Many of us are glued to our smartphones, tablets, and laptops, slavishly checking Facebook updates, refreshing email, and scanning Twitter. Although most people adopted these technologies for their benefits, they’ve become so tethered to them that they’ve lost control of how they spend their time and attention. People feel overpowered and exhausted by the multitude of digital tools at their fingertips, including devices like smartphones and tablets, websites, addictive apps, and social media platforms. Meanwhile, tech companies continue to invest major resources into making their products and services addictive so that you’ll continue scrolling and tapping.
This book explains how practicing digital minimalism can loosen technology’s grip on your attention. Digital minimalism is a philosophy that aims to maximize the benefits of technology and avoid the pitfalls by identifying your values and determining how to use technology to support them. First, we’ll discuss the principles of digital minimalism and explain why it’s an effective way to improve your digital (and real-world) life. Then, we’ll review practical strategies for implementing digital minimalism.
Before we talk about how to break our technology obsession, let’s explore what makes it so addictive in the first place.
If you ask people how much time is a reasonable amount to spend on these activities, their answer would probably be less than the amount of time they actually spend. Why are people spending more time and energy on devices than they think they should? The answer: Tech companies carefully engineer their products to keep your attention for as long as possible, because the longer your eyeballs are glued to the screen—where advertisements are placed strategically among your friend’s cat videos—the higher their revenues. This is the attention economy.
In order to drive profits, digital tools are specifically designed to promote addiction in order to support the attention economy. Of the various features that encourage technology addiction, we’ll explore two:
Digital overuse causes a number of negative effects, but, above all, technologies’ addictive designs rob you of your autonomy to decide how and how much you use your digital tools. Digital minimalism can help you reclaim the power to decide how you allocate your time and attention—because if you don’t feel that you have control over your digital habits, you become a victim of their negative consequences. Since your tech addiction has been engineered, you have to be diligent and deliberate about breaking that addiction and creating new habits.
A growing number of people are preaching the benefits of pulling back from the total technology immersion that has become the default for many. Those who promote reducing technology use typically advise simple hacks like turning off notifications. However, instead of hacks, most people need a complete overhaul—and that starts with developing a philosophy of technology use. Digital minimalism is one such philosophy, which requires that you identify what values and activities are priorities in your life, determine which digital tools promote those priorities, and implement constraints for using these tools to maximize their benefits and minimize their harm and distraction.
Let’s explore the three main principles of digital minimalism:
The most effective way to adopt digital minimalism is to start with a digital declutter, which is a 30-day detox from all non-essential technology. The digital declutter allows time for you to break your addictive habits, engage with more meaningful activities, and get a clean slate from which you can set the parameters for your long-term digital use.
Let’s discuss the three steps to the declutter process:
When you start to realize all the time you could gain by changing your digital habits, you’ll want to start filling it with something else. But it’s important that you spend some of that time doing nothing. Because digital tools are ubiquitous and addictive, they have robbed us of invaluable solitude. This may seem like a small loss, but even brief moments of solitude are critical for your mental and emotional well-being.
It’s easy to overlook the value of solitude, because our culture places a high value on connectivity. While close personal relationships are a critical source of happiness, time with close friends and family must still be balanced with time spent alone with your thoughts. This means having a break from outside input from other people, TV, podcasts, and anything on your phone or computer. Solitude is essential in order to:
Digital tools today are more ubiquitous than any of their technological predecessors. Whereas previous technologies could interrupt solitude intermittently, the iPod and iPhone were the first innovations that could continuously distract people from their thoughts, even in brief moments and inconvenient locations. As a result, people now face the real threat of solitude deprivation, meaning that they have virtually no time with their own thoughts. Solitude deprivation impedes your ability to think creatively, deliberate on problems, get to know yourself, and foster strong relationships—in other words, it brings down your quality of life.
It’s difficult to disconnect in a hyper-connected world, but there are some simple strategies you can use to get a little solitude.
Just as important as humans’ need for solitude is their need for meaningful social interaction. The human brain evolved to be extremely sophisticated in navigating social interactions because relationships have always been vital to humans’ health and survival. When you communicate with people face-to-face, on the phone, or over a video call—any means that’s not text-based—it stretches your mental muscles for social connection, such as reading body language, tone of voice, and facial expressions. However, digital communication has replaced much of people’s face-to-face and phone conversations, but texts, comments, and emails fail to feed people’s deep psychological social needs.
Rich, face-to-face communication draws on humans’ evolutionary social skills and is a meaningful experience because:
Despite the benefits of non-text interaction, people gravitate toward digital communication because—in addition to being wired for social connection—humans evolved to seek out the most efficient ways of doing things, despite the trade-offs. This leads to behaviors such as compulsively checking your phone even while carrying on a conversation with the person sitting in front of you, spending all your time on digital devices and leaving none for richer forms of interaction, and mistakenly assuming that digital communication is a substitute for face-to-face conversation. But, when you replace most of your conversations with digital, text-based communication, you eventually lose your social skills and become unable to satisfy your deep-seated social needs. For example, some adolescents have a hard time being empathetic because they haven’t had enough practice reading facial expressions to interpret what other people are feeling.
In order to maintain your communication skills and fulfill your social needs, you must not only incorporate more conversation into your life, but also change the way you use digital communication tools. Merely supplementing your digital connections with real-life conversations won’t create the fundamental shift you need for significant, sustained changes—rather, harness digital tools and use them to promote meaningful interactions, rather than replace them.
To shift the balance between your connections and your conversations, use digital (text-based) communication for only two purposes:
When you adopt these practices, the number of people you actively communicate with will almost certainly shrink, because you won’t have enough time to keep up meaningful communication with everyone you follow on social media. You might initially feel lonely as you watch your social circle appear to shrink, but you’ll soon notice that the relationships that survive this shift will become stronger. Instead of maintaining constant connection with a large network of weak ties and acquaintances, you’ll enjoy meaningful communication with a smaller group of close friends.
