The Art of Manliness - #479： Becoming a Digital Minimalist

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast practicing

00:00:18.800 minimalism with your possessions has been a trend for the past decade and it can be a worthy

00:00:22.440 practice as long as you use it as a means to greater efficacy outside your personal domain

00:00:26.380 rather than just an end in itself but there's arguably a minimalism practice that's even more

00:00:30.440 effective in achieving that greater efficacy digital minimalism my guest has written the

00:00:34.800 definitive guide to the philosophy and tactics behind digital minimalism his name is cal newport

00:00:39.100 and this is his third visit to the a1 podcast we've had him on the show previously to discuss

00:00:43.120 his books so good they can't ignore you and deep work today we discuss his latest book digital

00:00:47.880 minimalism choosing a focused life in a noisy world we begin our conversation discussing why

00:00:52.580 digital tech feels so addicting why steve jobs didn't originally intend for the iphone to become

00:00:57.060 something we check all the time and why the common tips for reducing your smartphone use don't work

00:01:01.020 and why you need to implement more nuclear solutions instead we then discuss the surprising lessons the

00:01:05.380 amish can teach you about being intentional about technology how cleaning up your digital life is

00:01:09.440 like decluttering your house and why he recommends a 30-day tech fast to evaluate what tech you want

00:01:14.840 to let back into your life cal then makes an argument for why you should see social media like

00:01:18.700 training wheels for navigating the web how to take those wheels off and why you should own

00:01:22.500 your own domain address we end our conversation exploring what you should do in the free time

00:01:26.500 you open up once your digital distractions are tamed and the advanced techniques you can use to take the

00:01:30.480 practice of digital minimalism to the next level i think you'll find this a tremendously interesting

00:01:34.800 and important show after it's over check out our show notes at aom.is slash digital minimalism

00:01:40.080 cal newport welcome back to the show brett always a pleasure to be on so the last time we had you

00:01:57.920 on was a few years ago to discuss your book deep work and in that book you made the case that the

00:02:03.920 ability to do really hard deep thinking for long periods of time is a competitive advantage in

00:02:10.780 today's world you got a new book out digital minimalism choosing a focused life in a noisy

00:02:16.380 world how is this book a continuation of your thinking in deep work well one way to think about

00:02:22.480 deep work is that it was about some of the unexpected consequences of technology in people's

00:02:28.380 professional lives right so we introduced these new technologies into the workplace and it ended

00:02:33.700 up severely diminishing people's ability to focus and this had all sorts of consequences but also

00:02:39.060 opened up interesting opportunities so you know i released that book and i was i was out on the road

00:02:43.300 talking about it and one of the most common pieces of feedback i started getting was people saying

00:02:50.000 okay maybe we buy your premise about what technology is doing our professional lives but what about our

00:02:55.640 personal lives and arguably it seemed like this was an even more urgent issue for a lot of people

00:03:02.820 that sometime maybe the last two years or so you know i really started to notice and they really

00:03:08.100 started to notice a change you know people had begun to shift from making self-deprecating jokes about

00:03:14.580 how often they check their phone to starting to become actually worried to actually thinking you know the

00:03:20.360 the digital things in my personal life are starting to actually substantially degrade the

00:03:25.340 quality of my life and something has to change and so i was hearing this shift this increased

00:03:31.380 urgency this increased concern from my readers and so that really turned my attention pretty quickly

00:03:36.760 to okay what's going on here how are these technologies affecting people's personal lives more

00:03:41.160 importantly what's really the right way to get out of a lot of these issues and that's that's where

00:03:45.320 these ideas came from so what were people saying that how technology was detrimental to their personal

00:03:51.000 life well one of the the things i noticed in these conversations is that it was it was not about

00:03:56.220 usefulness right i mean if you take any one of these technologies that people use in their personal

00:04:01.180 life and look at it in isolation it's not useless right there'll be some value to it there's some reason

00:04:06.200 they use it it's not like cigarette smoking or something where they just say there's no value to this

00:04:11.200 i just wish i wasn't doing it the problem people were having was the cumulative impact of all of these

00:04:16.600 things combined and they were finding that they were using their devices and looking at screens more

00:04:23.400 than they knew was useful more than they knew was healthy often to the extent in which it was starting

00:04:28.100 to significantly keep them away from things that they knew was more valuable and there was also this

00:04:33.240 rising fear that they felt like things like how they felt uh what they believed their emotions were

00:04:39.140 being manipulated that these were these were they're starting to be manipulated in some weird sort of

00:04:43.520 obscure algorithmic way into the what they were what they were thinking about and how they felt and

00:04:47.300 what they were believing and so there was just this overall sense of of creaking creeping lack of

00:04:52.560 autonomy you know i'm losing out on things that are more important i'm starting to get manipulated

00:04:57.280 this is shifting from hey isn't this fun or funny how often we look at our phones to

00:05:01.980 uh-oh something something actually bad is going on here right and i guess another issue that comes up too is

00:05:07.440 that one of the things that technology can get in the way of your personal life is actually

00:05:11.760 connecting with other people like really connecting so i think you have you have a section there about

00:05:16.680 the book like we've replaced connection with or replace conversation with connection we think it's

00:05:23.140 the same but it's not yeah it this was actually an interesting paradox you see in the research

00:05:27.940 literature that if you spend time really trying to read a bunch of papers about let's say social

00:05:33.360 media and people's well-being you start to see that there's these two parallel tracks so there'll be

00:05:39.160 these papers out there that say social media use makes people happier now i should point out almost

00:05:45.780 every one of these papers has at least one facebook data scientist on the list of co-authors but you

00:05:50.680 know you have those papers but then you have these other papers that are by very serious scientists

00:05:54.540 university scientists that are saying using more social media is making people more lonely and

00:05:58.980 depressed and unhappy right so what's going on how can both of these things being true

00:06:02.380 and it turns out what seems to be happening is uh it's not so much that the specific thing you do

00:06:09.980 when you're using a social media app makes you unhappy it's that the usage of these apps is keeping you

00:06:17.160 away from real world communication it's reducing the amount of time you spend doing old-fashioned

00:06:22.860 conversation talking to someone in person spending time with someone being on the phone with someone

00:06:26.460 actually like hearing the subtle nuances of their voice reading their body language actually making some

00:06:31.500 sort of real sacrifice of your time to actually spend time with someone and this is a big problem

00:06:36.660 and and so the reason why using more social media is making people feel more lonely is that it's pushing

00:06:42.600 out old-fashioned interaction and old-fashioned interaction is something that we crave and we need

00:06:48.700 and our brain more or less doesn't accept the digital equivalent as a reasonable comparable action so we think that

00:06:56.960 we're being very social because we're clicking like a lot and leaving comments on people's social posts

00:07:01.380 our brain though formed through hundreds of thousands of years of social evolution doesn't

00:07:06.580 think that's socializing at all so it just feels lonely and so that's how we get that paradox that

00:07:11.080 you you know you think you're being really social because you're on your phone all the time always

00:07:14.560 swiping on things and tapping on things and hitting hearts and clicking little thumbs up but our brain

00:07:19.100 doesn't see any of that as real socialization so we end up actually more lonely than before

00:07:22.760 so we how do how did we get here i thought that was really interesting you how you talk about the history

00:07:28.580 of how we got to this moment in 2018 where we're communicating in memes right we we we show our

00:07:35.220 connection with people with a thumbs up or all you know pressing a heart you know it's interesting

00:07:39.640 because back into the 2000s when the ipod came out there seemed there really wasn't an intention by

00:07:45.380 silicon valley to create this new social ecosystem it sort of happened by happenstance in a lot of ways

00:07:51.780 it's a lot more recent than many people think as well so even when the iphone came out uh this was

00:07:57.060 not at all the intention so i actually went back and talked to one of the original project leads on

00:08:02.340 the iphone back when it was originally released to the public in 2007 and what he emphasized is that

00:08:08.360 steve jobs vision like with lots of steve jobs's visions was taking something that people already

00:08:14.540 really valued and saying i can make the experience even better and so the idea behind the original

00:08:20.920 iphone was twofold it's going to be a better ipod than we've ever had before and two the phone

