Digital Minimalism

Cal Newport's book explains the philosophy of Digital Minimalism; showcasing how technology can negatively harm our social interactions. Personally I listened to this book from the local library in an audiobook format and felt the chapters were way to long. Some chapters were up to 70 minutes in length. I personally prefer shorter chapters as it allows someone to dip their toe into a book for 20 - 30 minutes. I often put the book to rest and picked it up the next day trying to pickup where I left of.

The book cites examples of how peoples experiences with technology before his 30 day programme. It talks about how parents may miss out on quality time with their friends and family and what can be done. Cal offers advice throughout the book though some of them are more basic. The range of advice allows the reader to pick and choose some tips and try and implement them. Advice ranges from spending time alone to gain solitude, deleting social media of our phones and walking outside.

As mentioned earlier I borrowed this book from the library as an audiobook which gave me more confidence to pick it up and follow along. Unfortunately, I returned the book before finishing it, which I rarely do, skipping a whole hour long chapter. I felt that the tips were too basic of which some felt 'common knowledge'. I also felt that my life didn't meet up with the examples cited in the book. While age plays a part I have never been inundated with notifications but I have stripped my phone apps to the basics. Cal talks about social interaction being better than digital which can be argued either way. While face to face interactions might be beneficial for some, others may find it harder. Personally I prefer avoiding large social interactions as it can be awkward and hard to gage where conversations are leading. Likewise text based communication does not have white noise from other people talking around you which I find very distracting. Finally the majority of my friends, all be it limited are online and very few are in person where I know their phone number.

TLDR:

To summarise this book explores how social media can be harmful, looking at studies showing both sides. Cal's advice is basic but allows the individual to pick and choose what works for them. Though a large proportion of the advice given could be found out through online queries. I enjoyed listening to how one person spends time drawing a picture for his children's lunch box everyday, and thinking that is a nice touch. But it is far fetched from financial independence which is also discussed in another case study. I wished the chapters were shorter as I often zoned out of the book when listening or got bored and paused it for the day mid chapter.

Like a lot of these sort of books, Newport uses a lot of interesting anecdotes and historical stories to pad out his overall message which is that while the internet can be useful, you can have too much of a good thing and it can't replace human contact and social media can't replace voice conversations. I feel this is true. Some of his advice like planning your leisure time (actually writing out a plan) sounds too much like work to me. Maybe that would help some people. His main idea though, is to go on a sort of "digital detox" for a month and then reintroduce social media and other "internet entertainment" in a more conscious way, so you're not picking up your phone whenever you feel bored. I have found this has helped me a lot.

I listened to this as an audiobook while I was driving around delivering UberEats, so I missed bits where my iPhone was barking directions out at me. I want to read the actual book in the future.

Cal Newport wrote Digital Minimalism after he received many comments from readers of his previous book, Deep Work, sharing that they struggled with the role of new technologies in their lives. Newport’s goals for Digital Minimalism are to provide a case for minimising tech’s role in our daily lives, and to teach how to adopt his philosophy of digital minimalism.

The book is divided in two parts (twos feature predominantly throughout the book): part one focuses on how technology captures our attention, introduces digital minimalism, and proposes a 30-day “digital declutter,” a detox-but-not-quite-a-detox program. The intent of the 30-day digital declutter is to effect a rapid transformation in digital technological consumption. I’m not convinced that this is any more effective than a 30-day crash diet.

The second part of the book ostensibly demonstrates four themes of practices to help grow a digitally minimal lifestyle: spending time alone, engaging with people, focusing on “high-quality” leisure, and joining an “attention resistance.” The ideas in each section are good for living a rich and meaningful life. However, Newport’s desire to convince you that digital tools can be harmful seeps into these chapters, leaving the book disorganized. Newport may have been more effective laying out his argument for digital minimalism, then discussing practices for a healthy inner life, followed by ideas to develop healthier digital habits.

I felt that Newport hurt his own argument a few times. For instance, he mentions that folks start using a service in its infancy, but new features are often added to keep people’s attention within the service. But he never deals with that challenge later in the book. Another example, Newport mentions Arnold Bennett’s How to Live on 24 Hours a Day as inspiration for active leisure while pointing out that Bennett ignored that leisure time may be affected by domestic chores, and therefore writing a primer for men. However, Newport himself doesn’t account for or confront this possibility either, offering many suggestions that, frankly, are focused primarily on things folks could exchange for monetary value. Newport essentially denies that domestic chores have value.

Finally, I feel that Newport’s computer science background place him at a disadvantage for meeting these goals, and may prevent him from providing proven and helpful advice for changing personal habits. I think that Newport would have done better to write with a co-writer to help cover the psychological aspect and ensure that advice for changing habits is sound.

I don’t recommend this book for moving to a digital minimalistic lifestyle. I feel that the tactics may not be lasting or could be harmful. I feel that several of Newport’s ideas presented as ways to grow a digitally minimal lifestyle are good, in the sense that they’re ideas we should be striving for, but also focus on non-domestic or hyper-productive means of leisure. In a way it’s exchanging hyper-focus from electronics to particular types of leisure that I’m not convinced is healthful.

Like many popular non-fiction books, this is an essay padded out to a book. The author isn't wrong about how phones hijack our attention, but it's really written from the perspective of a well-off and able-bodied man. As someone whose abilities and energy vary a great deal from day to day, I need my phone - and relationship to it - to change day to day without falling into the addictive traps it lays for me. This book wasn't very useful on that front.

The lack of a gender or class lens was eyerolling to painful in some places. For example, his solution for a lot of social media is to confine it to your actual computer - when half of people ONLY have internet access on their phones. In the US, more than 40 million people only have a smartphone to access the internet and they're almost all poor.

I was also annoyed because he, like many authors in this space, really devalues text as a communication medium. Many of my closest relationships are text based or have a textual communication foundation. (Dearest Ida, penpal of 25 years and going strong!) And many famous relationships in history have large textual components - swoon so many great epistolary romances and friendships.

But yeah, be intentional about how you use your phone and the internet and think about what matters to you and schedule time to do it.

In his new book Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport talks-in such a powerful way-about how costly it is for us to spend a big part of our lives in digital platforms, social media and all kind of media use.

There are certainly benefits in using social media, but Cal Newport guards us against the pitfalls of letting these technologies get the best of us. If you value your life, you need to try to make every minute meaningful. A life well lived requires activities that serve no other purpose than the satisfaction that the activity itself generates, said Aristotle. Becoming a slave to the attention economy of conglomerates is not a meaningful way to spend your life. If your personal brand requires engagement with services like social media, it’s important to approach these activities with a sense of zero-sum antagonism, Cal Newport suggests. Look carefully at these technologies and decide, consciously, how you are going to use them in order to avoid exploitation.

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