Shifting the way you think about and use your digital communication tools can be difficult, especially when those tools are already an established part of your relationships. Here are some strategies that can help you make the transition:
In order to successfully reduce your digital habits, you need to first identify the meaningful leisure activities that will take their place. While scrolling and tapping on your devices may feel like a pleasant way to decompress, they are low-quality leisure activities—they don’t contribute much value to your life and they don’t energize you. When you cut down on your digital use and deliberately fill that time with meaningful activities, the high-quality leisure will leave you feeling more energized and fulfilled than your digital habits.
As you think of the ways you could fill your newfound free time, consider the following three lessons about what defines high-quality leisure activities.
In the spirit of digital minimalism, there is a growing movement of people using technology to support leisure activities instead of relying on technology to be the activity. First, you can go online to find communities of people who share your interests so that you can connect with them in person. Second, if you’re picking up a new skill or hobby, you can find detailed instructions, how-to videos, and sources for obscure materials and tools.
From woodworking to volunteering, you have a wide array of high-quality leisure options to fill your time. Consider these strategies to get the most out of your downtime:
Since tech companies have a vested interest in keeping you addicted to your devices, reclaiming control of your attention requires strong conviction and thorough planning. The key to digital minimalism is to change how you view and use technology so that you use only the tools that benefit you, and forego the rest of the distractions. Here are some strategies to help you achieve this:
Digital minimalists aren’t anti-technology—rather, they want to be intentional about how they use technology in order to maximize its benefits. Digital minimalists are content to miss out on low-value digital experiences because they’ve chosen to invest only in high-value experiences, in both the virtual and real worlds. If you decide to adopt this philosophy, you have to put in time and effort, and you’ll probably falter along the way, but you’ll be on the path to a higher quality of life.
Many of us are glued to our smartphones, tablets, and laptops. When most people first got smartphones or signed up for social media, they envisioned the benefits they’d reap, from the convenience of having a pocket-sized computer to the connectedness they could feel with friends and family across the globe. But, over time, the urge to slavishly check Facebook updates, refresh email, and scan Twitter has become so strong that many people feel that they’ve lost control of how they spend their time and attention. Many people feel overpowered and exhausted by the multitude of digital tools at their fingertips, including devices like smartphones and tablets, websites, addictive apps, and social media platforms. People want to use digital tools, they don’t want to feel used by them.
There are a number of strategies for loosening technology’s grip on your attention, but simple hacks meant to alter your habits aren’t potent enough to overcome technology’s addictive pull. Instead, this book lays out a philosophy of technology use that manages your digital behavior based on your values. This philosophy is digital minimalism, and it aims to maximize the benefits of technology and avoid the pitfalls by identifying your values and determining how to use technology to support them. In Part 1, we’ll discuss the principles of digital minimalism and explain why it’s an effective way to improve your digital (and real-world) life. In Part 2, we’ll review practical strategies for implementing digital minimalism.
Cal Newport—an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University—was inspired to write this book after hearing readers’ reactions to his 2016 book, Deep Work, which discussed how modern communication tools like email prevent professionals from having the intense, uninterrupted focus that is critical to performing at their best. After the book was published, many readers responded that this wasn’t just a problem in their professional lives, but also in their personal lives: Their digital habits were eating up all of their leisure time and chipping away at their personal fulfillment.
(Shortform note: Read more from Cal Newport with our summaries of Deep Work and So Good They Can’t Ignore You.)
Before we talk about how to break our technology obsession, let’s explore what makes it so addictive in the first place.
(Shortform note: Digital minimalism is an evergreen philosophy, even when you work, learn, and socialize remotely. For example, early in the pandemic, Newport posted a brief blog encouraging readers to sustain their commitment to the tenets of digital minimalism: Be mindful of your values, be intentional about your digital use, and make a point to engage in rewarding and rejuvenating non-digital activities.)
Technology addiction is insidious. When social media and smartphones were first introduced, neither the creators nor the users had any idea that the technologies would evolve to become the ever-present, addictive forces they are today. The technologies transformed daily life and culture accidentally and unexpectedly.
When Facebook launched in 2004, people signed up for the service to keep in touch with friends and family. Similarly, when Apple released the first iPhone in 2007, Steve Jobs promoted it as a hybrid of a cell phone and an iPod—in fact, Jobs initially rejected suggestions to frame the iPhone as a small, ultra-mobile computer. As people spent more time using these digital tools, their usefulness morphed from convenient ways to stay connected to constant distractions pulling your attention away from the person sitting in front of you.
Today, many people spend hours on their devices, scrolling through their news feeds and compulsively checking emails. If you ask people how much time is a reasonable amount to spend on these activities, their answer would probably be less than the amount of time they actually spend. Where’s the disconnect? Why are people spending more time and energy on devices than they think they should?
The answer: Tech companies carefully engineer their products to keep your attention for as long as possible, because the longer your eyeballs are glued to the screen—where advertisements are placed strategically among your friend’s cat videos—the higher their revenues. This is the attention economy. You’re not lazy or indulgent, you’re simply falling victim to clever design tactics.
Technology overuse causes a number of negative effects, such as:
Above all, technologies’ addictive designs rob you of your autonomy to decide how and how much you use your digital tools. Digital minimalism can help you reclaim the power to decide how you allocate your time and attention—because, if you don’t feel that you have control over your own digital habits, then you become a victim of their negative consequences. However, just as smokers know that cigarettes cause cancer, simply understanding the consequences of technology overuse isn’t enough to help you escape its grasp. First, you need to understand how technology has caught you in its attention trap.
Although compulsively checking your Twitter feed may seem like a far cry from drug addiction, the two are more closely related than you think. In psychological terms, addiction means that you continue to do something that makes you feel good or provides some other reward, despite the negative consequences. In recent years, psychology experts have recognized that behavioral addictions—like gambling and internet addictions—can strongly resemble addictions to substances like drugs and alcohol.
In 2013, Adam Alter—a marketing professor with a PhD in social psychology—discovered firsthand the addictive effects of technology. Alter was boarding a cross-country flight, and he intended to spend the time catching up on sleep and work. Instead, he spent the entire six hours playing a game on his cell phone. Realizing what he’d done, Alter decided to investigate the psychological reasons that technology is addictive.
As Alter researched the topic, he discovered that digital tools are specifically designed to promote addiction in order to support the attention economy. Of the various features that encourage technology addiction—which Alter discusses in his 2017 book, Irresistible—we’ll explore two: intermittent positive reinforcement and the drive for social approval.