00:08:27.740 features are going to be better than other phones right the way this engineer said is job said that

00:08:32.760 this was supposed to be a phone that played songs right he just wanted to do those two things better

00:08:37.040 and these were things that had long been established as things that people like to do people like to

00:08:40.960 listen to music people like to make phone calls job says i want to take these things that we love

00:08:45.340 and make the experience better and so if you actually go back and look at the original

00:08:49.440 keynote address where jobs introduces the iphone it's not until about 30 minutes into it that he

00:08:55.200 even starts really talking about you know the internet features or the communication features

00:08:59.720 the first 30 minutes are really focused on the ipod features and the phone features because that's

00:09:05.440 what he had in mind there was no app store when the iphone was released this this engineer confirmed

00:09:10.200 to me that steve jobs was very worried about the idea that you would let people's third-party apps

00:09:14.460 run on the phone he didn't want to sully the phone with third-party apps it was supposed to be

00:09:18.320 a very very good phone and a very very good music player right so even as late as 2007 this idea that

00:09:24.260 we would be constantly checking a screen didn't exist that was on anyone's radar screen it wasn't

00:09:31.220 really until the large social media giants figured out how to make money from people looking at an ipod or

00:09:38.060 iphone screen that we really saw this drastic shift towards the the world we see today in which people

00:09:42.820 are just constantly engaging with technology and as i imagine facebook was the the first company that

00:09:47.400 really figured that out yeah facebook you know they had an ipo pending they weren't making a ton

00:09:52.820 of money off of their browser-based platform and so they they said we have to get a lot more aggressive

00:09:59.560 about trying to monetize our users and that's when they realized the shift the mobile would be the way

00:10:04.480 to do it because people had their mobile phones with them all the time right so they could they could

00:10:08.560 get in theory a lot more engagement which they needed because if you're using it more they get more data

00:10:13.140 about you and if you're using it more that's more time to show you ads right so the key was how can

00:10:18.200 we get people to take steve jobs beautiful phone and ipod out of their pocket 85 times a day and click

00:10:25.840 on our app and look at it and they realize okay what we're going to have to do is actually engineer in

00:10:31.440 moderate behavioral addictions into our service and that's where you start to see these apps really take

00:10:36.160 off with features that are were created mainly to exploit psychological vulnerabilities in its users

00:10:42.520 to try to get people to obsessively and compulsively check this so that they could create the revenue

00:10:46.920 numbers that originally facebook needed to show investors for its ipo to be a success and so it

00:10:51.960 really was facebook which is why anyone who was an early user of facebook has this split experience

00:10:58.180 where they have an old memory of facebook being something they would you know sometimes log on to on

00:11:03.500 their computer and check on some things and then they have this new memory of them obsessively and

00:11:08.180 compulsively using it what happened in between there is that facebook figured out okay we can

00:11:13.360 attention engineer this thing to be compulsive and we'll make a lot more money and then once they had

00:11:17.880 that idea everyone else sort of jumped on the bandwagon as well well so what are some of these tactics

00:11:21.820 that facebook pioneered and other apps use now to keep people constantly checking their phone

00:11:26.700 well they really were interested in sort of social related psychological vulnerabilities so and a lot of

00:11:33.320 this by the way comes from in part the research of the nyu professor adam alter who's really looked

00:11:39.260 into the the psychological hooks but also from tristan harris who is a former google engineer who became a

00:11:44.960 whistleblower and started writing about hey this is what we're doing this is what this company you know

00:11:49.400 this is what's happening at these various attention companies and so what was revealed through the sort of

00:11:54.540 this whistleblower and researchers like tristan and adam is that hijacking the social apparatus in

00:12:00.400 in your brain is a good way to get people to keep looking back and so one thing they'll do for example

00:12:05.280 is they introduced a lot more social approval indicators into these apps so a social approval

00:12:12.260 indicator is some way that someone else can indicate to you that they thought about you or were thinking

00:12:16.760 about you right the original structure of social media didn't have a lot of this it was more you would

00:12:22.480 post things and then people could see it so like here's a baby picture and people could see the baby

00:12:27.440 picture but when they added things like the like button right there's a reason for that because now

00:12:32.620 the like button meant that's a lot more social approval indicators it's very easy for people to

00:12:36.540 indicate to you that they were thinking about you and they added more and more of these things like

00:12:40.680 tens of millions of dollars were invested for example to figure out how to do the facial recognition

00:12:45.940 required to do auto tagging on photos so that when you take an instagram photo it can say hey

00:12:52.060 our algorithms looked at this photo and we think this person the photo is you know so and so this is

00:12:56.760 brett do you want to tag them click a button to say yes why did they spend so much money to solve that

00:13:01.400 really really hard computer science vision problem is because it was another stream of social approval

00:13:05.800 indicators right they're always looking for ways that people can easily indicate that they're thinking

00:13:11.040 about you because human psychology says if clicking on this app might reveal new social approval

00:13:17.800 indicators it's almost impossibly irresistible to do so that if i click on this app i might see an

00:13:24.600 indication that someone was thinking about me that's very very hard to resist and once they

00:13:28.780 added those social approval indicators usage minutes of the app skyrocketed because now instead

00:13:34.000 of it being something that maybe you signed on to once a day to see what was going on you had a

00:13:38.140 constant reason to keep checking maybe there's a new indicator maybe there's a new indicator and then

00:13:43.640 you add on to that intermittent reinforcement so sometimes when you click there is nothing and

00:13:48.200 sometimes there is right now you're becoming sort of almost impossible to avoid right intermittent

00:13:54.500 reinforcement is something that las vegas casino gambling has taken a lot of advantage of in the

00:13:58.800 design of their games like slot machines so you put those type of things together which are all

00:14:03.760 engineered right this didn't exist in the original social media it's not necessary for social media

00:14:08.780 experience to be what it is all of that makes clicking on these apps really really difficult to avoid

00:14:15.020 yeah we had adam alter on the podcast a while back ago and one of the things the tactics he talked

00:14:19.700 about that instagram uses with that intermittent reinforcement is that sometimes when you check

00:14:24.480 there's no likes but they'll kind of build them up so when you check again you have like 20 likes

00:14:30.040 right and even though like someone was probably liking it already you know when you check the first time

00:14:34.720 they don't show you that right away because you know getting seen there's 20 hearts it's a lot more

00:14:39.620 like oh man i want to check again the next time yeah and it's it's important to emphasize that

00:14:44.960 we think about liking is what you do on social media but it's really really arbitrary and it

00:14:49.860 really was not in the original design of social media it was not there in web 2.0 i mean this notion

00:14:55.400 of liking things is entirely invented and spread to make the app irresistible and we're so used to it now

00:15:03.680 like well that's what you do on social media but actually if you just step back and our objective like

00:15:07.340 well it's kind of weird like clicking on this thing it just sends like a one bit and there's like a

00:15:11.460 little counter of like how many people click this thing like why is that there like objectively

00:15:16.280 speaking it's kind of weird but it made these companies billions of dollars and the other

00:15:21.020 thing it gives you gives these companies is information about you that they can then sell

00:15:24.960 more at more targeted ads at you exactly what are you clicking on what do you not what do you like

00:15:29.640 what do you don't like we can feed that all in the machine learning algorithms digest you to use

00:15:34.160 jaron lanair's term into essentially a gadget that can then be put into our ad making machinery

00:15:39.420 and besides these other whistleblowers that you mentioned like even sean parker who was

00:15:43.340 the president of facebook in the early days even came out and said yeah we designed this thing

00:15:48.280 to keep you coming back again and again and again so we could make more money

00:15:52.160 yeah there's a lot of this going on you know i spoke on a panel recently with roger mcnamey who

00:15:59.000 was one of the original mentors of mark zuckerberg who who brought sheryl sandberg on the facebook

00:16:03.900 and you know he wrote an op-ed for the washington post saying i wish i hadn't mentored mark zuckerberg

00:16:08.900 even though the company probably made a lot of money so there's a lot of this going on where

00:16:12.380 people are having second thoughts about what they've brought and so as we can see this could

00:16:17.440 cause a lot of anxiety and angst in people because you're constantly checking things for

