{"id":15409,"date":"2019-04-24T16:34:54","date_gmt":"2019-04-24T08:34:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.justcharlie.com\/?p=15409"},"modified":"2019-05-12T13:58:19","modified_gmt":"2019-05-12T05:58:19","slug":"digital-minimalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.justcharlie.com\/digital-minimalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Digital Minimalism"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
Through living and traveling overseas for over ten years, I\u2019ve become more and more enamored with a minimalist lifestyle. There are countless blog and podcasts explore subjects of practical minimalism like reducing clutter, ultralight travel, and identifying the things which matter to you most. And they help a lot, but there was one phenomenon in particular which this book addresses, and that is the natural attraction that most of us feel toward screens and information. The most common manifestation of this is through the device which we have with us at all times: smartphones.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Although people habitually peering at their phones throughout the day is a global phenomenon, I sense that it might be even more entrenched in China than in other places. China is ahead of the rest of the world in leveraging the smartphone to become the universal enabler of modern life. In a single day people in China use their phones to communicate with friends and family, pay for virtually everything from vegetables to a movie, call a car or order food delivery, and much more. It\u2019s so convenient that there\u2019s an unmistakable magnetic effect, which might lead you to wonder: is there a downside to this kind of digital lifestyle?“<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n“Few want to spend so much time online, but these tools have a way of cultivating behavioral addictions. The urge to check Twitter of refresh Reddit becomes a nervous twitch that shatters uninterrupted time into shards too small to support the presence necessary for an intentional life.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nUnfortunately, for most people eliminating some of these tools will be difficult or impossible. With that in mind, what are the real effects of our modern digital lifestyle and what practices should we encourage to promote health and happiness? These are the questions which Digital Minimalism asks and seeks to answer.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nEffects of the \u201cLike\u201d Button<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOne of the most profound concepts in the book is the deep psychological impact that the \u201cLike\u201d button (on Facebook and other social media platforms) has on our behavior. Since the 1970\u2019s scientists have determined that rewards delivered unpredictably are far more enticing than those delivered with a known pattern. Something about the unpredictability of rewards, like seeing how many people liked a post, releases more of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which regulates our sense of craving.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n“Leah Pearlman, who was a product manager at Facebook on the team that developed the \u201cLike\u201d button for Facebook (she was the author of the blog post announcing the feature in 2009), has become so wary of the havoc it causes that now, as a small business owner, she hires a social media manager to handle her Facebook account so she can avoid exposure to the service\u2019s manipulation of the human social drive.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nRather than just a digital conduit through which we\u2019re connected with friends, Facebook and its peers can also be viewed as a psychological trap designed to target our deep-seated vulnerabilities with staggering precision and efficiency. We\u2019re unprepared to use these tools in a way which suits us best because we are subject to the whim of experts whom often know us better than we know ourselves.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n“The \u201cLike\u201d feature evolved to become the foundation on which Facebook rebuilt itself from a fun amusement that people occasionally checked, to a digital slot machine that began to dominate its users\u2019 time and attention. This button introduced a rich new stream of social approval indicators that arrive in an unpredictable fashion\u2014creating an almost impossibly appealing impulse to keep checking your account. It also provided Facebook much more detailed information on your preferences, allowing their machine-learning algorithms to digest your humanity into statistical slivers that could then be mined to push you toward targeted ads and stickier content.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nUsage of the Like button seems like an innocuous interaction, but over time it teaches your mind that connection is a suitable alternative to conversation. Despite our best intentions, the role of these low-value interactions rapidly expand to push out high-value socializing.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nSince reading this book and learning more about this effect, I have stopped clicking the Like button. As the author of the book states in clear terms: \u201cDon\u2019t click Like. Ever.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nReducing Social Media<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nA trend which I first observed in 2017 has been friends deleting social media accounts, particularly Facebook. This is partly due to a generalized feeling of Facebook being an unessential distraction, but it\u2019s more than just that. Many were prompted to more deeply consider Facebook when founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed by the U.S. congress about Facebook\u2019s role in the 2016 presidential election. Since then, I\u2019ve noticed at least a dozen friends delete their Facebook accounts. And while I haven\u2019t deleted mine outright because it\u2019s my only social connection to family members abroad, decluttering low-value digital distractions on social media has become a priority.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nRemove people who aren\u2019t your friends from your friends list. Acquaintances you might never see or speak to again don\u2019t count as friends. Despite what Facebook would lead you to believe, no one really has 1,000 friends, or even 200 friends (an instructive scientific study on the theoretical social limits of human friendships is called Dunbar\u2019s Number, which states that our brains aren\u2019t capable of keeping tracking of more than 150 people in our social circles).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nFocusing on Intentionality<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe prescription which this book offers to navigating the digital landscape of distractions and rabbit holes is this: focus your online time to a small number of carefully selected activities that support the things you value, and skip everything else.