Principle: When you get unpredictable rewards for your behavior, you’re more driven to continue that behavior than if the rewards were consistent.
Explanation: Your brain releases the craving-inducing chemical dopamine whenever you get a reward. When rewards are intermittent instead of reliable, your brain actually releases a larger amount of dopamine. For example, if you’re playing the slot machine, you pull the lever consistently, but you only win occasionally. Something about that unpredictability makes it more exciting—you keep pulling the lever not in spite of the unpredictability, but because of it.
In the 1970s, psychologist Michael Zeiler illustrated this principle in an experiment in which pigeons had to peck at a button in order to receive food pellets. When the pellets were released intermittently, the pigeons pecked more often than when the pellets were released predictably.
Technology application: On social media, the “Like” button is one form of intermittent reward. When you post a photo on Facebook, you may get a swarm of likes and comments, or you may get none. That uncertainty creates an urge for you to compulsively check your notifications, anxiously hoping to see more likes.
Technology companies also sprinkle rewards throughout their apps and websites, giving users sporadic hits of dopamine in order to keep them engaged longer. Think of a time when you visited a website for a specific purpose, and 30 minutes later you realize that you’d followed links and headlines down a rabbit hole of unrelated content—many of the articles and videos were uninteresting, but along the way you encountered a few that really engaged you. Those few interesting articles were rewards in your journey of distraction.
It’s clear that these features were deliberately designed in order to keep users’ attention, because early versions of apps and websites didn’t have these elements—they were added only after tech companies adopted their attention economy business models. Additionally, these features add no real value: Most Facebook users say that the benefit of the platform is to stay up-to-date with friends and family, and that would still be possible if Facebook disabled likes and comments.
Principle: Humans are wired to seek social approval.
Explanation: In ancient times, people’s survival literally depended on being in good standing with the fellow members of their tribes. Modern humans’ brains still have the drive to seek and reciprocate social approval.
Technology application: On social media, likes and comments convey social approval. Your ancient social urges push you to compulsively check your notifications to find out whether your peers have validated you with the thumbs-up button—and, when you don’t get that feedback, you feel rejected and distressed by the lack of approval. That distress intensifies the urge to check your notifications in hopes of getting a like or a comment, creating a vicious cycle.
This is the reason that many teenagers get caught up in a stream of back-and-forth messages with their friends on Snapchat, because it feels like affirmation of their strong relationship. Similarly, this drive creates the urge to respond to a text message as soon as you hear your phone ping—regardless of whether you’re driving or sitting in a work meeting. To the ancient parts of your brain, ignoring a text or breaking a Snapchat streak is like giving your friend the cold shoulder, which could have serious implications in the context of a small tribe.
Human’s drive for social approval is also behind the photo-tagging option in social media apps like Facebook and Instagram. When you get a notification that someone tagged you in a photo, it feels like a message that the other person is thinking about you, which feeds your need for social approval and gives you an emotional boost. Social media companies have made it easier to trigger this response by using face-recognition technology and algorithms that identify other people in a photo and suggest that you tag them. When you post a photo of you and your friend, the app recognizes your friend’s face and prompts you to tag her with a single click. It takes minimal time and effort for the person who posts the photo, but it brings major psychological rewards for the person who gets tagged.
Are you in the grip of a tech addiction?
How much time would you estimate you spend on your smartphone (or tablet or computer) per day?
If you can, check the settings on your device to find out your actual usage time. How does this compare with your estimate, and why do you think you were close or not?
Describe an example of how intermittent positive reinforcement or social approval is used by one of your favorite apps or websites.
Do you feel you have control over your technology use? Why or why not?
How do you want to change your digital habits, if at all?
As we’ve seen, your tech addiction is by design—and that means that you have to be just as deliberate in breaking that addiction and creating new habits. In this chapter, we’ll explain how to do that with the philosophy of digital minimalism.
A growing number of people are preaching the benefits of pulling back from the total technology immersion that has become the default for many. Those who promote reducing technology use typically advise simple hacks like turning off notifications; a New York Post columnist wrote that he took back his life by disabling notifications for 112 apps on his iPhone. However, simple strategies don’t address the root of the problem, which is that cultural norms and addictive designs are the reason that writer had 112 apps in the first place.
Instead of hacks, most people need a complete overhaul—and that starts with developing a philosophy of technology use. Digital minimalism is one such philosophy. Digital minimalism requires that you identify what values and activities are priorities in your life, determine which digital tools promote those priorities, and implement constraints for using these tools to maximize their benefits and minimize their harm and distraction.
Let’s explore the three main principles of digital minimalism.
Main idea: When your life is cluttered with too many digital tools, they collectively demand so much of your time and attention that the negative effects outweigh the benefits of any single tool.
Explanation: Most people’s digital use follows a maximalist philosophy, which suggests that you should adopt a digital tool if it provides any benefit at all. By contrast, the minimalistic approach requires you to constantly weigh the pros and cons. Digital minimalists assess technology with cost-benefit analyses, which involve asking yourself:
Consider how you might apply this assessment to Facebook and Twitter:
If you assess every digital tool with these criteria, you’ll likely end up reducing or eliminating your need for these devices, even though our culture considers many of them necessary. As you realize all the things you’re gaining (like the opportunity to have meaningful conversations with friends over coffee), it’ll be easier to accept the things you’re losing by reducing your tech use (like hitting the “Like” button on a photo of a high school classmate).
Henry David Thoreau explores the idea that less is more in his well-known book, Walden, which is about his experience living modestly in a cabin in the woods for two years. In his experiment, Thoreau was testing a new economic theory that having more stuff doesn’t create a richer life. During his time in the woods, Thoreau added up the costs of building and living in his cabin, and then determined that he would need to work just one day a week in order to cover his expenses. Although it seems straightforward, Thoreau was radical in finding a way to weigh these two different measurements against each other: time and money.
