useful. Losing lightweight contact with your international friends might help clarify which of these friendships were real in the first place, (Location 866)
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. (Location 908)
The goal is not to simply give yourself a break from technology, but to instead spark a permanent transformation of your digital life. The detoxing is merely a step that supports this transformation. (Location 922)
He also started listening to records on a record player, from beginning to end, with no earbuds in his ears or skip buttons to tap when antsy—which turns out to be a much richer experience than Caleb’s normal habit of firing up Spotify and seeking out the perfect track. (Location 944)
During his declutter he rediscovered the satisfaction of spending real time with his boys instead of just spending time near them with his eyes on the screen. He noted how surreal it can feel to be the only parent at the playground who is not looking down. (Location 952)