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThis is in direct opposition to the \u201cmaximalist\u201d approach deployed by most by default, where any potential benefit is enough to start using an app or technology that catches your attention. It comes from a scarcity mindset, or a fear that there\u2019s something useful you\u2019ll miss out on, but this book encourages a fear of the opposite. Not missing the small things, but diminishing the large things that we already know give us great value.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n“Thoreau establishes early in Walden: \u201cThe cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe cumulative effect of unessential distractions accumulate to outweigh the price that we pay for them: time we won\u2019t get back.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOnline vs Offline Interactions<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOnline interactions with friends and family generally occur on a narrow band of information: a like, a comment, or a short message. By comparison, offline interactions are rich and occur on a broad band because we utilize massive neuronal power to deduce what\u2019s happening in a face to face social situation. It\u2019s through millions of years of evolution that we perform complicated computational feats in social situations without thinking about it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAn example which the author of the book uses to demonstrate this phenomenon is competitive Rock Paper Scissors players.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n“A strong Rock Paper Scissors player integrates a rich stream of information about their opponent\u2019s body language and recent plays to help approximate their opponent\u2019s mental state and therefore make an educated guess about the next play. These players will also use subtle movements and phrases to prime their opponent to think about a certain play.<\/p>\r\nUnderstanding Rock Paper Scissors champions is important to our purposes because their strategies highlight a foundational endowment shared by every human being on earth: the ability to perform complicated social thinking.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nMaking Optimizations<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nA few optimizations are encouraged in the book, some of which I\u2019ve put into practice and found effective.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nDon\u2019t watch television or movies alone. This restriction allows you to still enjoy these things, but in a more controlled manner that limits their potential for abuse while strengthening social bonds at the same time.<\/li>\r\nRemove social media apps from your phone. You can still access these services from your computer browser when you need, but you might find that you won\u2019t bother much, because they won\u2019t be accessible as a knee-jerk response to boredom.<\/li>\r\nTrack time on your phone and computer, evaluate the data, and make judgements on how to best spend your time. More details on this below.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nTime Tracking<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOver the last year both iOS (Apple) and Android (Google) have deployed time tracking utilities on their smartphone platforms specifically for the purpose of observing usage patterns. Apple calls this Screen Time<\/a> and Google calls it Digital Wellbeing<\/a>, but they do the same thing: they inform you of how much time you\u2019re spending on your phone, and which apps occupy you the most (note: there are alternative apps available also, like the one I’m using which is <\/em>ActionDash<\/em><\/a> – it has Digital Wellbeing’s functionality plus much more<\/em>).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nActionDash<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe results of tracking your phone usage will probably shock you: almost all of us spend much more time looking at our phones than we realize. For many this is a great first step. Track time on your phone first, and then on your laptop. Two tools which I\u2019ve used and can recommend for time and app tracking are Qbserve (Mac) and Rescue Time (Windows & Mac).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIf you’re interested in hearing the principles of this book explained in a podcast, this is a good episode<\/a> with the author of the book featured as a guest on The Minimalists<\/a> podcast.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nUnlike smoking or drinking alcohol, the negative effects of digital distractions are less apparent. Instead of killing you or making you sick, they consume countless small fragments of time, which cumulatively have a hampering effect. Identify, target, and eliminate these and you\u2019ll be better off.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nView all of my highlights from Digital Minimalism<\/a><\/li>\r\nDigital Minimalism by Cal Newport<\/a> on Amazon<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’m vulnerable to digital distractions and you probably are too. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[182],"yoast_head":"\nDigital Minimalism<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n
\r\n“Few want to spend so much time online, but these tools have a way of cultivating behavioral addictions. The urge to check Twitter of refresh Reddit becomes a nervous twitch that shatters uninterrupted time into shards too small to support the presence necessary for an intentional life.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nUnfortunately, for most people eliminating some of these tools will be difficult or impossible. With that in mind, what are the real effects of our modern digital lifestyle and what practices should we encourage to promote health and happiness? These are the questions which Digital Minimalism asks and seeks to answer.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nEffects of the \u201cLike\u201d Button<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOne of the most profound concepts in the book is the deep psychological impact that the \u201cLike\u201d button (on Facebook and other social media platforms) has on our behavior. Since the 1970\u2019s scientists have determined that rewards delivered unpredictably are far more enticing than those delivered with a known pattern. Something about the unpredictability of rewards, like seeing how many people liked a post, releases more of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which regulates our sense of craving.