00:16:21.780 social approval and if you don't get it well then you feel terrible about yourself because

00:16:26.000 someone didn't arbitrarily you know like something for whatever reason so it causes you to like

00:16:30.460 post another thing hoping that someone will like that thing so it becomes sort of this weird

00:16:34.200 arms race with yourself to get these digital status boosts yeah and it's playing with fire too

00:16:40.720 because the the social aspects of our brain are incredibly powerful there's a massive amount of

00:16:46.080 our neural processing goes towards social processing because it's such a big part of our species survival

00:16:52.360 is being able to cooperate and work together in social groups so our brain really really cares about

00:16:57.940 these things so it's very dangerous to start toying with it right i mean our brain knows nothing

00:17:03.020 about digital technology or social media so you you bring these apps that are you know born out of

00:17:08.320 incubators in northern california by 20 year olds and hooded sweatshirts or whatever you bring these

00:17:13.060 apps and you put them into your world and they start manipulating and messing around with the social

00:17:16.840 circuitry of your brain it can cause a lot of problems because that's a very sensitive and

00:17:21.260 powerful portion of the brain just like when you know the 20th century we were able to refine

00:17:26.220 really pure chemicals we figured out how to do the chemistry of this it created drugs that our brains

00:17:31.480 couldn't handle because it was hijacking you know very sensitive powerful parts of our brains once

00:17:36.500 we could have purified opioids or these type of things and so we're really playing with fire right

00:17:41.180 you start messing around with something as fundamental as our drive to be social and you you start

00:17:46.100 messing around with that in a completely novel context like a digital screen and doing so for you

00:17:51.080 know purposes of whatever manipulation there could be a lot of really big consequences i mean it's a

00:17:55.820 really a dangerous thing to mess around with yeah one consequence we had another guest a few years ago

00:18:00.060 psychologists talking about you know social status and things and one of the research that came out

00:18:04.960 that suggests that whenever you get a status boost like serotonin i guess increases whenever you feel

00:18:10.840 a sense of status like your parts of your prefrontal cortex basically shut down right and so you think

00:18:17.260 less right you think less critically because you'd rather have the serotonin boost than like do the right

00:18:23.540 thing and so he suggested that this might be why some people just post crazy stuff that they probably

00:18:28.720 they just took a step back and think they wouldn't have posted it but they did it because they knew

00:18:33.840 it would give them some sort of status boost so they post some sort of outrageous thing that will

00:18:37.840 get lots of engagement and likes and comments and things like that yeah well i mean you certainly see

00:18:41.880 that on twitter for example and i've interviewed a lot of people very active sort of well-known you know

00:18:47.440 blue check verified twitter style users who will tell the story that there's this this weird drive

00:18:53.280 towards extreme versions of whatever you believe and that's probably the the underlying mechanism

00:18:58.120 going on is that your serotonin system is being hijacked by these sort of little visual retweet

00:19:04.420 and you know heart counts and you i want more i want more i want more and you look up you know

00:19:09.540 three days later and you're like wow this is um whatever i'm i'm completely you know trashing this

00:19:15.560 person or saying like i'm going to come after your kids or have some really extreme version of my view

00:19:19.560 or say like if you don't agree with this you're hitler or something it pushes you so quickly to

00:19:23.940 extreme places because again these systems are very very powerful and you start messing around with

00:19:29.400 them you're going to have consequences and so this is why you're starting to see people take a step back

00:19:33.520 and say i'm not liking how social media is affecting my personal life i don't feel like a good person when

00:19:39.180 i'm on social media yeah so you get those two things one is i don't like the way it makes me feel

00:19:44.320 i don't like the way i act i don't like how it how i express myself on it and then you add to that just

00:19:50.100 the more general thing is i don't like how much i'm using this you know i'm here trying to give a

00:19:54.260 bath to my kid and i can't help but look at my phone and like the kid wants my attention you know

00:20:00.260 that you you know that it's much more important to be paying attention to your kid in the moment

00:20:04.220 and yet you're still looking at the phone like so these are the type of things that i think have led

00:20:08.580 people in the last couple years to say there's got to be a better way all right so there's the

00:20:13.480 problem let's talk about the solution for a lot of people who want to concentrate more and be less

00:20:18.820 distracted and have social media have less of an influence on their life you argue that they

00:20:22.760 typically resort to like modest hacks and tips to reduce their the amount of time they spend on

00:20:27.760 social media what are some examples of those and then this the follow-up question that is why don't

00:20:32.120 you think those are enough yeah this has certainly been the initial response to people recognizing that

00:20:38.280 this is a problem has been hacks and tips so you've probably heard a lot of these uh like

00:20:43.380 turn off notifications uh you know turn off the notification on the phone you'll be a lot better

00:20:47.180 or take a digital shabbat you know have a day each week in which you don't use your technology that'll

00:20:53.360 help or you know try to try to find you know something you do each day where you don't bring

00:20:59.280 your phone with you so sort of assorted tips and tricks these aren't working it's not working it's

00:21:05.300 completely underestimating sort of the scope of the problem the appeal the irresistibility of what's in

00:21:11.800 your pocket on this phone the social pressures the cultural pressures are so strong that just a

00:21:17.040 handful of these tips and tricks is is not going to create the reform in what your everyday life is

00:21:22.980 like that you're looking for and you know i think a really good analogy is health and fitness

00:21:26.940 so you know we saw in the the second half of the 20th century a big rise of of you know the

00:21:32.680 processed food industry in the west especially in america right we had all this processed food that was

00:21:37.540 not healthy for us and so of course we saw obesity went up diabetes went up heart disease went up

00:21:41.960 there's a lot of negative health consequences and what we discovered is that simple common sense tips

00:21:47.760 like hey you should move more or try to eat healthier didn't work right this wasn't taking people who are

00:21:54.260 having huge problems with like obesity or diabetes or something and suddenly they'd be really healthy

00:21:58.860 right it was it was too small given the the powerful appeal of these foods and the cultural pressure to go to

00:22:04.700 fast food and so what did end up working think about anyone you know who's really healthy

00:22:09.320 almost certainly they have some sort of strong aggressive named philosophy you know lifestyle

00:22:16.920 philosophy that they live by so maybe they're vegan or they're paleo or they're like a crossfit

00:22:22.840 fanatic or whatever it is but they have a really strong internally consistent philosophy about how to live

00:22:28.140 that's built on clear values and has its own internal logic and only that is really strong enough for

00:22:32.960 them to resist all these urges so almost certainly that's what we need in the digital space is people

00:22:37.720 have to treat this problem more seriously and instead of just tips and tricks have actually a strong

00:22:43.280 philosophy for this is how i manage my digital life all right so your philosophy is digital minimalism so

00:22:51.360 what is that philosophy so digital minimalism says that you should essentially wipe the slate clean

00:22:56.340 of all these different things that are pulling at your attention in your digital life

00:23:01.140 wipe the slate clean ask what is really important to me what are the things in my life that really

00:23:07.600 matter the things i want to spend time on and then for each of those say okay what's the best way to use

00:23:13.500 technology to support these things and let the answer to that question be the technologies you let

00:23:19.500 back into your personal life so you're essentially decluttering all of the junk out of your digital life

00:23:25.700 and starting from scratch and very intentionally and carefully putting back in a few digital behaviors

00:23:33.120 that give you huge wins huge benefits so it's very intentional and it's very selective and so it's a

00:23:39.520 lifestyle that you know what technology you're using why you're using it you're almost certainly

00:23:43.000 going to be looking at screens much much less than most of the people you know all the while still

00:23:46.960 getting huge benefits from a lot of these new innovations so let's dig into these three principles a

00:23:51.000 little bit more so the first principle is clutter is costly and i loved how you talked about how

00:23:55.980 thoreau and his experiment at walden pond can kind of highlight or give us insights about the cost of

00:24:03.600 digital clutter can you talk about that a bit yeah it's an important point because in any sort of

00:24:08.460 minimalist movement the objection that people worry about is that the things they're saying no to

00:24:14.460 seem like they have some value so maybe they're leaving value on the floor right it's very worrisome

