Digital Minimalism: On Living Better with Less Technology

by Cal Newport

so many different shiny baubles pulling so insistently at their attention and manipulating their mood.

The urge to check Twitter or refresh Reddit becomes a nervous twitch that shatters uninterrupted time into shards too small to support the presence necessary for an intentional life.

This reality creates a jumbled emotional landscape where you can simultaneously cherish your ability to discover inspiring photos on Instagram while fretting about this app’s ability to invade the evening hours you used to spend talking with friends or reading.

The declutter acts as a jarring reset: you come into the process a frazzled maximalist and leave an intentional minimalist.

the past couple of decades are also defined by a resurgent narrative of techno-maximalism that contends more is better when it comes to technology—more connections, more information, more options.

cleverly dovetails with the general objective of the liberal humanism project to offer individuals more freedom, making it seem vaguely illiberal to avoid a popular social media platform

For many people, their compulsive phone use papers over a void created by a lack of a well-developed leisure life.

If you’re wearing headphones, or monitoring a text message chain, or, God forbid, narrating the stroll on Instagram—you’re not really walking, and therefore you’re not going to experience this practice’s greatest benefits.

Typing computer code into an advanced integrated development environment is not quite the same as confronting a plank of maple wood with a handheld plane. The former misses both the physicality and sense of unlimited options latent in the latter.

The state I’m helping you escape is one in which passive interaction with your screens is your primary leisure.

new technology, when used with care and intention, creates a better life than either Luddism or mindless adoption.