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n“Leah Pearlman, who was a product manager at Facebook on the team that developed the \u201cLike\u201d button for Facebook (she was the author of the blog post announcing the feature in 2009), has become so wary of the havoc it causes that now, as a small business owner, she hires a social media manager to handle her Facebook account so she can avoid exposure to the service\u2019s manipulation of the human social drive.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nRather than just a digital conduit through which we\u2019re connected with friends, Facebook and its peers can also be viewed as a psychological trap designed to target our deep-seated vulnerabilities with staggering precision and efficiency. We\u2019re unprepared to use these tools in a way which suits us best because we are subject to the whim of experts whom often know us better than we know ourselves.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n“The \u201cLike\u201d feature evolved to become the foundation on which Facebook rebuilt itself from a fun amusement that people occasionally checked, to a digital slot machine that began to dominate its users\u2019 time and attention. This button introduced a rich new stream of social approval indicators that arrive in an unpredictable fashion\u2014creating an almost impossibly appealing impulse to keep checking your account. It also provided Facebook much more detailed information on your preferences, allowing their machine-learning algorithms to digest your humanity into statistical slivers that could then be mined to push you toward targeted ads and stickier content.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nUsage of the Like button seems like an innocuous interaction, but over time it teaches your mind that connection is a suitable alternative to conversation. Despite our best intentions, the role of these low-value interactions rapidly expand to push out high-value socializing.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nSince reading this book and learning more about this effect, I have stopped clicking the Like button. As the author of the book states in clear terms: \u201cDon\u2019t click Like. Ever.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nReducing Social Media<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nA trend which I first observed in 2017 has been friends deleting social media accounts, particularly Facebook. This is partly due to a generalized feeling of Facebook being an unessential distraction, but it\u2019s more than just that. Many were prompted to more deeply consider Facebook when founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed by the U.S. congress about Facebook\u2019s role in the 2016 presidential election. Since then, I\u2019ve noticed at least a dozen friends delete their Facebook accounts. And while I haven\u2019t deleted mine outright because it\u2019s my only social connection to family members abroad, decluttering low-value digital distractions on social media has become a priority.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nRemove people who aren\u2019t your friends from your friends list. Acquaintances you might never see or speak to again don\u2019t count as friends. Despite what Facebook would lead you to believe, no one really has 1,000 friends, or even 200 friends (an instructive scientific study on the theoretical social limits of human friendships is called Dunbar\u2019s Number, which states that our brains aren\u2019t capable of keeping tracking of more than 150 people in our social circles).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nFocusing on Intentionality<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe prescription which this book offers to navigating the digital landscape of distractions and rabbit holes is this: focus your online time to a small number of carefully selected activities that support the things you value, and skip everything else.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThis is in direct opposition to the \u201cmaximalist\u201d approach deployed by most by default, where any potential benefit is enough to start using an app or technology that catches your attention. It comes from a scarcity mindset, or a fear that there\u2019s something useful you\u2019ll miss out on, but this book encourages a fear of the opposite. Not missing the small things, but diminishing the large things that we already know give us great value.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n“Thoreau establishes early in Walden: \u201cThe cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe cumulative effect of unessential distractions accumulate to outweigh the price that we pay for them: time we won\u2019t get back.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOnline vs Offline Interactions<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOnline interactions with friends and family generally occur on a narrow band of information: a like, a comment, or a short message. By comparison, offline interactions are rich and occur on a broad band because we utilize massive neuronal power to deduce what\u2019s happening in a face to face social situation. It\u2019s through millions of years of evolution that we perform complicated computational feats in social situations without thinking about it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAn example which the author of the book uses to demonstrate this phenomenon is competitive Rock Paper Scissors players.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n“A strong Rock Paper Scissors player integrates a rich stream of information about their opponent\u2019s body language and recent plays to help approximate their opponent\u2019s mental state and therefore make an educated guess about the next play. These players will also use subtle movements and phrases to prime their opponent to think about a certain play.<\/p>\r\nUnderstanding Rock Paper Scissors champions is important to our purposes because their strategies highlight a foundational endowment shared by every human being on earth: the ability to perform complicated social thinking.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nMaking Optimizations<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nA few optimizations are encouraged in the book, some of which I\u2019ve put into practice and found effective.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nDon\u2019t watch television or movies alone. This restriction allows you to still enjoy these things, but in a more controlled manner that limits their potential for abuse while strengthening social bonds at the same time.<\/li>\r\nRemove social media apps from your phone. You can still access these services from your computer browser when you need, but you might find that you won\u2019t bother much, because they won\u2019t be accessible as a knee-jerk response to boredom.<\/li>\r\nTrack time on your phone and computer, evaluate the data, and make judgements on how to best spend your time. More details on this below.