00:24:20.820 this idea that you just focused on a small number of really important things to the exclusion of

00:24:25.440 everything else people get very worried about well what about all the little bits of value wouldn't i

00:24:29.240 be better off doing the important things and adding these other sources of value as well but the core idea

00:24:34.780 behind why minimalism works is that actually the clutter itself of having too many things in your life

00:24:39.460 has such a big cost that you're better off not having all those small things and this was essentially

00:24:44.820 what thoreau was trying to explore when he went to walden pond i mean i'm a big fan of thoreau i've been

00:24:52.000 studying him for years walden is often incorrectly characterized as a nature book it's like an

00:24:58.840 environmentalist book that it's about nature and the importance of nature it's actually mainly making a

00:25:04.360 pretty aggressive and interesting economic argument right so what thoreau was trying to figure out

00:25:09.600 is how much do i actually need to satisfy like my basic needs of a human how much money do i need

00:25:16.980 right that's why he went out the walden and kept very careful tabulation of exactly how much he spent

00:25:22.220 on the nails he used to make his cabin the food that he had to buy and consume he kept track of all of this

00:25:29.840 and then he figured out okay at the at my skill level and the going labor rate how much would i have to work

00:25:36.020 to support these basic things and he figured out it was about one day a week right and so he was

00:25:41.140 figuring out this baseline of okay it takes about one day a week of labor to support my basic needs

00:25:47.300 and the reason he was out there observing nature was to try to indicate that hey once your basic needs

00:25:51.260 are met you can actually have a pretty interesting life as long as you're willing to you know like he

00:25:54.840 is stare at ice for an hour and look at his different properties and then he makes this really big

00:25:59.580 argument about where people get pushed awry when thinking about bringing stuff into their life like

00:26:06.320 i want a nicer venetian blinds he talks about i want a nicer copper pot the farmer that mortgages

00:26:12.100 more land so they can make a little bit more money to get a cart or something like this he says they

00:26:16.840 only think in terms of what's the value i'm going to get from this new thing but they don't think about

00:26:21.780 what am i going to have to give up in terms of my life in order to acquire this thing and so his

00:26:27.940 experiment was okay it only takes a day of my life to meet my basic necessities so everything

00:26:32.120 else i'm giving up time i don't have to give up so what's actually worth giving up time of my life

00:26:36.380 for and his basic calculation is that most of the stuff that most of the farmers he knew around him

00:26:42.700 in concord massachusetts were toiling so hard to afford was not worth the amount of their time and

00:26:49.560 life that they had to sacrifice to get it and his clever example was getting a wagon for taking your

00:26:56.060 your produce to the market and his calculus was okay you know taking the wagon instead of walking

00:27:02.140 to the market might save you an hour because it's faster but if you actually do the math it's costing

00:27:08.900 you about three or four hours of extra work a week to afford it so actually you're way worse off right

00:27:13.700 you've lost a lot more time trying to support this wagon than if you didn't have it at all

00:27:17.660 and so the way that he thinks about things where you say you can't just think about what's the value

00:27:22.880 i'm going to get from having this thing or using this thing but you also have to say what's the

00:27:26.580 price i'm paying in terms of my life force into exchange to get this thing you have to put both

00:27:33.380 of those things into the equation and that's what's happening with a lot of these digital

00:27:36.740 behaviors yeah they all bring you some benefits but they also are bringing you harm they're taking

00:27:41.100 your time and attention away from other things that could be more valuable they're fragmenting your

00:27:45.380 time and day so you get less satisfaction of other things there is actually a really big cost to

00:27:49.360 this clutter that's hidden behind the sort of top line headlines about isn't this a nice little

00:27:54.260 benefit you get from having this app right so what this principle is like think about the opportunity

00:27:58.640 cost with your attention and your life force you can call it that yeah he was sort of the original

00:28:03.120 person to really emphasize these opportunity costs really matter don't ignore them and so going on

00:28:08.060 to that the second principle is you know understanding the importance of like diminishing returns right

00:28:12.660 like at a certain point your social media use or whatever it has some benefit but at a certain

00:28:17.600 point you don't get any more in fact it starts going down yeah so this is a this is another key

00:28:23.260 point to minimalism which is that you don't just you don't just ask the binary question you know do i

00:28:28.960 use this service or do i don't you also ask the more specific question how do i use this service and why

00:28:34.880 right so minimalists are always trying to optimize you know how do i get the the biggest roi on the time

00:28:41.840 required to use this thing and a lot of people in the digital space don't do this they'll they'll have

00:28:46.940 some reason to use facebook let's say there's a community group that's important to them and this

00:28:52.060 group organizes using a facebook group and then they'll allow that justification to then be the

00:28:57.080 reason that they're on their phone on facebook two hours a day you know because it was just a binary

00:29:01.420 question like do you use facebook or not but a minimalist says no no no you you have to optimize

00:29:05.760 if you optimize how you use these things you get much much bigger bang for your buck and so the

00:29:10.540 minimalists might say the only thing i want to do on facebook is check on this facebook group for

00:29:15.500 this community organization i care about how am i going to do that wednesday and sunday night on a

00:29:20.640 desktop not on my phone it takes 20 minutes i have a big complicated password that's on a post-it so it

00:29:25.980 kind of a bit of a pain to do and now i'm getting most of the benefit that i need out of facebook and it

00:29:30.920 has a minimal footprint on my life so optimization of how you use the things you choose to use is almost as

00:29:37.060 important as just the binary decision of what's on your phone and what's not so that leads to

00:29:41.440 principle three which is to be intentional and i love the example of the amish how the amish can

00:29:46.960 teach us how to be intentional with our technology because oftentimes we think the amish are just like

00:29:52.120 complete luddites they don't incorporate any technology but that's not true yeah the amish are

00:29:57.100 an interesting case study people do incorrectly think that they just froze their technology maybe in

00:30:02.020 like the late 18th century or something like this and it's not true i mean the way the amish actually

00:30:05.900 function is that they have a really core principle which is the community matters above all else the

00:30:11.200 strength of their community matters above all else and so when new technologies come along they go

00:30:16.280 through a decision making process you know is this going to make our community stronger or is it going

00:30:21.280 to make our community weaker and if it's going to make it stronger then we can adopt it and if it's not

00:30:26.340 we're not and often the way they'll do this is they'll test it so they'll they'll have essentially

00:30:31.160 the amish equivalent of an alpha geek use it like great here's here's a cell phone came along use a

00:30:35.920 cell phone for a while let's watch it let's see what happens you know here's a car great someone buy a

00:30:39.980 car let's watch like does this make things better or worse in terms of the thing we really care about

00:30:44.200 which is community strength and that's why if you if you study actual old order amish communities you

00:30:50.440 see all sorts of interesting technologies you'll see diesel engines and solar panels and really

00:30:56.180 complicated fertilizer systems you'll see disposable diapers for sure all this is really modern stuff

00:31:02.300 but you won't see phones in people's houses automobiles or connection to the electric grid

00:31:07.600 yep so what's going on is it's they're evaluating what strengthens our community and what weakens it

00:31:13.440 right so disposable diapers are really great and they don't weaken the community so of course we're

00:31:17.560 going to use those but having a phone in the house maybe then i'm not going to go actually visit

00:31:21.980 my neighbors i could call you on the phone and it could weaken the community so maybe we don't want

00:31:25.680 that the automobile they're really worried about because then people can leave the community and

00:31:30.540 go other places and it really hurts the community cohesion so they're really against automobiles

00:31:34.460 but tractors they're fine and oftentimes they'll take the pneumatic wheels off the tractors so that

00:31:39.940 it's fine to drive through the the fields when it'd be difficult to use as a car so they do this

00:31:44.440 really complicated calculus and so there's a lot of inconveniences to be amish because they don't use a

00:31:52.120 lot of things that are convenient like the electric grid or cars but somewhat surprisingly if not

00:31:57.280 bafflingly this this order has existed for 300 years and it's not like they're in isolation you

00:32:02.780 know in north korea somewhere where they don't know there's a better way i mean they're riding their

00:32:06.720 buggies next to mcdonald's and lancaster they all spend at least a year living in the normal world

