Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

by Cal Newport

I call it digital minimalism, and it applies the belief that less can be more to our relationship with digital tools. This idea is not new. Long before Henry David Thoreau exclaimed “simplicity, simplicity, simplicity,” Marcus Aurelius asked: “You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life?” Digital minimalism simply adapts this classical insight to the role of technology in our modern lives. The impact of this simple adaptation, however, can be profound. In this book, you’ll encounter many examples of digital minimalists who experienced massively positive changes by ruthlessly reducing their time spent online to focus on a small number of high-value activities. Because digital minimalists spend so much less time connected than their peers, it’s easy to think of their lifestyle as extreme, but the minimalists would argue that this perception is backward: what’s extreme is how much time everyone else spends staring at their screens. The key to thriving in our high-tech world, they’ve learned, is to spend much less time using technology.