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nTime Tracking<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOver the last year both iOS (Apple) and Android (Google) have deployed time tracking utilities on their smartphone platforms specifically for the purpose of observing usage patterns. Apple calls this Screen Time<\/a> and Google calls it Digital Wellbeing<\/a>, but they do the same thing: they inform you of how much time you\u2019re spending on your phone, and which apps occupy you the most (note: there are alternative apps available also, like the one I’m using which is <\/em>ActionDash<\/em><\/a> – it has Digital Wellbeing’s functionality plus much more<\/em>).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nActionDash<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe results of tracking your phone usage will probably shock you: almost all of us spend much more time looking at our phones than we realize. For many this is a great first step. Track time on your phone first, and then on your laptop. Two tools which I\u2019ve used and can recommend for time and app tracking are Qbserve (Mac) and Rescue Time (Windows & Mac).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIf you’re interested in hearing the principles of this book explained in a podcast, this is a good episode<\/a> with the author of the book featured as a guest on The Minimalists<\/a> podcast.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nUnlike smoking or drinking alcohol, the negative effects of digital distractions are less apparent. Instead of killing you or making you sick, they consume countless small fragments of time, which cumulatively have a hampering effect. Identify, target, and eliminate these and you\u2019ll be better off.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nView all of my highlights from Digital Minimalism<\/a><\/li>\r\nDigital Minimalism by Cal Newport<\/a> on Amazon<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’m vulnerable to digital distractions and you probably are too. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[182],"yoast_head":"\nDigital Minimalism<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n
“Few want to spend so much time online, but these tools have a way of cultivating behavioral addictions. The urge to check Twitter of refresh Reddit becomes a nervous twitch that shatters uninterrupted time into shards too small to support the presence necessary for an intentional life.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Unfortunately, for most people eliminating some of these tools will be difficult or impossible. With that in mind, what are the real effects of our modern digital lifestyle and what practices should we encourage to promote health and happiness? These are the questions which Digital Minimalism asks and seeks to answer.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
One of the most profound concepts in the book is the deep psychological impact that the \u201cLike\u201d button (on Facebook and other social media platforms) has on our behavior. Since the 1970\u2019s scientists have determined that rewards delivered unpredictably are far more enticing than those delivered with a known pattern. Something about the unpredictability of rewards, like seeing how many people liked a post, releases more of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which regulates our sense of craving.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
\r\n“Leah Pearlman, who was a product manager at Facebook on the team that developed the \u201cLike\u201d button for Facebook (she was the author of the blog post announcing the feature in 2009), has become so wary of the havoc it causes that now, as a small business owner, she hires a social media manager to handle her Facebook account so she can avoid exposure to the service\u2019s manipulation of the human social drive.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nRather than just a digital conduit through which we\u2019re connected with friends, Facebook and its peers can also be viewed as a psychological trap designed to target our deep-seated vulnerabilities with staggering precision and efficiency. We\u2019re unprepared to use these tools in a way which suits us best because we are subject to the whim of experts whom often know us better than we know ourselves.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n“The \u201cLike\u201d feature evolved to become the foundation on which Facebook rebuilt itself from a fun amusement that people occasionally checked, to a digital slot machine that began to dominate its users\u2019 time and attention. This button introduced a rich new stream of social approval indicators that arrive in an unpredictable fashion\u2014creating an almost impossibly appealing impulse to keep checking your account. It also provided Facebook much more detailed information on your preferences, allowing their machine-learning algorithms to digest your humanity into statistical slivers that could then be mined to push you toward targeted ads and stickier content.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nUsage of the Like button seems like an innocuous interaction, but over time it teaches your mind that connection is a suitable alternative to conversation. Despite our best intentions, the role of these low-value interactions rapidly expand to push out high-value socializing.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nSince reading this book and learning more about this effect, I have stopped clicking the Like button. As the author of the book states in clear terms: \u201cDon\u2019t click Like. Ever.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nReducing Social Media<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nA trend which I first observed in 2017 has been friends deleting social media accounts, particularly Facebook. This is partly due to a generalized feeling of Facebook being an unessential distraction, but it\u2019s more than just that. Many were prompted to more deeply consider Facebook when founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed by the U.S. congress about Facebook\u2019s role in the 2016 presidential election. Since then, I\u2019ve noticed at least a dozen friends delete their Facebook accounts. And while I haven\u2019t deleted mine outright because it\u2019s my only social connection to family members abroad, decluttering low-value digital distractions on social media has become a priority.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nRemove people who aren\u2019t your friends from your friends list. Acquaintances you might never see or speak to again don\u2019t count as friends. Despite what Facebook would lead you to believe, no one really has 1,000 friends, or even 200 friends (an instructive scientific study on the theoretical social limits of human friendships is called Dunbar\u2019s Number, which states that our brains aren\u2019t capable of keeping tracking of more than 150 people in our social circles).