00:32:11.900 during rum spring out right so it's not like they've been hidden from the real world but this

00:32:16.160 community has persisted and my argument is that this is in part because the positive power of being

00:32:23.160 very intentional about what you do in your life so in their case really trying to support their

00:32:27.800 community can really far outweigh the conveniences you lose by making those intentional decisions

00:32:35.320 so the amish have introduced lots of inconveniences into their life by being wary about a lot of modern

00:32:41.820 technologies but they persist in part because of the value they get out of being really intentional

00:32:47.420 about how they live their life and so this is a big reason more generally why minimalism is powerful

00:32:54.040 is when you're very intentional about what you want to do in your life and you focus your technology only

00:33:00.060 on these small number of things it's true that you're probably missing out on a lot of little things that

00:33:04.660 could be convenient but my argument is that's okay because the positive return you're going to get by being

00:33:11.440 so in control and intentional about your life is going to far outweigh the inconvenience of not

00:33:16.840 having whatever latest app might have been useful in the moment all right so let's recap that so

00:33:21.360 basically digital minimalism is being intentional about your digital technology use thinking about

00:33:26.620 the opportunity costs that come with having digital clutter thinking about the return on investment you

00:33:31.500 get from using these things and then setting some rules for yourself and following those rules and like

00:33:38.320 being happy if you know even if you miss out on some stuff because you don't use social media as

00:33:43.840 much as other people yeah like i've never had a social media account and so i'm sure there's any

00:33:48.560 number of little things that you could list like well you you don't get this benefit and you miss this

00:33:53.280 benefit but as a true digital minimalist i don't care about missing out on those little things uh because

00:33:59.380 i'm much more interested investing more time in the things that i already know for sure are really

00:34:04.920 important to me that if you want to look at the net happiness and satisfaction you know you have in

00:34:09.760 your life investing in the things that you already know give you huge returns is almost always going

00:34:16.560 to be the better strategy than instead dissipating that energy around a lot of things that give you

00:34:21.440 small returns you know the big return things dominate and so i mean i would say the quick summary on how

00:34:26.860 you operationalize these digital minimalist ideas is you really want to think about it like you're

00:34:32.500 decluttering a house you clear all of the stuff out of your digital personal life so we're talking

00:34:37.980 about your personal life work is a different thing you clear all the optional technology out of your

00:34:41.840 personal life and you start from scratch and say okay if you want to make it back onto my phone or

00:34:47.060 onto my computer or onto the regular rotation of things that i check on my web browser you've got to

00:34:52.280 make a really strong case there has to be a really strong case that you're very important for something i

00:34:57.060 really value and when you do this decluttering process you are almost certainly going to end up

00:35:02.860 with much much less things in your digital life and you're almost certainly going to actually be

00:35:08.880 getting more value out of the technology in your life than before so it's this interesting paradox

00:35:13.140 you'll be looking at screens much much less but you'll be getting much more value out of the time

00:35:17.440 you do spend with your devices so let's talk about that declutter so brass tack advice one thing you talk

00:35:22.920 about in the book is you start off with a 30-day tech break and you basically just as you said clear

00:35:27.080 all the stuff off your phone what do you think the 30 days like staying away from it before you start

00:35:32.320 reintroducing does to make this process i don't know more seamless or more it just work make it work

00:35:39.360 better well you need two things that the 30 days give you the first is a detoxing process in my

00:35:44.720 experience and again i've run about 1600 people plus through this process so far it takes about one to two

00:35:50.140 weeks just for your mind to detoxify enough that it doesn't have this strong craving for especially

00:35:56.700 the more engineered addictive services you spend time with so you want to you want your mind to

00:36:00.820 actually get a detox experience and then you have a couple more weeks to actually spend time exploring

00:36:06.260 and rediscovering what it is that you really value and and so this is worth serious thought this sort

00:36:12.400 of rediscovery of okay when i'm not just looking at my phone and my tablet you know all evening

00:36:16.940 what do i really do like to do what really is important and so i really encourage people to

00:36:21.720 take this 30 days not just as a detox process but also a period of discovery to return to the type of

00:36:28.180 analog activities to sort of to use a terminology that's relevant to your audience to the type of

00:36:32.960 traditionally manly activities that people used to spend their leisure time with and rediscover

00:36:37.640 and re-experience what's valuable what you really like what really gives you satisfaction so that when it

00:36:43.800 then comes time to do the reintroduction you know what matters and so you know okay this doesn't

00:36:49.280 matter this doesn't matter oh i can use this tool in a way that's really going to make a difference so

00:36:52.600 you need some time to actually rediscover what it's like to live a real meaningful life

00:36:57.580 and one of the things i noticed when i've taken you know extended breaks from social media

00:37:01.380 is that when i do come back to it i realize i just don't like this like because i think when you're

00:37:06.720 like doing it all the time you think like okay it's just a habit and you it's something you do but then

00:37:11.000 you take a break and you come back and you're like boy this is really dumb yeah and you just go away

00:37:14.800 from it again yeah there's a lot of arbitrariness that that you kind of miss out on when you're using

00:37:19.240 all the time you're like oh this is just what people do right and then you step away from and

00:37:22.560 you turn around you're right and it looks really weird and this is a common experience with digital

00:37:26.420 minimalists is because they look at their screens so much less than most people everyone around them

00:37:31.080 thinks they're weird but then the digital minimalists always have this matrix type moment where they

00:37:35.300 look around are like wait a second what other people are doing is incredibly weird right i mean i'm not the

00:37:40.540 weird one that i'm sitting here reading a book i think the weird one is that you know everyone

00:37:44.020 around me is looking at this little thing and tapping at it with their finger you know the

00:37:48.780 digital minimalists are not the weird ones i think it's the rest of us the rest of the culture that is

00:37:53.100 that's kind of gone into the the the unusual territory with their behavior so you take the 30-day

00:37:58.900 break how do you go about reintroducing the the service digital services so that you don't go back

00:38:04.580 into your old ways a good way to think about it is don't even use the term break think of it as a

00:38:09.980 decluttering right like if you really want to clean out your house the way you think about it is not

00:38:13.960 all right i'm gonna take everything all this junk out of my house and then after 30 days i'll put it

00:38:17.840 all back in right like you're not taking a break from your junk you're getting out of your house

00:38:21.280 and then after those 30 days when you find it oh i'm really missing you know whatever my potato

00:38:26.660 peeler like let me go get that out of storage and bring that back into my kitchen it's sort of the

00:38:30.780 same thing with the digital declutter so you're take you're decluttering all the stuff out of your

00:38:34.660 life and then you can sort of step back and see what do i really miss like where am i finding hey

00:38:40.180 not having this thing in my life is really having a big negative consequence it's keeping me from

00:38:44.820 something that's really important or diminishing the the benefit i'm getting from something that's

00:38:48.960 really important and as you discover these these real needs for the things you've taken away then you

00:38:54.280 can reintroduce that particular thing back but when you do the key advice is don't just bring it back

00:39:00.080 put some rules in place all right here is how and why i'm going to use this thing and so it's just

00:39:05.060 like the classic minimalist house decluttering trick you know you pack up the whole house and then you

00:39:09.640 only bring back the things that you realize you need and when most people do that they find that you

00:39:13.800 know 90 of their their possessions they actually didn't need that should be the same experience you

00:39:18.340 have when you do this with your digital life as well so let's get to those rules so like what kind of

00:39:22.620 what are some examples of rules that you apply whenever you bring you know a digital service back into your life

00:39:28.220 well you should think about when and how i'm going to use it and for what purpose right so you know

00:39:33.480 on what occasions or on what timing am i going to use this and when i use it what am i going to do

00:39:38.300 with it and let me be clear about what's the underlying reason so a lot of digital minimalists

00:39:43.220 that i've worked with have particular needs to use particular social media platforms and almost always

00:39:50.000 when they apply these rules they're not using it on their phone they almost always determine that

00:39:54.460 it's much better to have it on their computer if it's on their phone they're going to use it for other

00:39:57.640 reasons and they usually have a schedule on which they're going to use it another thing you see

00:40:02.500 when people do these you know when and how and why type rules is it changes their behavior so there's