Before Walden, economic theory focused on earning the highest profit possible. By contrast, Thoreau’s exchange rate between time and money enabled him to determine the cost of items not just in dollars and cents, but also in the amount of life that had to be sacrificed to earn those dollars. This explained why many people who followed the standard approach to earn as much as humanly possible seemed no better off for it: The time and effort they put in to earn those profits—and the things they necessarily had to sacrifice to do so—were greater than things they bought with those profits. For example, the nice Venetian blinds you bought with a big paycheck are not worth the life you missed while working weekends in order to earn that paycheck. Thoreau argued that even when money was spent on more practical items, like a wagon, the time saved by taking the wagon to town instead of walking did not outweigh the hours of labor spent earning the money to buy it.
Main idea: Digital minimalism isn’t just about eliminating technologies—it’s about selectively deciding which tools you’ll continue to use, and how you’ll use them.
Explanation: The second principle of digital minimalism applies the economic law of diminishing returns, which says that increased input leads to increased output up to a point, after which the benefits of additional input plateau. In other words, if you are overseeing a project at work, four people will get it done more quickly than two people, but nine people won’t finish it much sooner than four people. When it comes to technology, a few apps and devices may make your life more convenient, but too many will bog you down. Later in this summary, we’ll talk more about how to decide which tools to lose and which to keep.
Once you’ve decluttered your digital life and pared down your apps and devices, you must then decide how you’ll use them in order to get the most benefits with the fewest distractions. Instead of looking at an app or device as a single tool, think about it as a collection of features, such as direct messaging and marketing platforms. With this view, you can optimize your digital use based purely on the tools they provide, and it’ll be easier to bypass the rest of the noise.
For example, if you’re part of a group that uses Facebook as a primary means of communication, you can:
Additionally, if you use Netflix instead of cable because it’s cheaper and doesn’t have commercials, but you find that you are prone to binging, you can:
Main idea: In addition to the direct benefits of reducing digital clutter in your life, the act of making deliberate decisions about your technology use helps you to reclaim the autonomy that many people feel they’ve lost.
Explanation: As we discussed in Chapter 1, one of the most harmful effects of technology addiction is that users feel they don’t have control. You can avoid all of the issues that come with technology overuse—including negative impacts on your psychological well-being and reduced time for other activities—if you can simply control your digital habits. Additionally, the act of reclaiming control of your time and attention is empowering, and in the coming chapters we’ll talk about the added benefit of using that time to engage in fulfilling activities.
Contrary to their reputation for Luddism, the Amish are not opposed to technology entirely—rather, they live out the principles of digital minimalism, especially as a growing number pursue entrepreneurship over farming. Most Amish communities have an “alpha geek,” who goes before the parish bishop to ask permission to try new technologies. With that permission, the first adopter tries out the technology and determines whether its use would support or undermine the community’s values, such as strong family and community relationships. If the technology’s effects are positive overall, the community is allowed to adopt it—if not, it’s banned.
This process has led many Amish communities to ban personal phones but provide a community phone booth, and to allow sophisticated farming equipment but to power machines with solar panels and diesel energy instead of connecting to the electric grid. Mennonites take a similar approach, though individuals make their decisions on a personal level, rather than following community mandates. Both communities share the minimalistic philosophy of prioritizing intention and commitment to their fundamental values above mere convenience.
Reflect on how you could apply digital minimalism to your life.
Digital minimalism promotes using technology to support your values and interests. What are some of your values and interests (such as family or a musical hobby)?
Name one of the apps or websites that you spend the most time on. How does it add value to your life beyond minor convenience? (For example, perhaps you use Instagram to keep up with work from an artist whose work isn’t displayed publicly anywhere else.)
Is that technology the best way to support your values? Why or why not? What are alternative ways to support your values?
What parameters could you implement to change the way you use this tool so that you maximize the positive aspects and minimize the negative (or merely distracting) ones?
You now know the principles of digital minimalism, but your persistent technology addiction makes implementing them difficult. That’s why the most effective way to adopt digital minimalism is to start with a digital declutter, which is a 30-day detox from all non-essential technology. The digital declutter allows time for you to break your addictive habits, engage with more meaningful activities, and get a clean slate from which you can set the parameters for your long-term digital use.
Let’s discuss the three steps of the declutter process.
The digital declutter involves banning all optional technologies, so you must first define what is an optional technology. The answer will be different for everyone, but it should fit two criteria.
First, “technology” includes websites, apps, and other digital tools that you access through your phone or computer. Video games and television and streaming services are gray areas, depending upon whether you feel that you rely on them in a way that’s cluttering your life. If you often feel an addictive pull to your gaming system, or if binging on Netflix constantly impedes your productivity, ban them for the declutter.
Second, “optional” technology is something that you can ignore for a month without causing harm to your personal or professional life. Be careful to distinguish between technologies that are essential and those that are merely convenient. You may even find that certain inconveniences are valuable. For example, social media provides an easy way to stay connected with friends and family, but it’s not the only way, and detoxing from Facebook may clarify which friends are worth the extra effort to stay in touch with. Additionally, talking to those friends on the phone or in person—rather than simply commenting on their photos—could strengthen those relationships.
There may be technologies that are essential only under specific circumstances. For example, in an experiment in which more than 1,600 volunteers did digital declutters and reported their experiences to the author, one participant wanted to cut down on text messaging, but she still needed to use it to communicate with her husband when he traveled. In order to achieve both, she set special alerts to go off when her husband sent a message, and she silenced all other text notifications. Another person limited his podcast listening to only during his daily two-hour commute. In the experiment, roughly 30 percent of participants’ self-imposed rules were nuanced like this, which gave volunteers the freedom to customize their experiences to their needs—increasing their chances of success. By the same token, limiting the number of such conditions keeps the declutter simpler to follow.
Once you’ve determined your list of banned technologies and outlined your operating procedures for the others, write everything down and put the paper somewhere you’ll see it every day.
Now that you’ve set the rules, the next step is to follow them for one month. At first, it will be hard to break your tech use habits, and you may find yourself absentmindedly reaching for your phone. Typically, those reflexes fade after a week or two—and resetting those impulses is a major reason that the digital declutter is a critical first step to adopting digital minimalism.