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nFocusing on Intentionality<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe prescription which this book offers to navigating the digital landscape of distractions and rabbit holes is this: focus your online time to a small number of carefully selected activities that support the things you value, and skip everything else.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThis is in direct opposition to the \u201cmaximalist\u201d approach deployed by most by default, where any potential benefit is enough to start using an app or technology that catches your attention. It comes from a scarcity mindset, or a fear that there\u2019s something useful you\u2019ll miss out on, but this book encourages a fear of the opposite. Not missing the small things, but diminishing the large things that we already know give us great value.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n“Thoreau establishes early in Walden: \u201cThe cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe cumulative effect of unessential distractions accumulate to outweigh the price that we pay for them: time we won\u2019t get back.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOnline vs Offline Interactions<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOnline interactions with friends and family generally occur on a narrow band of information: a like, a comment, or a short message. By comparison, offline interactions are rich and occur on a broad band because we utilize massive neuronal power to deduce what\u2019s happening in a face to face social situation. It\u2019s through millions of years of evolution that we perform complicated computational feats in social situations without thinking about it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAn example which the author of the book uses to demonstrate this phenomenon is competitive Rock Paper Scissors players.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n“A strong Rock Paper Scissors player integrates a rich stream of information about their opponent\u2019s body language and recent plays to help approximate their opponent\u2019s mental state and therefore make an educated guess about the next play. These players will also use subtle movements and phrases to prime their opponent to think about a certain play.<\/p>\r\nUnderstanding Rock Paper Scissors champions is important to our purposes because their strategies highlight a foundational endowment shared by every human being on earth: the ability to perform complicated social thinking.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nMaking Optimizations<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nA few optimizations are encouraged in the book, some of which I\u2019ve put into practice and found effective.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nDon\u2019t watch television or movies alone. This restriction allows you to still enjoy these things, but in a more controlled manner that limits their potential for abuse while strengthening social bonds at the same time.<\/li>\r\nRemove social media apps from your phone. You can still access these services from your computer browser when you need, but you might find that you won\u2019t bother much, because they won\u2019t be accessible as a knee-jerk response to boredom.<\/li>\r\nTrack time on your phone and computer, evaluate the data, and make judgements on how to best spend your time. More details on this below.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nTime Tracking<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOver the last year both iOS (Apple) and Android (Google) have deployed time tracking utilities on their smartphone platforms specifically for the purpose of observing usage patterns. Apple calls this Screen Time<\/a> and Google calls it Digital Wellbeing<\/a>, but they do the same thing: they inform you of how much time you\u2019re spending on your phone, and which apps occupy you the most (note: there are alternative apps available also, like the one I’m using which is <\/em>ActionDash<\/em><\/a> – it has Digital Wellbeing’s functionality plus much more<\/em>).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nActionDash<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe results of tracking your phone usage will probably shock you: almost all of us spend much more time looking at our phones than we realize. For many this is a great first step. Track time on your phone first, and then on your laptop. Two tools which I\u2019ve used and can recommend for time and app tracking are Qbserve (Mac) and Rescue Time (Windows & Mac).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIf you’re interested in hearing the principles of this book explained in a podcast, this is a good episode<\/a> with the author of the book featured as a guest on The Minimalists<\/a> podcast.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nUnlike smoking or drinking alcohol, the negative effects of digital distractions are less apparent. Instead of killing you or making you sick, they consume countless small fragments of time, which cumulatively have a hampering effect. Identify, target, and eliminate these and you\u2019ll be better off.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nView all of my highlights from Digital Minimalism<\/a><\/li>\r\nDigital Minimalism by Cal Newport<\/a> on Amazon<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’m vulnerable to digital distractions and you probably are too. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[182],"yoast_head":"\nDigital Minimalism<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n
“Leah Pearlman, who was a product manager at Facebook on the team that developed the \u201cLike\u201d button for Facebook (she was the author of the blog post announcing the feature in 2009), has become so wary of the havoc it causes that now, as a small business owner, she hires a social media manager to handle her Facebook account so she can avoid exposure to the service\u2019s manipulation of the human social drive.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Rather than just a digital conduit through which we\u2019re connected with friends, Facebook and its peers can also be viewed as a psychological trap designed to target our deep-seated vulnerabilities with staggering precision and efficiency. We\u2019re unprepared to use these tools in a way which suits us best because we are subject to the whim of experts whom often know us better than we know ourselves.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