00:40:08.560 i've met several artists for example who get important professional creative inspiration from

00:40:14.700 instagram right that that at the moment i guess in the art community it's a place that a lot of people

00:40:20.420 share works in progress or things they're working on and creative inspiration is very important if you're an

00:40:24.840 artist and so a lot of artists that become digital minimalists for example will say okay that's

00:40:29.900 important to me right creating art and being inspired is important and this is a source of

00:40:35.020 inspiration that technology has brought into the life that wouldn't be here otherwise but they realized

00:40:39.640 that maybe the way they were using instagram before is that in addition to these artists they were

00:40:43.820 following lots of people in comedy and they were looking at it you know 90 minutes a day and so they

00:40:48.640 might when they're looking at the sort of the the when and how they might say okay i'm going to be

00:40:52.660 very restrictive about who i follow right so that's a common how rule that i'm going to reduce who i

00:40:57.560 follow down to like the 10 artists who are most inspiring me at the moment and then the win rule

00:41:01.940 might be every evening you know after dinner that's when i look at this for 20 minutes and and so it can

00:41:07.220 mean different things but basically when i use it how i use it and reiterating the reason why you're

00:41:12.320 using it that's the key when you you realize you want to add one of these things back one of the rules

00:41:18.380 that you talk about that could seem like crazy for a lot of people because you're just disrupting the

00:41:22.860 way that social media is supposed to like works today is people should stop liking things on the

00:41:27.460 internet yeah yeah i i recommend you uh don't click like and you don't leave comments and it does seem

00:41:34.180 kind of disruptive but what's what's going on here is it goes back to what we talked about earlier in the

00:41:37.760 interview which is this notion that researchers are finding that that type of digital interaction

00:41:44.400 really does not satisfy our human drive for sociality one bit indicators like hey someone

00:41:50.280 click like or or pure text indicators like someone says hey great or congratulations or i'm rooting for

00:41:55.900 you or whatever these don't activate most of the social areas of our brain that are expecting instead

00:42:01.480 a very rich analog stream of you know voice tone and modulation and body language the type of things that

00:42:08.360 we expect from social interactions so we do not get a lot of social satisfaction out of these sort of

00:42:13.740 lightweight social connection type things and so one of my strategies i advise to digital minimalist is

00:42:20.840 consider changing your mindset so that you say from a social perspective the primary purpose of things

00:42:29.340 like social media or text messaging is logistical it is here to help support an old-fashioned analog social

00:42:37.460 life right so text messaging is very valuable because it can help me uh when i'm trying to meet my

00:42:42.620 friend you know hey no i'm over at this bar not that bar or something and it's it's helping facilitate

00:42:47.940 an old-fashioned analog social interaction social media in this context is maybe useful because i can

00:42:52.700 find out that hey this person i knew for a long time is going to be in town and now i can i can set up a

00:42:57.980 get together with this person i would have known they're going to be in town if i didn't see them on

00:43:01.460 social media but now i do but seeing these tools is logistical it's to support my analog old-fashioned

00:43:08.440 interactions and it's not a substitute for those interactions is probably the the healthier way to

00:43:13.020 look at it so once you stop counting social media and text interactions as real interactions you'll

00:43:18.880 realize like oh i'm not really that social when's the last time i talked to someone when's the last

00:43:22.320 time i was on the phone when's the last time that i was getting coffee with someone and you'll feel

00:43:25.520 that urge to actually get out there and do the things that really satisfy our human drive for

00:43:28.900 sociality so when i say don't click like what i mean is change your perspective you know these digital

00:43:34.480 connection tools think about them as logistical things that makes it easier for you to do the

00:43:38.680 same type of old-fashioned face-to-face or voice interaction that for for centuries has been at the

00:43:44.740 core of our drive for human interaction but how do you explain that to like friends and family because

00:43:49.920 that's the weird thing about social media there's like this weird etiquette that's developed like well

00:43:53.220 if i like your stuff you got to like my stuff and if you don't like it then that that that signals

00:43:58.380 some sort of you know rift in our relationship right yeah you you know you just tell them i you know i don't

00:44:02.960 use social media much anymore right i mean that's like if you think about it you usually know some

00:44:07.980 people who are like that there's probably a couple cal newports in your life you know who who aren't on

00:44:12.360 social media or you know they are but they really haven't used it in a while and you basically you

00:44:17.040 you step away from that particular attention marketplace uh it's a little bit more difficult

00:44:23.520 with text messaging this is what i found is the feedback i've been getting when people really expect

00:44:27.740 you to respond to text messages it could be a little bit harder but basically you you essentially teach

00:44:31.480 people like i i often don't have my phone with me so you know i'm not always able to respond right

00:44:35.900 away and people just learn and they adjust and then they're usually more or less okay with it and

00:44:42.460 you know sometimes people get frustrated the biggest thing you lose when you step away from thinking about

00:44:47.520 social media as actually counting as social interaction is that you are going to lose probably

00:44:53.500 some weak tie social friendships that were maintained exclusively through social media interaction

00:44:58.680 but i think that's fine actually we as human beings this idea that we need to maintain like

00:45:03.940 well above the dunbar number of sort of weak tie social interactions with people we barely know or

00:45:08.920 knew a long time ago there's no actual evidence that that's important for us thriving as humans or

00:45:14.300 feeling socially connected or valued so yes you will lose those when you step away from social media as an

00:45:20.020 actual means to socialize with people but i don't think there's any actual loss to the strength of your

00:45:26.480 social life or your happiness by doing so gotcha and the the other upside to like stop liking things

00:45:31.940 on the internet like the social media companies know less about you is another benefit and also

00:45:38.200 you had an article about this not too long ago about how social media sort of encourages it's like

00:45:43.040 really crappy stuff on the internet because it's all based on vanity metrics uh and not really on

00:45:48.580 quality so maybe if you stop liking crappy stuff because everyone else is liking it you will start

00:45:53.500 getting better stuff on the internet yeah i definitely think that's true and and more generally

00:45:57.480 i mean i think there's a not to get technical but there's an important distinction to make here that

00:46:01.960 i've been writing about quite a bit recently which is there's a difference between the social internet

00:46:06.780 and social media right so the social internet is just the idea that you can use the internet to

00:46:12.700 connect with people express yourself and discover interesting information this is a incredibly sort of

00:46:19.100 powerful paradigm shifting innovation that we got along with consumer access to the internet in the

00:46:25.500 1990s and in particular the rise of the the worldwide web and the associated protocols among other things right

00:46:31.020 so the idea of the internet as a force for these type of things is very very powerful and and i'm a huge

00:46:36.680 booster of it the thing that i'm less a fan of is this notion that we need to consolidate the social

00:46:43.680 internet behind the walled gardens of these massive private companies and that's really where the

00:46:50.180 problems start to happen when you have massive companies like facebook say look you guys are too

00:46:54.840 you're too dumb to enjoy the social internet it's too complicated for you here we'll make an easier

00:47:00.940 to use version of it right now we got to get everyone to sign on to our easier to use version of the

00:47:05.780 internet but we'll give you like a really clean interface and and you don't really have to go

00:47:09.960 discover things we'll just kind of show you things we'll watch you and see what you like and you

00:47:13.620 can just sit there you know like the the people on the spaceship and that pixar movie wally just

00:47:18.000 sit there and we'll just kind of feed you things that that'll make you happy and you'll like it and

00:47:21.620 don't worry about it and and the internet's too difficult for you to actually go out there engage

00:47:25.100 with and and so this movement of let's take the social internet which is wild and decentralized

00:47:29.840 and wonderful and disruptive and something i love and let's let's consolidate it you know into a

00:47:36.140 small number of private companies that's where all the problems are happening like almost

00:47:39.260 everything that people are upset about with social media today is because we thought that the

00:47:43.600 social internet has to exist you know on the private servers of two or three companies

00:47:47.320 and and so i like the social internet i don't like social media i think if you leave the the walled

00:47:54.660 garden of social media and go back out to the wild web you can find interesting things you can connect

00:48:00.560 to interesting people you can express yourself in interesting ways and you can do it in a way that's

00:48:04.580 just so much healthier because you don't have these sort of algorithmic forces trying to push you