Without the digital declutter, your addictions and habits would cloud your judgment and make certain technologies seem more essential than they are. But after 30 days of declutter, when it’s time to reintroduce select technologies back into your life, you’ll be better able to make those decisions. You’ll know the true consequences of being disconnected from certain technologies, and you may have discovered that they’re smaller than you would have expected. For example, at the start of the declutter, you may fear that without Twitter you would be woefully uninformed, but you could discover that reading the morning paper leaves you more informed and less distracted.
The digital declutter is also essential because it gives you time to reconnect with your interests and passions by revisiting old activities and trying new ones—and you may be surprised by how much time you have without distracting technologies taking your attention. Participants in the digital declutter study discovered that, by the end of the 30 days, they had time to finish multiple books, take up old hobbies, start blogs, spend quality time with family, and even shop for and buy a house.
It’s key that you brainstorm alternative activities before you begin the declutter; if you start the declutter and are jonesing for your smartphone, it will be harder to resist if you don’t already have an alternative activity in mind. In Part 2, we’ll talk more about how to come up with meaningful ways to spend your newfound time.
After you complete the 30-day declutter, you’ll choose which technologies to reintroduce into your life, and you’ll decide how to use them. This is a critical step in turning the declutter into a long-lasting change—without it, you rescind the control you’ve taken over your digital life.
In order to determine which technologies to reintroduce, you must ask yourself three questions:
When you implement your declutter, beware of two mistakes that often derail people:
If you were to commit to a 30-day digital declutter, what would that entail?
Think of all the technologies you use, including websites, apps, and other digital tools that you access through your phone or computer. Which of these could you eliminate for a month without damaging your personal or professional life?
If there are technologies that you only need under certain circumstances (for example, to talk to a relative overseas), what rule could you impose so that you only use that tool for that specific need?
Predict which tools you would reintroduce after completing the digital declutter and explain why.
Which tools do you think you would eliminate, and why?
In Part 2, we’ll examine various benefits you’ll enjoy when you reform your digital use, and we’ll share some practice advice for becoming a digital minimalist. When you start to realize all the time you could gain by changing your digital habits, your mind might jump to the ways you could fill that free time and all the things you could accomplish (we’ll talk more about these kinds of activities in the next couple chapters). But it’s important that you also spend some of that time doing nothing.
Because digital tools are ubiquitous and addictive, they have robbed us of invaluable solitude. With smartphones, no small moment—while waiting in line or commuting on the subway—is without a digital crutch keeping our attention. This may seem like a small loss, but even brief moments of solitude are critical for your mental and emotional well-being.
It’s easy to overlook the value of solitude, because our culture places a high value on connectivity. That emphasis on constant connection can also obscure technology’s harmful effects: Facebook’s mission statement is to help people build community and make people all over the world more closely connected—it’s hard to find fault with that.
While close personal relationships are a critical source of happiness, time with close friends and family must still be balanced with time spent alone with your thoughts. Solitude is essential in order to:
Great thinkers throughout history have recognized the value of solitude. For example, Abraham Lincoln spent much of his presidency commuting from the White House to a quiet cottage on the edge of the woods so that he could have the solitude he needed to work through challenges. Lincoln used his commute time as well as the quiet space the cottage provided to sit in thought and walk the grounds as he contemplated how to lead the country through the Civil War. Lincoln even wrote the first drafts of the Emancipation Proclamation at the cottage. René Descartes, Immanuel Kant, and Friedrich Nietzsche were among others who had no families and few friends, but used solitude to lead productive, notable lives.
You don’t have to be physically alone to have solitude—you just need to be alone with your thoughts. The value of solitude is in having a break from all outside input, which means that you’re not:
The author Virginia Woolf described solitude as freedom from the oppression of constant noise and distraction. We are bombarded everywhere and every moment with sights and sounds—from Muzak in elevators to TV screens at gas pumps. As external noise has been growing louder and more pervasive, our constant reliance on smartphones has led to a steady hum of self-imposed noise, as well. When was the last time you had a quiet moment alone, and you didn’t pull out your phone?
In generations past, people worried about innovations such as telegraphs and TV sets intruding upon solitude. However, digital tools today are more ubiquitous than any of their technological predecessors. It started with the iPod: Before Apple released the iPod, people could listen to music on the go with Discmans and Sony Walkmans, but they typically did so only in certain settings, such as while exercising or traveling. Once iPods appeared, they went everywhere with people, providing a soundtrack to people’s entire days. Whereas previous technologies could interrupt solitude intermittently, the iPod was the first innovation that could continuously distract people from their thoughts.
Despite the iPod’s ubiquity, there were still occasions when it was inappropriate or inconvenient to pop in earbuds—for example, while waiting for a meeting to start or while sitting bored during church. But when Apple launched the iPhone, it eliminated the remaining bits of solitude. During moments when people couldn’t listen to music, they could sneak a quick glance at a text message or an app. As a result, people now face the real threat of solitude deprivation, meaning that they have virtually no time with their own thoughts.
The importance of solitude becomes more pronounced when you consider the consequences of losing it. Solitude deprivation erodes your quality of life by eliminating the wide-ranging benefits of solitude (including creativity, self-reflection, and improved problem-solving)
Nowhere are the effects of sustained solitude deprivation more apparent than among members of Generation Z, who were born during and after the mid-1990s and grew up with constant access to the internet through tablets and smartphones. Collectively, members of Gen Z are glued to their digital devices more than any other group: A 2015 study found that teenagers spent an average of nine hours a day consuming media, including through social networks and text messages. The consequences of Gen Z’s solitude deprivation are becoming apparent, with skyrocketing rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide among teens.
Psychology professor Jean Twenge investigated the connection between Gen Z’s digital use and their mental health, and she found that the sharp decline in teen mental health started at the same time that smartphones took over the cell phone market. Although modern teens deal with many of the same issues that adolescents have faced for generations—such as social pressures and mental and physical changes—their constant connectivity is not only exacerbating those issues but also creating new ones. (Shortform note: Read more about Twenge’s investigation in our summary of her Atlantic article, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”)
While teens and young adults are generally experiencing the most severe symptoms of technology overuse, people of all ages are living their daily lives with constant low-level anxiety because of their constant connectivity. People need downtime to maintain a mental and emotional equilibrium.
It’s difficult to disconnect in a hyper-connected world, but there are some simple strategies you can use to get a little solitude.