\r\n“The \u201cLike\u201d feature evolved to become the foundation on which Facebook rebuilt itself from a fun amusement that people occasionally checked, to a digital slot machine that began to dominate its users\u2019 time and attention. This button introduced a rich new stream of social approval indicators that arrive in an unpredictable fashion\u2014creating an almost impossibly appealing impulse to keep checking your account. It also provided Facebook much more detailed information on your preferences, allowing their machine-learning algorithms to digest your humanity into statistical slivers that could then be mined to push you toward targeted ads and stickier content.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nUsage of the Like button seems like an innocuous interaction, but over time it teaches your mind that connection is a suitable alternative to conversation. Despite our best intentions, the role of these low-value interactions rapidly expand to push out high-value socializing.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nSince reading this book and learning more about this effect, I have stopped clicking the Like button. As the author of the book states in clear terms: \u201cDon\u2019t click Like. Ever.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nReducing Social Media<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nA trend which I first observed in 2017 has been friends deleting social media accounts, particularly Facebook. This is partly due to a generalized feeling of Facebook being an unessential distraction, but it\u2019s more than just that. Many were prompted to more deeply consider Facebook when founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed by the U.S. congress about Facebook\u2019s role in the 2016 presidential election. Since then, I\u2019ve noticed at least a dozen friends delete their Facebook accounts. And while I haven\u2019t deleted mine outright because it\u2019s my only social connection to family members abroad, decluttering low-value digital distractions on social media has become a priority.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nRemove people who aren\u2019t your friends from your friends list. Acquaintances you might never see or speak to again don\u2019t count as friends. Despite what Facebook would lead you to believe, no one really has 1,000 friends, or even 200 friends (an instructive scientific study on the theoretical social limits of human friendships is called Dunbar\u2019s Number, which states that our brains aren\u2019t capable of keeping tracking of more than 150 people in our social circles).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nFocusing on Intentionality<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe prescription which this book offers to navigating the digital landscape of distractions and rabbit holes is this: focus your online time to a small number of carefully selected activities that support the things you value, and skip everything else.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThis is in direct opposition to the \u201cmaximalist\u201d approach deployed by most by default, where any potential benefit is enough to start using an app or technology that catches your attention. It comes from a scarcity mindset, or a fear that there\u2019s something useful you\u2019ll miss out on, but this book encourages a fear of the opposite. Not missing the small things, but diminishing the large things that we already know give us great value.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n“Thoreau establishes early in Walden: \u201cThe cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe cumulative effect of unessential distractions accumulate to outweigh the price that we pay for them: time we won\u2019t get back.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOnline vs Offline Interactions<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOnline interactions with friends and family generally occur on a narrow band of information: a like, a comment, or a short message. By comparison, offline interactions are rich and occur on a broad band because we utilize massive neuronal power to deduce what\u2019s happening in a face to face social situation. It\u2019s through millions of years of evolution that we perform complicated computational feats in social situations without thinking about it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAn example which the author of the book uses to demonstrate this phenomenon is competitive Rock Paper Scissors players.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n“A strong Rock Paper Scissors player integrates a rich stream of information about their opponent\u2019s body language and recent plays to help approximate their opponent\u2019s mental state and therefore make an educated guess about the next play. These players will also use subtle movements and phrases to prime their opponent to think about a certain play.<\/p>\r\nUnderstanding Rock Paper Scissors champions is important to our purposes because their strategies highlight a foundational endowment shared by every human being on earth: the ability to perform complicated social thinking.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nMaking Optimizations<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nA few optimizations are encouraged in the book, some of which I\u2019ve put into practice and found effective.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nDon\u2019t watch television or movies alone. This restriction allows you to still enjoy these things, but in a more controlled manner that limits their potential for abuse while strengthening social bonds at the same time.<\/li>\r\nRemove social media apps from your phone. You can still access these services from your computer browser when you need, but you might find that you won\u2019t bother much, because they won\u2019t be accessible as a knee-jerk response to boredom.<\/li>\r\nTrack time on your phone and computer, evaluate the data, and make judgements on how to best spend your time. More details on this below.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nTime Tracking<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOver the last year both iOS (Apple) and Android (Google) have deployed time tracking utilities on their smartphone platforms specifically for the purpose of observing usage patterns. Apple calls this Screen Time<\/a> and Google calls it Digital Wellbeing<\/a>, but they do the same thing: they inform you of how much time you\u2019re spending on your phone, and which apps occupy you the most (note: there are alternative apps available also, like the one I’m using which is <\/em>ActionDash<\/em><\/a> – it has Digital Wellbeing’s functionality plus much more<\/em>).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nActionDash<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe results of tracking your phone usage will probably shock you: almost all of us spend much more time looking at our phones than we realize. For many this is a great first step. Track time on your phone first, and then on your laptop. Two tools which I\u2019ve used and can recommend for time and app tracking are Qbserve (Mac) and Rescue Time (Windows & Mac).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIf you’re interested in hearing the principles of this book explained in a podcast, this is a good episode<\/a> with the author of the book featured as a guest on The Minimalists<\/a> podcast.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nUnlike smoking or drinking alcohol, the negative effects of digital distractions are less apparent. Instead of killing you or making you sick, they consume countless small fragments of time, which cumulatively have a hampering effect. Identify, target, and eliminate these and you\u2019ll be better off.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nView all of my highlights from Digital Minimalism<\/a><\/li>\r\nDigital Minimalism by Cal Newport<\/a> on Amazon<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’m vulnerable to digital distractions and you probably are too. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[182],"yoast_head":"\nDigital Minimalism<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n
