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.

begin to rediscover the analog activities that provide you deeper satisfaction. You’ll take walks, talk to friends in person, engage your community, read books, and stare at the clouds. Most importantly, the declutter gives you the space to refine your understanding of the things you value most.

I examine issues such as the importance of solitude and the necessity of cultivating high-quality leisure to replace the time most now dedicate to mindless device use.

We require a philosophy that puts our aspirations and values once again in charge of our daily experience,

a philosophy that prioritizes long-term meaning over short-term satisfaction.

“This thing is a slot machine,” Harris says early in the interview while holding up his smartphone. “How is that a slot machine?” Cooper asks. “Well, every time I check my phone, I’m playing the slot machine to see ‘What did I get?’” Harris answers.

attention engineering

I recommend instead a rapid transformation—something that occurs in a short period of time and is executed with enough conviction that the results are likely to stick. I call the particular rapid process I have in mind the digital declutter.

you’re more likely to succeed in reducing the role of digital tools in your life if you cultivate high-quality alternatives to the easy distraction they provide.

The goal of a digital declutter, however, is not simply to enjoy time away from intrusive technology. During this monthlong process, you must aggressively explore higher-quality activities to fill in the time left vacant by the optional technologies you’re avoiding. This period should be one of strenuous activity and experimentation.

for each optional technology that you’re considering reintroducing into your life, you must first ask: Does this technology directly support something that I deeply value?

A month later, Moment provided Alter the truth: on average, he was picking up his phone forty times per day and spending around a total of three hours looking at his screen.

Solitude Deprivation A state in which you spend close to zero time alone with your own thoughts and free from input from other minds.

we need solitude to thrive as human beings, and in recent years, without even realizing it, we’ve been systematically reducing this crucial ingredient from our lives.

How can you find enough of this solitude in the hyper-connected twenty-first century? To answer it, we can draw an unexpected insight from Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond.

people have succeeded in creating their own metaphorical cabin by the pond in an increasingly noisy world.

we too should embrace walking as a high-quality source of solitude.

the value generated by a Facebook comment or Instagram like—although real—is minor compared to the value generated by an analog conversation or shared real-world activity.

Leisure Lesson #1: Prioritize demanding activity over passive consumption.

Leisure Lesson #3: Seek activities that require real-world, structured social interactions.

Aristotle argued that high-quality leisure is essential to a life well lived.

It doesn’t matter if it’s a local sporting league, a committee at your temple, a local volunteer group, the PTA, a social fitness group, or a fantasy gamers club: few things can replicate the benefits of connecting with your fellow citizens, so get up, get out, and start reaping these benefits in your own community.

In addition, I’ve noticed that once someone becomes more intentional about their leisure, they tend to find more of it in their life. The weekly planning ritual can lead you to begin fighting for more leisure opportunities. Seeing, for example, that Thursday is a light schedule, you might decide to end work at 3:30 that day to go on a hike before dinner. These types of invented opportunities are rarer when you’re not planning ahead. Becoming more systematic about your leisure, in other words, can significantly increase the relaxation you enjoy throughout your week.

it really comes down to how you use the technology.”

As we’ve known since the time of Socrates, engaging with arguments provides a deep source of satisfaction independent of the actual content of the debate.