1) Get away from your phone for a while. If you go out to a movie or meet a friend for dinner, leave your phone at home or in the car. If that feels too extreme, ask your friend to put your phone in her pocket or purse—whatever you can do to make the phone less accessible to you. Try to regularly get some time away from your phone.
Many people are reluctant to stray too far from their devices because they fear that something terrible will happen while they’re temporarily unreachable, but these concerns are generally overblown. To keep things in perspective, remember that just a couple of decades ago, people didn’t have portable communication (besides payphones)—and, although it might have been a little more inconvenient, they got along just fine.
2) Take long, quiet walks. Try to make time for leisurely walks that give you the opportunity for quiet reflection. Resist the urge to talk on the phone or listen to a podcast—just be with your thoughts. Of course, you can have solitude anywhere, but the unique mental and emotional benefits of walking have been well-documented: For about a decade, Nietzsche walked up to eight hours a day, and it helped him produce several influential books.
3) Write down your thoughts. Writing is a form of productive solitude, and writing a journal entry or a letter to yourself is a valuable way to process your thoughts. You don’t necessarily need to write daily—simply use writing as an outlet to work through difficult problems and big emotions.
Reflect on the role of solitude in your life.
When and how do you get solitude in your daily life?
If you can remember a time in your life when you had significantly more or less solitude than you get now, how did it affect your mental and emotional state?
What is one point in your day when you could have solitude but you normally use your device instead (for example, to play music, talk on the phone, listen to a podcast, or browse the internet)?
In the next few days, when could you leave your phone at home or put it away for a few hours?
Just as important as humans’ need for solitude is their need for meaningful social interaction. The human brain evolved to be extremely sophisticated in navigating social interactions because relationships have always been vital to humans’ health and survival: When our ancient ancestors lived in tribes, each individual’s survival depended on whether her relationships with other members of the tribe supported cooperation and goodwill. However, digital communication has replaced most face-to-face and phone conversations, but texts, comments, and emails fail to feed people’s deep psychological social needs.
Humans are wired to be social. In fact, scientists have revealed that during moments of mental idleness, certain areas of the brain continue to think about your social connections. When you communicate with people face-to-face, on the phone, or over a video call—any means that’s not text-based—it stretches your mental muscles for social connection, such as reading body language, tone of voice, and facial expressions. Humans evolved over millions of years to perform the immense mental feat of having face-to-face conversations, and we must continue to use these skills to prevent them from atrophying.
In the 2015 book, Reclaiming Conversation, MIT professor Sherry Turkle drew a key distinction between connection and conversation. Turkle, who specializes in Social Studies of Science and Technology, wrote that conversation refers to the rich, face-to-face communication that draws on humans’ evolutionary social skills, while mere connection refers to the low-level forms of communication that take place online. Conversation—not connection—is a rich human experience because:
When you replace most of your conversations with digital, text-based communication, your evolutionary social skills become dull. If you don’t use them, you eventually lose your social skills and become unable to satisfy your deep-seated social needs. In the book, Turkle illustrates this with case studies that describe:
If human brains have evolved to crave social connection, why do we constantly use inadequate digital communication tools? One obvious reason is that they’re easier and faster than the alternatives, and—in addition to being wired for social connection—humans evolved to seek out the most efficient ways of doing things, despite the trade-offs. This contradictory wiring leads to behaviors such as:
Since the rise of social media and digital communication, many scientists have set out to determine how this form of social interaction affects people. The results have been contradictory:
The distinction lies in how versus how much people use social media. When people use specific features that facilitate communication, they feel more connected—but when they spend too much time on social media in general, it robs them of their time for more meaningful offline social interactions. In other words, while social media can keep you somewhat connected with your circle, it can’t come close to meeting your social needs. When people replace their offline social lives with online communication, they’re left feeling unhappy and lonely.
(Shortform note: Some people with social anxiety feel more comfortable communicating through digital and text-based formats. However, these habits don’t necessarily improve their psychological well-being, and people risk relying so heavily on online communication that they almost entirely avoid non-text-based interactions.)
In order to maintain your communication skills and fulfill your social needs, you must not only incorporate more conversation into your life, but also change the way you use digital communication tools. Merely supplementing your digital connections with real-life conversations won’t create the fundamental shift you need for significant, sustained changes—rather, harness digital tools and use them to promote meaningful interactions, rather than replace them.
To shift the balance between your connections and your conversations, adopt the conversation-centric communication philosophy. This philosophy draws a hard line between connection and conversation: They are not merely two means of accomplishing the same social goals. Instead, only conversation—in person or via phone or video call—truly contributes to your relationships. Accordingly, connection via digital (text-based) communication should only be used for two purposes:
In other words, connection should only be used to support conversation, not to supplement or substitute for it. When you change your objective, it will inherently change the way you use those tools:
When you adopt conversation-centric communication practices, there will be consequences:
Shifting the way that you think about and use your digital communication tools can be difficult, especially when those tools are already an established part of your relationships. Here are some strategies that can help you make the transition:
1) Stop clicking “like” and leaving social media comments. As we’ve talked about, these are shallow forms of interaction that don’t feed your need for social connection, and they create the illusion that you’re communicating. As a result, these actions actually undermine your effort to strengthen your relationships through meaningful interactions.
If you’re tempted to comment on your cousin’s photo of her baby, call or visit her instead. Once you stop engaging on social media, you will probably lose some relationships that were based only on social media interaction. While that will feel like a loss, it ultimately leaves you with more time and energy to invest in fewer, more meaningful relationships.
2) Text only during certain times and for specific purposes. Text messages are a major aspect of communication in most relationships—so much so that it isn’t feasible for most people to stop texting altogether. Since ongoing text conversations create distractions and frequent interruptions, change the way you text: Use text messages only to exchange logistical information, such as setting up a time for a phone conversation or face-to-face meeting. Additionally, keep your phone on Do Not Disturb mode so that you don’t receive text notifications, and then designate times when you’ll check and respond to text messages. If you need to, adjust your phone settings to allow calls to come through from certain people.
