Book Reviews

Digital Declutter: Halfway Reflection

Posted on December 11, 2020by Harrison

As I was getting ready to write this post, I came across this quote:

“The things you learn in maturity aren’t simple things such as acquiring information and skills. You learn not to engage in self-destructive behavior. You learn not to burn up energy in anxiety. You discover how to manage your tensions. You learn that self-pity and resentment are among the most toxic of drugs. You find that the world loves talent but pays off on character.”
John Gardner

This quote sums up one of my main purposes for a digital declutter. It’s not about being a better programmer. I won’t learn how to write better code. There isn’t a programming language that I’ll suddenly know at the end. Instead, the goal is to learn how to live with the technology that’s in my life. To discover self-destructive behaviors and replace them with self-constructive ones. Sure, as a nice side-effect, that should result in having more time to learn those hard skills, but that isn’t the motivation.

Now, on to some reflection on what I’ve learned so far.

In the first few days, it was interesting to see how often I would check my phone for no reason. Even though everything I would normally turn to was gone, the habit was still hard to break. I found myself scrolling through my list of apps, looking for anything to do. I ended up having to uninstall a few more apps that I hadn’t expected to be a problem. During this time, I definitely also looked at the weather more often than normal.

After some time, that tendency started to fade. I started reading a more: two books in the past week and a half or so. That’s something I want to emphasize. It wasn’t the case that I put these restrictions in place, then suddenly became super productive. Actually, for several days I’ve been far behind on my todo list. Example: I intended to write this post six days ago as a “end of the first week reflection.” Now it turned into a “almost halfway through reflection.”

The point is, reading those books actually felt good. Those hours I spent on my phone were, at worst, draining, and at best only mildly beneficial. I’m sure there will continue to be ups and downs in my energy to be productive. I believe that I’m learning how to recover that energy better, though, instead of throwing it away.

To wrap this up, let me just say that the feeling of freedom alone has been worth the cost of giving up some of the digital distractions I clung to. Feel free to reach out to me if you want to talk about doing your own digital declutter.

Book Reviews

Digital Declutter: Preparations

Posted on November 27, 2020by Harrison

Recently, I decided to do a digital declutter. This has been on my mind ever since I read Digital Minimalism, and I’ve half-heartedly implemented some aspects of a digital declutter, but never fully committed. All the recent stress, though, has had me reaching more and more for cheap distractions, like phone games, scrolling through social media, and such like.

The goal is to create some mental space to be able to examine what works best for my life. What will best help me accomplish what I want to accomplish?

Here are some at actions I took before starting, to support me in this process:

Talked to my wife about it. As my partner in life, and the person who knows me best, she can help me be accountable and reflect on how I’m changing.
Made a list of categories of services that I spend my time on, and how I wanted to handle that. For example, for Twitter, I needed to change my password to something I can’t remember (so that I must use a password manager to access Twitter).
Made a new user on my laptop dedicated to work. I set up a new work-only Protonmail email account, work-only Lastpass account, etc. By not having easy access to the passwords for distracting services, I make it more inconvenient to get on Facebook than just Ctrl+T, F, Enter. Plus, it was a good opportunity to be more mindful of the services I wanted to use. Instead of the data-hungry Gmail, for example, I went with privacy-focused Protonmail.
Set up access controls through PAM to restrict my old account to be used only during certain times of the day.
Removed various apps from my phone, and disabled the ones I couldn’t remove. I also made sure it would be inconvenient to get the passwords for services like Twitter on my phone.
Decided on a time frame: November 28 – December 28.

During this time, I want to reflect on what high quality activities can replace my low quality ones. Instead of browsing the suggested articles that Google bombards me with, for example, perhaps it would be better to sign up for one or two high quality newsletters that cover topics I’m interested in.

So far, my preparations seem to be helping me stay focused. I expect there will be some difficulty adjusting and figuring out what works best for me, but I’m excited for the possibilities!

Book Reviews

Book Review: Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport

Posted on February 26, 2020by Harrison

Recently, I read Digital Minimalism and started implementing some of its ideas in my life. In this post, I want to share my perspective on the book and the effects it has had in my life.

Part 1: Foundations

The main argument behind the reasoning in the book is that many people have been convinced to use technology in ways that detract from their happiness and values. Building on the philosophies of Aristotle, Henry David Thoreau, and others, Cal argues that we can find happiness through skilled, focused work and pursuing our deeply held values.

The way to achieve this is to take a minimalist approach to digital technology. That means dropping or modifying our usage of the apps, services, and devices that fail to provide the most value for our time.

Digital Minimalism
A philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else.
Digital Minimalism, 28

This can be contrasted with a maximalist approach, which says that anything that provides some value should be included.

There are three principles Cal presents in support of this philosophy:

Clutter is costly.
Optimization is important.
Intentionality is satisfying.

The explanations behind these principles were one of the most interesting parts of the book, and there isn’t room here to give it justice—so I will leave that for you to read!

The Digital Declutter

To be minimal requires some deep thinking about what value we actually get out of the services we use. For a quick example, some of the value that I get out of Facebook is staying connected with my family. Perhaps by commenting on my sister’s post about my niece and nephew. However, that value is probably better supported by calling my sister. The connection is more meaningful, and it’s not diluted by the mindless scrolling that Facebook often draws me into.

Cal recommends doing a month-long digital declutter to start that process. While in the middle of everything, it can be difficult to evaluate what actually works for us. This is especially true because many apps are designed specifically to grab our attention for as long as possible. Simply saying “I won’t use ______ as much” isn’t likely to last very long.

So, it’s best to start with a clean slate and put everything down for a month. Note that this covers only “optional technologies,” which we have to decide for ourselves. Cal suggests this heuristic: “consider the technology optional unless its temporary removal would harm or significantly disrupt the daily operation of your professional or personal life” (page 64).

During that month-long declutter, the goal is to find and reconnect with satisfying, meaningful activities. Then, at the end, when it’s time to start reintroducing what had been cut out, we can make decisions about whether there’s room in our lives for that, after all.

It’s not all black and white, though. A lot of times all we need to do is optimize our use of a service in order to get what we want out of it without being distracted by its lower-value parts.

Part 2: Practices

The remainder of the book focuses on various qualities of a good life, and practices we can do to obtain those qualities. The exact qualities—solitude, deep conversation over shallow connection, and high-quality leisure—are debatable, but the evidence Cal presents is convincing.

As I have started to implement some of these practices in my own life, I can say that they have been effective for me. The existence of this blog is evidence of that. Prior to doing my digital declutter, I would spend hours reading articles on my phone. Sure, some of those articles had useful information for me, but there were better ways for me to learn new things. Now I use Android’s digital wellbeing tools to limit my browser to five minutes a day, just to look up something quick when I need it, which has led to having time for writing of my own.

Conclusion

I still have room to grow in my practice as a digital minimalist, but I can wholeheartedly recommend Cal Newport’s book. Even if you decide that the philosophy isn’t for you, I think anyone can benefit from thinking about the questions it raises about our relationship with the technology that has become such a large part of our lives.

I’d love to hear your perspective on this philosophy! Especially if you have tried or are trying digital minimalism. I’m always looking for ways to continue growing.