“The \u201cLike\u201d feature evolved to become the foundation on which Facebook rebuilt itself from a fun amusement that people occasionally checked, to a digital slot machine that began to dominate its users\u2019 time and attention. This button introduced a rich new stream of social approval indicators that arrive in an unpredictable fashion\u2014creating an almost impossibly appealing impulse to keep checking your account. It also provided Facebook much more detailed information on your preferences, allowing their machine-learning algorithms to digest your humanity into statistical slivers that could then be mined to push you toward targeted ads and stickier content.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Usage of the Like button seems like an innocuous interaction, but over time it teaches your mind that connection is a suitable alternative to conversation. Despite our best intentions, the role of these low-value interactions rapidly expand to push out high-value socializing.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nSince reading this book and learning more about this effect, I have stopped clicking the Like button. As the author of the book states in clear terms: \u201cDon\u2019t click Like. Ever.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nReducing Social Media<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nA trend which I first observed in 2017 has been friends deleting social media accounts, particularly Facebook. This is partly due to a generalized feeling of Facebook being an unessential distraction, but it\u2019s more than just that. Many were prompted to more deeply consider Facebook when founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed by the U.S. congress about Facebook\u2019s role in the 2016 presidential election. Since then, I\u2019ve noticed at least a dozen friends delete their Facebook accounts. And while I haven\u2019t deleted mine outright because it\u2019s my only social connection to family members abroad, decluttering low-value digital distractions on social media has become a priority.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nRemove people who aren\u2019t your friends from your friends list. Acquaintances you might never see or speak to again don\u2019t count as friends. Despite what Facebook would lead you to believe, no one really has 1,000 friends, or even 200 friends (an instructive scientific study on the theoretical social limits of human friendships is called Dunbar\u2019s Number, which states that our brains aren\u2019t capable of keeping tracking of more than 150 people in our social circles).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nFocusing on Intentionality<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe prescription which this book offers to navigating the digital landscape of distractions and rabbit holes is this: focus your online time to a small number of carefully selected activities that support the things you value, and skip everything else.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThis is in direct opposition to the \u201cmaximalist\u201d approach deployed by most by default, where any potential benefit is enough to start using an app or technology that catches your attention. It comes from a scarcity mindset, or a fear that there\u2019s something useful you\u2019ll miss out on, but this book encourages a fear of the opposite. Not missing the small things, but diminishing the large things that we already know give us great value.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n“Thoreau establishes early in Walden: \u201cThe cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe cumulative effect of unessential distractions accumulate to outweigh the price that we pay for them: time we won\u2019t get back.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOnline vs Offline Interactions<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOnline interactions with friends and family generally occur on a narrow band of information: a like, a comment, or a short message. By comparison, offline interactions are rich and occur on a broad band because we utilize massive neuronal power to deduce what\u2019s happening in a face to face social situation. It\u2019s through millions of years of evolution that we perform complicated computational feats in social situations without thinking about it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAn example which the author of the book uses to demonstrate this phenomenon is competitive Rock Paper Scissors players.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n“A strong Rock Paper Scissors player integrates a rich stream of information about their opponent\u2019s body language and recent plays to help approximate their opponent\u2019s mental state and therefore make an educated guess about the next play. These players will also use subtle movements and phrases to prime their opponent to think about a certain play.<\/p>\r\nUnderstanding Rock Paper Scissors champions is important to our purposes because their strategies highlight a foundational endowment shared by every human being on earth: the ability to perform complicated social thinking.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nMaking Optimizations<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nA few optimizations are encouraged in the book, some of which I\u2019ve put into practice and found effective.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nDon\u2019t watch television or movies alone. This restriction allows you to still enjoy these things, but in a more controlled manner that limits their potential for abuse while strengthening social bonds at the same time.<\/li>\r\nRemove social media apps from your phone. You can still access these services from your computer browser when you need, but you might find that you won\u2019t bother much, because they won\u2019t be accessible as a knee-jerk response to boredom.