00:48:10.220 into weird extremes or to pacify you or to get you upset or to get you mollified or whatever's going

00:48:15.260 on you know that that's necessary to get revenue up at these private companies when you go back out to

00:48:20.000 the wild social internet it's such a better experience and so this is why i've been a blogger for a long

00:48:24.540 time i think the blogosphere though weirder and harder to navigate is for example a a much better

00:48:31.600 repository of expression and information than say facebook or twitter is and so this is definitely a movement

00:48:38.160 i've been making is that that facebook wants us to think that it's fundamental i think it's more like

00:48:44.200 what aol was in the 1990s right it was like the worldwide web with training wheels for people who

00:48:49.280 didn't know how web browsers work i think facebook is just the social internet with training wheels you

00:48:54.240 know for for people who who don't want to actually take the time to go out there and explore you know

00:48:59.680 actual websites and different you know protocols and more peer-to-peer type stuff and so i'm hope i want to

00:49:05.720 make that distinction clear because i don't want it to seem like it's i'm curmudgeonly on these

00:49:09.920 technologies i just don't like the idea of consolidating all this stuff into these big

00:49:13.720 companies that really is the source of most of the problems so maybe a digital minimalist rule would be

00:49:19.000 delete your facebook page get a blog with your own name you know domain name and start posting stuff

00:49:24.780 there yeah you know there's this exciting movement out there it's called the indie web movement

00:49:29.320 and that's basically what it's saying it's like you need to own your own domain have your own domain

00:49:34.640 you know it's a server that you're renting from a local hosting company you own it you own all the

00:49:38.700 content and actually what what we're seeing in the indie web movement which i think is kind of exciting

00:49:43.080 is that they're saying you know the way that the social internet should work is that everyone has

00:49:48.240 their own domain they have their own information and then what people can offer smaller companies can

00:49:53.340 offer like social front ends where you can point your feed towards one of these companies and then when

00:49:58.700 you log into their interface they can make it easier for you to find people and follow people or

00:50:02.600 whatever but the actual content is on people's individual servers on their own blogs they own

00:50:07.460 it they can point it towards however many of these services they want this idea that everyone has to

00:50:12.180 be in the same service and that service has to own all of their things and own all their data there's

00:50:16.440 it's just not necessary for there to be a vibrant social web so let's go back to another tactic that

00:50:23.520 you you'll have to implement as you do this declutter you said earlier once you get rid of all this

00:50:30.060 stuff on your phone you're going to realize you have a lot more free time on your hand and that's

00:50:34.640 that's a catch-22 because the reason why people go to their phones is because they're bored

00:50:39.380 and they have a lot of free time on their hands so what can people start doing to figure out like

00:50:44.900 what to do with their new found freedom or new free time now they're not checking their phone all the

00:50:49.420 time this is a really important point and something that really became clear especially as i worked with

00:50:55.280 people who are going through this this transition into minimalism which is this notion that we have

00:51:00.940 we have a human drive among other things for quality leisure you know things that we do just for the

00:51:10.020 sake of doing them i go all the way back to aristotle and the nicomedian ethics where he he talks about

00:51:15.760 this as as far back as then he really talks about the importance of sort of activity that's pursued just for

00:51:20.420 the activity's sake just for its intrinsic qualities and we have this drive right i mean you write a lot

00:51:25.720 about this on art of manliness you see these there's a reason why these sort of old manly hobbies

00:51:31.020 of woodworking and being an expert at this and that there's a reason that resonates so much is because

00:51:35.740 it's quality activity you're mastering a skill for the sake of being good at something we want that we

00:51:41.240 hunger for that and if we don't have that in our life we tend to feel a void right there's there's a large

00:51:46.260 void and one of the problems with this sort of very recent modern state of persistent digital

00:51:52.780 distraction is that we can be distracted enough that you can paper over that void just enough that

00:51:59.460 it's tolerable right and so you're like okay i can i can avoid having to actually you know develop real

00:52:05.560 sort of manly quality skills and pursuits and hobbies in my life if i can just look at look at my phone

00:52:10.620 and my tablet enough i can kind of tolerate not having that thing that i really crave and so the

00:52:16.160 issue as you point out is that when you then rip the band-aid off so let's say you do the 30-day

00:52:21.000 digital declutter it can be really uncomfortable and disconcerting because now you have to confront

00:52:27.280 that void in your life of what do you do in your time outside of work and if you haven't taken the

00:52:33.240 time to actually develop quality high quality leisure pursuits you're you're going to feel bad and

00:52:39.600 you're going to be adrift and you're going to be sort of itchy and wanting to look at things and so

00:52:44.160 i often you know advise people if you're really really into screens you might want to take the

00:52:49.600 time to develop these sort of old-fashioned analog high quality leisure pursuits before you even attempt

00:52:55.420 a digital declutter so that when you do rip these things out of your life you have something waiting

00:53:01.160 to fill that void because i was surprised to the extent by which this was disconcerting to people

00:53:06.600 when they tried to step away from their technology they didn't realize how much they were missing in

00:53:12.560 their life by not actually having high quality leisure and they were so thrilled to discover

00:53:18.440 how much meaning it gave them once they actually put in the time to reintroduce it yeah one other thing

00:53:22.880 i've noticed too is that uh when you use screens a lot like you you often like you forget how to

00:53:28.700 develop that high quality leisure right it's like like that's a skill that you know you you develop

00:53:34.260 it takes practice and then when you stop using it you're like well how do i get how do i get started

00:53:38.400 what do i do because you haven't exercised that skill in maybe years yeah and that's why i i get

00:53:44.120 really instrumental in the book it's like okay let me give you some like actual tactics i mean this

00:53:48.540 is something that our grandfathers would think is crazy that we would even talk about this like

00:53:52.080 what do you mean you need tactics for how to you know have high quality leisure like what do you

00:53:56.780 what else would you do with your time if you weren't you know building a canoe in your

00:54:00.420 woodshed or or what have you or running a big community organization that wrote you know the

00:54:04.620 rotary club or whatever and so but yeah we have to we have to go back to tactics so in in the book i i

00:54:09.520 get down to some basic things i i give out a plan about okay use youtube how-to videos and systematically

00:54:18.440 work up the complexity of things that you're fixing with your hands i mean it sounds almost trite but

00:54:24.440 it's a huge mind shift right just this notion of of going from my hands are basically used to

00:54:30.300 manipulate digital screens to my hands manipulated something in the physical world it didn't work and

00:54:35.640 now it does and your brain it's like fireworks go off once you do that like yes this is what we're

00:54:40.340 supposed to be doing or you know we're supposed to be confronting the world physically and changing

00:54:45.320 the world in ways that's positive we're supposed to be you know holding the piece of wood and feeling

00:54:50.120 the grain we're supposed to be you know seeing the metal bend we're supposed to be confronting the

00:54:55.280 world our brains get really confused by like all i'm looking at is glowing leds all day like this is

00:54:59.560 not what i'm used to from our evolutionary history i also talk in the book about building leisure plans

00:55:05.380 and and maybe this is just sort of hyper cal newport tony and productivity stuff here but you know some

00:55:10.920 people need this like these are some leisure activities that i'm working on this is what i'm working

00:55:16.160 on each week that's what i'm working on each day like systematically building yourself a schedule

00:55:20.380 of doing high quality analog leisure and building up what you're comfortable with i mean all of this

00:55:25.840 is so important it sounds you know like optional superfluous like well you know whatever hobbies

00:55:32.060 but you need this right especially if you're going to go minimalist on your digital life

00:55:36.900 you need to go much more intentional on your analog life that replaces it and it can be pretty hard

00:55:42.940 right that system that's why we developed the strenuous life last year on the art of manliness

00:55:47.240 just like providing a structure for people it's like well i don't know what to do it's like well

00:55:50.760 do these things yeah and they get going it sort of greases the wheels and they start you know they

00:55:55.280 find a new hobby and they get delved deeper into that and that's been really cool to see

00:55:58.540 yeah and i'm not surprised that it's been popular i mean i think what's happening in the digital

00:56:03.220 world is actually making the appeal of the analog world so much stronger again in a way that would