Leaving your phone on Do Not Disturb allows you to go through your day without text messages distracting you, so that you can be more present in the real world. This will also improve your relationships, because your refusal to engage in conversation via text will push you and your friends and family to set aside time for more meaningful communication. Consider letting people know that you check texts a few times a day, and that they can call if they need to reach you urgently (and be sure to add their phone numbers to the list of allowed calls).
3) Designate days and times for conversations. Just like college professors hold office hours, during which students can drop by their office to discuss assignments and issues, set aside days and times to have conversation office hours. When people try to instigate a conversation via text or email, simply tell them you’d love to continue the discussion, and that they can call or meet you during your conversation office hours. This strategy prevents anyone from hesitating to call you for fear of interrupting something, and it blocks out time for you to invest in meaningful conversation.
If you commute home during rush hour, tell people they can call you any weekday at 5:30. Alternatively, hold your conversation office hours in a local coffee shop where people can drop by, or implement regular walks when people can join you or you can talk on the phone.
Reflect on how you could improve communication with your closest friends and family.
Name two of the most important people in your life.
How do you generally keep in touch with each of these two people?
What is one way you could decrease some of that text-based interaction and increase face-to-face or phone communication?
If you were to implement conversation office hours, what day(s) and time(s) would you schedule them?
In order to successfully reduce your digital habits, you need to first identify the meaningful leisure activities that will take their place. In recent decades, the rise of technological overuse has coincided with the decline of high-quality leisure activities: Employers have demanded constant access to employees, the line has blurred between people’s personal and professional lives, and community bonds and traditions have fallen by the wayside. These lifestyle changes have created a void in satisfying and social leisure activities—and, instead of facing this void, most people fill it with mindless social media browsing and other digital fill-ins, the equivalent of empty carbs for your brain.
While scrolling and tapping on your devices may feel like pleasant ways to decompress, they are low-quality leisure activities—they don’t contribute much value to your life and they don’t energize you. When you cut down on your digital use and deliberately fill that time with meaningful activities, the high-quality leisure will leave you feeling more energized and fulfilled than your digital habits did.
As you think of the ways you could fill your newfound free time, consider the following three principles of high-quality leisure activities:
In the spirit of digital minimalism, there is a growing movement of people using technology to support leisure activities instead of relying on technology to be the activity. First, you can go online to find communities of people who share your interests so that you can connect with them in person. Second, if you’re picking up a new skill or hobby, you can find detailed instructions, how-to videos, and sources for obscure materials and tools online.
From woodworking to volunteering, you have a wide array of high-quality leisure options to fill your time. Consider these strategies to get the most out of your downtime:
1) Build or fix something new each week. As a whole, people aren’t as handy as they used to be: Many people don’t know how to change a tire or weld a gate—they just Google an auto shop or order a new gate on Amazon. However, as we talked about, creating something with your hands is a rewarding experience.
For six weeks, make a commitment that each week, you will learn a new skill and then use that skill to fix, create, or learn something new. These projects could include changing the oil in your car, installing a light fixture, starting a garden, building a headboard, or learning a new technique on an instrument. Start with relatively easy skills and projects. Each success will boost your confidence and motivation to continue learning and taking on increasingly challenging projects.
2) Schedule time for low-quality leisure. Decide in advance how much time you’ll spend on low-quality leisure activities, such as browsing social media or watching Netflix. This strategy has two benefits: First, creating time limits for your low-quality leisure prevents those activities from stealing time away from high-quality leisure. Second, this creates a compromise for reducing your digital use. If you try to completely abandon your digital habits, you’re more likely to relapse when you have the urge to log on. Instead, this approach builds in time to get your fix, while still protecting your commitment to incorporate more high-quality activities. As you experience the benefits of dedicating the rest of your leisure time to high-quality activities, you’ll naturally want to allocate less time to digital use.
3) Join a group. Enjoy the benefits of regular, structured social interactions by joining a church group, volunteer organization, fitness club, or some other association—whether the unifying mission is serious or playful. Connecting with other people in pursuit of a common goal is uniquely rewarding. Although getting together with other people to work toward a shared goal brings inevitable logistical and emotional frustrations, it’s worth it.
As we discussed, tempting as it may be to leave your leisure time unplanned and unstructured, that approach seldom leaves you feeling refreshed and fulfilled. Instead, create leisure plans ahead of time, so that when you have free time, you already know how you want to spend it.
First, make a seasonal leisure plan. At regular intervals throughout the year—according to season, quarters, semesters, or another measure—create a plan for how you want to spend your leisure time during that season. The plan should include objectives, or specific goals you want to achieve. With each objective, identify strategies for accomplishing that goal and define what success or completion will entail. For example, your objective may be to learn how to play your favorite Beatles songs on guitar, and your strategies can include practicing regularly and scheduling a party at the end of the season where you’ll perform the songs. Your plan should also include habits, which are regular behaviors and activities you’d like to do on an ongoing basis. Habits don’t have to tie in with a specific goal—rather, they are behaviors that you want to maintain because they support your values or interests.
Second, make a weekly leisure plan, which will help you to execute the goals in your seasonal plan. At the start of every week:
Although it may feel rigid to create so much structure in your leisure life, seasonal and weekly planning enable you to maximize your downtime, which enables you to enjoy it even more. Additionally, planning ahead can help you find places in your schedule to squeeze in more leisure. For example, during your weekly planning session, you may notice that Wednesday will be a light day at work, and you can plan to leave the office early so that you can take a bike ride before your evening plans.
Reflect on how you could enjoy more high-quality leisure time.
What are a few of your most common leisure activities?
Give one or two examples of high-quality leisure activities you would do if you had more time.
If you were to build or fix something each week, what would you do the first week?
If you were to join a group or association, which one might you join?
Name one objective or habit you might include in a seasonal leisure plan.
You have the knowledge and the strategies to break technology’s hold on you. In this final chapter, we’ll reiterate the goals of digital minimalism and provide practical suggestions for implementing it.
