Book Summary: Digital Minimalism – Cal Newport

Book Summary: Digital Minimalism

Cal Newport’s Digital Minimalism is a practical guide to managing our digital lives. It discusses the growing scepticism around large online media companies and how to regain your autonomy from apps that may be starting to take over your life.

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Quotes:

By cultivating a high-quality leisure life first, it will become easier to minimize low-quality digital diversions later.

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.

Digital Minimalism Book Summary Notes:

• Smart phones started as a clever way to listen to music as well as make phone calls. Since their debut around 2007 a lot has changed, now social media engineers are paid to develop apps meant to keep you on your device as long as possible.
• Digital minimalism is a philosophical idea that less can be more. To protect ourselves against some of these large media companies we need to develop strategies and principles to work within.
• The average Facebook user spends around 350 minutes per week on the companies services.
• The basics of digital minimalism revolves are three key principles; clutter is costly, optimisation is important and intentionality is satisfying.
• Social media clutter is costly – what are you really gaining from it and what are the true time and attention costs?
• The law of diminishing returns lets us know that we cannot keep adding and expect the same returns. It works the same with apps and subscriptions, how many do you really need to accomplish your goal?
• When you begin to use a new tool or app ask yourself if it truely benefits and supports your values. If it doesn’t align with what you need it for or with your own values, reconsider using it all.
• A digital declutter is a 30 day break from social media, afterwards you can consider reintroducing a few critical apps. Make sure that any reintroduced apps again conform to your own set of values.
• These days younger generations are spending up to 9 hours a day on their devices. These higher percentages of use among younger generations are also being correlated to an uptick in depression, suicide, eating disorders and anxiety.
• Another aspect of today’s more connected generations are that they suffer from what the author calls solitude deprivation. Time away from devices and by ourselves can be important for processing emotions, thinking about relationships and procession what’s important in life.
• You can try scheduling time to call and text your friends and family as a method of not needing your phone around you constantly.
• Focus your spare time on outdoor or strenuous leisure activities now that you have freed up some extra time away from devices. The author found in his research that these are considered the most rewarding for people to engage in.
• If you are really struggling you may consider downgrading your phone or decreasing your data plan as a way to limit your ability to access certain apps and programs.