00:56:08.600 be completely mystifying to our grandfathers just the idea that you would do anything else with

00:56:12.780 your leisure time of these type of activities would make no sense you would have been doing it

00:56:16.160 in every spare moment since you were four years old but you know for our generation or younger

00:56:20.660 can be completely novel and like that's why i think the strenuous life is a great that that program is

00:56:25.520 great right it's not about is it really important that you learn to do this particular thing it's no

00:56:30.760 no it's the fact that you're out there doing analog things just for the sake of doing them just for

00:56:35.300 the sake of mastery just for the sake of adventure and it's so important and i and i think that's also

00:56:40.900 i mean you would know better but it explains i think a lot of the growing renaissance in some of

00:56:46.360 these sort of virtuous manliness movements like you're a part of or you know why characters like

00:56:50.380 ron swanson resonate so strongly with people even though he was supposed to be you know a comic

00:56:55.680 character is because we miss these things and we feel it right we know that i don't know just swiping

00:57:03.660 at this tablet this doesn't feel right right my shoulders are hunched over you know and i'm sort of in the

00:57:09.300 back of the cafe and i'm swiping on this and clicking on emojis and something about that just doesn't

00:57:14.960 feel like this is what you know you know i'm a grown man this is what i'm supposed to be doing

00:57:18.520 with my time it just doesn't feel right you know we know there's something wrong here and when we get

00:57:23.720 back to using our hands engaging in our community spending real quality time with our family you know

00:57:31.220 being an active dad for your kids like all of this type of stuff that resonates we know in our gut

00:57:35.960 is the right thing to do we feel it and and i think we're feeling it stronger at the same time

00:57:41.800 that the sort of attention economy conglomerates are trying to distract us from it as hard as possible

00:57:46.100 i love that so let's talk about like last minute like last thing what are some like next level like

00:57:50.720 advanced level tactics in implementing digital minimalism so far we've talked about okay you get

00:57:55.280 rid of everything and you slowly introduce things that you're actually going to use you set rules for

00:57:59.600 how you're going to use those things but let's say someone's like man i just i'm tired of it like

00:58:03.700 what can they do to like take this to the next level so the most hardcore digital minimalists

00:58:08.700 one of the things you'll see is they don't use smartphones and that's actually a lot more common

00:58:12.960 than you would think i would you know there's a i just read a article in the guardian so this

00:58:18.360 this came out around new year so it's like on the the second or third of january and the reporters

00:58:22.460 she's a literary critic and she read she read the book and she's like that's it i'm done with my

00:58:27.700 smartphone and she writes about how you know switching over to what they call feature phones but

00:58:32.400 basically old-fashioned phones you know with buttons and you can't touch the screen how it's

00:58:36.620 really improved her life right and and she's she's bored more and just present more and and doesn't

00:58:42.580 feel that crushing weight so that's something you see a lot of like people will go away from their

00:58:45.960 smartphones you also see people being pretty aggressive about taking their computers and

00:58:51.600 transforming them back into more like single tasking machines so they'll use internet blocking software

00:58:57.060 like freedom very aggressively right so okay i can't access any i can't access the web for example

00:59:03.420 during this five-hour period or there's only like a two-hour period at night where i can i can even see

00:59:07.960 social media like they really really hamper down really tamp down like when they have access to

00:59:13.420 things a lot of digital minimalists like me just leave social media all together they like the social

00:59:18.300 internet maybe they have a blog or maybe they say i don't care i'm i i have good friends that i see

00:59:22.360 every week i call my family on the phone i'm a part of a community group i don't need a you know a

00:59:26.080 computer screen to be social so definitely the more extreme digital minimalist you see that

00:59:30.120 and finally you see like much more aggressive engagement in analog activity so so minimalist once they

00:59:36.800 get away from these things they're avoiding you know papering over that void i talk about

00:59:40.360 the extreme digital minimalist tend to become much more extreme in their analog activity and and so you

00:59:46.720 get sort of mr money mustache style like i'm out there you know renovating a building in my town

00:59:52.440 or learning how to weld and and building a rack for my truck like this type of stuff like really

00:59:57.540 like a lot of time doing really highly skilled analog type activities and so like these are what

01:00:03.700 the the black belt minimalist that's type of things you'll see no smartphone really severely locked down

01:00:08.400 computers no social media really big almost old-fashioned analog presence in their life yeah and

01:00:14.980 it's funny the market's responding to this so you know like i you know the strenuous life you

01:00:18.520 mentioned us you've been mr money mustache there's all these analog things you like communities like

01:00:23.480 in-person stuff you can do now but even like the devices i just um there's this new phone the light

01:00:28.240 phone too yep i don't know have you seen yeah it's it's amazing it's like it's a phone you can listen

01:00:33.180 to music you can text and do directions but that's about it like there's no social stuff which i think is

01:00:39.680 genius yeah and there's also um phone tethering too so the original light phone before the light phone

01:00:45.620 too the original idea there i write about a bit in the book is you have your normal smartphone but

01:00:50.700 then you have this like second really simple phone that's like the size of two credit cards and people

01:00:54.340 can call you and that's about it and so what you can do is basically put your phone into a mode where

01:00:59.640 it all transfers to the light phone and then you can go out and say i have the light phone with me

01:01:04.400 so if there's an emergency you know my wife can still reach me or whatever i can call you know the

01:01:08.520 police or something if my car is stolen but i don't have any of the social stuff but you still have

01:01:12.700 your real phone and what's happening is like things are getting forwarded to the light phone so you

01:01:16.240 don't have to keep two separate numbers and so like that's another thing that that you see out

01:01:20.660 there is a sort of tethering or or just in general this notion um you know i really get into this in

01:01:25.980 this book this idea that like you have to have your phone with you is all the time is really recent and

01:01:31.720 really unnecessary and you know i do this a lot and this is a growing movement among people where they

01:01:36.340 really change their relationship with their phone and they think like there's sometimes i need it for

01:01:40.620 specific purposes but it's not by default right it's not wallet keys phone it's like wallet keys

01:01:45.280 and sometimes phone and so they'll they'll spend much more time without a phone at all and so you

01:01:50.120 definitely see that as well yeah so the market is responding for sure well cal this has been a great

01:01:54.780 conversation where can people go to learn more about the book so you can find the book anywhere books

01:01:59.620 are sold also my website calnewport.com i've been blogging there a diehard blogger for over a decade

01:02:06.460 so if you're just curious maybe dipping your toe and these type of ideas you can also uh probably

01:02:12.480 spend a little bit of time there as well and you can subscribe to them via rss feed which i do which

01:02:17.460 is awesome or yeah or old-fashioned emails yeah and as i like to say since i have no social media

01:02:21.800 presence if you have any complaints about the books or any uh diatribes you want to give or insults to me

01:02:27.300 i just highly recommend that you share those but you do so on social media there you go well cal thanks so

01:02:33.060 much for your time it's been a pleasure great thank you brett my guest today was cal newport he's the

01:02:36.840 author of the book digital minimalism it's available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere check out

01:02:40.920 his website calnewport.com and while you're there subscribe to his blog it's one of my favorite

01:02:44.920 blogs been following it for years also check out our show notes at aom.is digital minimalism

01:02:49.640 where you find links to resources where you delve deeper into this topic

01:02:52.460 well that wraps up another edition of the a1 podcast if you want to check out the strenuous

01:03:08.280 life cal and i talked about it during the podcast check out our strenuouslife.co you can see what

01:03:12.740 it's all about what we're trying to do with it what happens when you sign up and while you're there

01:03:16.600 make sure you get your email on our waiting list for our next enrollment which will be around the end

01:03:20.520 of march 1st of april so strenuouslife.co check it out and if you haven't done so already i'd really

01:03:25.140 appreciate if you give us review on itunes or stitcher it helps us out a lot and if you've done

01:03:28.640 that already thank you please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member you think we

01:03:32.340 get something out of it as always thank you for your continued support and until next time this is

01:03:35.620 brett mckay encouraging you to not only listen to the a1 podcast but put what you've learned into action

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The Art of Manliness - July 31, 2025

#479： Becoming a Digital Minimalist

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