The attention economy—in which advertisers pay publishers or platforms for access to people’s time and attention—actually existed long before smartphones and tablets, but its current size and power is unprecedented. This business model traces back to 1830, with the publication of the first penny press newspaper, the New York Sun. Instead of printing high-quality stories and charging accordingly, the Sun’s publisher filled the paper with advertisements and mass-interest stories, and he dropped the price to just a penny. The business model was then adopted by tabloids, radio, television, and the internet. Then, iPhones and subsequent smartphones marked a significant turning point: Portable digital devices made it possible to grab consumers’ attention throughout the day, while the data they collected on consumers’ habits and preferences enabled advertisers to launch hyper-targeted ads.
Since tech companies have a vested interest in keeping you addicted to your devices, reclaiming control of your attention requires strong conviction and thorough planning. First, change how you view and use digital tools. Tech companies like Facebook present their products as foundational technologies (like electricity and cell phones) that you either use or you don’t—and, if you don’t, you’re an outlier. By contrast, digital minimalism proposes that you can decide which specific services you value within Facebook, and you can exclusively use those features to benefit you, while sidestepping the rest of the site’s distractions. In other words, you can determine how you use technology, instead of whether you use it.
Resisting the attention economy is a David-and-Goliath battle against tech companies’ efforts to keep your eyes glued to your screens. Here are some strategies to arm yourself for the fight:
1) Delete your social media apps. These apps are designed to be more addictive than the web versions, so the best way to disarm the attention economy’s most potent weapon is to delete the apps from your smartphone. When tech companies shifted their services to mobile apps, their influence and advertising revenues skyrocketed. Since apps proved to be a major moneymaker, social media companies invested heavily in making them as addictive as possible, as we talked about in Part 1. The swipe-down method of refreshing the newsfeed on Facebook’s mobile app was designed to increase user engagement because it plays into intermittent positive reinforcement. In addition to the addictive designs, social media apps are always with you when they’re on your smartphone, making it almost impossible to resist checking them when you have a few free moments while waiting in a lobby or standing in a checkout line.
The key to this advice is that you don’t have to stop using social media entirely—you just need to change the way you use them so that you have more control. Since you’ll have to log onto a computer to access those platforms, it will naturally limit how often you use them, and you’ll be more selective about when and why you log on. Many people who have tried this strategy changed the way they used social media: Instead of signing on frequently and scrolling aimlessly, they began using it briefly just a couple of times a week for specific uses. Other people stopped using social media, because the barrier of logging onto a computer for access outweighed the benefits. (Shortform note: If you decide to delete your social media accounts entirely, the process can be tricky. Read our summary of the Wired article, “How to Delete Your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok” for tips for navigating this process.)
2) Limit your smartphone’s capabilities. Block all distracting apps, websites, and functions on your digital devices, ideally by default or on a set schedule—for example, during work hours—and then unblock certain services when you need them. There are several digital tools that help you to create these blocks, such as Freedom and SelfControl. The goal is to turn your smartphone, tablet, or computer into a single-use device as much as possible.
When computers were first invented, it was the first time that a single machine could perform a wide variety of tasks, as opposed to something like a calculator that could do only calculations. Consumers valued the fact that computers allowed them to be more productive with just one piece of equipment. Over time, people began to use computers to perform multiple tasks all at once. However, switching back and forth among different apps and functions is less efficient than focusing on one task at a time—especially because those apps are designed to pull you into a time warp of distraction.
3) Use social media strategically. When it comes to being intentional about digital use, take a cue from social media professionals, such as marketing directors and social media strategists—they have to be smart about avoiding distractions, or they’d get nothing done. The best defense is a good offense. If you create a plan for using technology in a way that maximizes the benefits and minimizes the pitfalls, you’ll be better able to avoid distraction.
Consider the social media habits of one professional as examples of strategies you could use:
4) Transition to “slow media.” The current digital landscape formed so quickly that most people adopted smartphones and social media apps without stopping to think about how to use these tools mindfully. However, it’s critical that people pause to consider their digital habits before diving even deeper into technological addiction. That’s the aim of the Slow Media movement, which encourages people to shift their media consumption to high-quality sources over convenient, low-quality media.
For example, let’s look at the slow media approach to news consumption. Many people get their news by checking social media and various news and aggregation sites throughout the day. One way to embrace slow media is to avoid breaking news, which is often redundant and sometimes incorrect. Instead, if you wait until the full article is published several hours later, you will get more accurate and complete information. In the same vein, make an effort to seek out opposing views on controversial stories. Additionally, limit your intake to only high-quality news by looking for stories by writers you respect. Finally, be intentional about how, when, and where you consume your news: You could start each day by reading the newspaper, and, whenever you come across longer pieces, set them aside for the weekend. Then, on Saturday morning, go to a coffee shop and read those articles without any distractions.
5) Get a “dumb” phone. Since smartphones are the most potent weapons in the attention economy, trading your smartphone for a cell phone that can only make calls and send texts is the most effective action you can take in resisting tech addiction and overuse. And, as tablets and laptops become lighter and more portable, getting rid of your smartphone is less radical than it seems. If you can’t completely ditch your smartphone because you need it for work or other logistical reasons, you could get a tethered dumb phone: When you want to have some time without your smartphone, activate your tethered phone to have texts and phone calls forwarded from your smartphone.
Just about every major innovation throughout history has raised concerns about how the new technology would change life and what the long-term consequences would be—that is as true of modern technology as it was with Morse code. But today, new technology is developing so quickly and providing such conveniences that most of us haven’t stopped to question whether we should use a technology just because we can. Now, we’re facing the unintended consequences of our digital impulses.
(Shortform note: Read our summary of Amusing Ourselves to Death to further explore the idea that the increasing barrage of media is causing people to become indifferent to the most important things in life.)
Digital minimalists aren’t anti-technology—rather, they want to be intentional about how they use technology in order to maximize its benefits. Digital minimalists are content to miss out on low-value digital experiences because they’ve chosen to invest only in high-value experiences, in both the virtual and real worlds. If you decide to adopt this philosophy, you have to put in time and effort, and you’ll probably falter along the way, but you’ll be on the path to a higher quality of life.
Is digital minimalism the right philosophy for you?
After reading this summary, would you consider adopting (or trying out) digital minimalism? Why or why not?
What is the most attractive thing about digital minimalism?
What is your biggest concern or hesitation about implementing digital minimalism?
Do you think your digital habits need to be changed at all? Why or why not?