<\/li>\r\nTrack time on your phone and computer, evaluate the data, and make judgements on how to best spend your time. More details on this below.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nTime Tracking<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOver the last year both iOS (Apple) and Android (Google) have deployed time tracking utilities on their smartphone platforms specifically for the purpose of observing usage patterns. Apple calls this Screen Time<\/a> and Google calls it Digital Wellbeing<\/a>, but they do the same thing: they inform you of how much time you\u2019re spending on your phone, and which apps occupy you the most (note: there are alternative apps available also, like the one I’m using which is <\/em>ActionDash<\/em><\/a> – it has Digital Wellbeing’s functionality plus much more<\/em>).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nActionDash<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe results of tracking your phone usage will probably shock you: almost all of us spend much more time looking at our phones than we realize. For many this is a great first step. Track time on your phone first, and then on your laptop. Two tools which I\u2019ve used and can recommend for time and app tracking are Qbserve (Mac) and Rescue Time (Windows & Mac).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIf you’re interested in hearing the principles of this book explained in a podcast, this is a good episode<\/a> with the author of the book featured as a guest on The Minimalists<\/a> podcast.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nUnlike smoking or drinking alcohol, the negative effects of digital distractions are less apparent. Instead of killing you or making you sick, they consume countless small fragments of time, which cumulatively have a hampering effect. Identify, target, and eliminate these and you\u2019ll be better off.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nView all of my highlights from Digital Minimalism<\/a><\/li>\r\nDigital Minimalism by Cal Newport<\/a> on Amazon<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’m vulnerable to digital distractions and you probably are too. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[182],"yoast_head":"\nDigital Minimalism<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n
Since reading this book and learning more about this effect, I have stopped clicking the Like button. As the author of the book states in clear terms: \u201cDon\u2019t click Like. Ever.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
A trend which I first observed in 2017 has been friends deleting social media accounts, particularly Facebook. This is partly due to a generalized feeling of Facebook being an unessential distraction, but it\u2019s more than just that. Many were prompted to more deeply consider Facebook when founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg was interviewed by the U.S. congress about Facebook\u2019s role in the 2016 presidential election. Since then, I\u2019ve noticed at least a dozen friends delete their Facebook accounts. And while I haven\u2019t deleted mine outright because it\u2019s my only social connection to family members abroad, decluttering low-value digital distractions on social media has become a priority.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Remove people who aren\u2019t your friends from your friends list. Acquaintances you might never see or speak to again don\u2019t count as friends. Despite what Facebook would lead you to believe, no one really has 1,000 friends, or even 200 friends (an instructive scientific study on the theoretical social limits of human friendships is called Dunbar\u2019s Number, which states that our brains aren\u2019t capable of keeping tracking of more than 150 people in our social circles).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
The prescription which this book offers to navigating the digital landscape of distractions and rabbit holes is this: focus your online time to a small number of carefully selected activities that support the things you value, and skip everything else.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
This is in direct opposition to the \u201cmaximalist\u201d approach deployed by most by default, where any potential benefit is enough to start using an app or technology that catches your attention. It comes from a scarcity mindset, or a fear that there\u2019s something useful you\u2019ll miss out on, but this book encourages a fear of the opposite. Not missing the small things, but diminishing the large things that we already know give us great value.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
\r\n“Thoreau establishes early in Walden: \u201cThe cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe cumulative effect of unessential distractions accumulate to outweigh the price that we pay for them: time we won\u2019t get back.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOnline vs Offline Interactions<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOnline interactions with friends and family generally occur on a narrow band of information: a like, a comment, or a short message. By comparison, offline interactions are rich and occur on a broad band because we utilize massive neuronal power to deduce what\u2019s happening in a face to face social situation. It\u2019s through millions of years of evolution that we perform complicated computational feats in social situations without thinking about it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nAn example which the author of the book uses to demonstrate this phenomenon is competitive Rock Paper Scissors players.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n“A strong Rock Paper Scissors player integrates a rich stream of information about their opponent\u2019s body language and recent plays to help approximate their opponent\u2019s mental state and therefore make an educated guess about the next play. These players will also use subtle movements and phrases to prime their opponent to think about a certain play.<\/p>\r\nUnderstanding Rock Paper Scissors champions is important to our purposes because their strategies highlight a foundational endowment shared by every human being on earth: the ability to perform complicated social thinking.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nMaking Optimizations<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nA few optimizations are encouraged in the book, some of which I\u2019ve put into practice and found effective.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nDon\u2019t watch television or movies alone. This restriction allows you to still enjoy these things, but in a more controlled manner that limits their potential for abuse while strengthening social bonds at the same time.<\/li>\r\nRemove social media apps from your phone. You can still access these services from your computer browser when you need, but you might find that you won\u2019t bother much, because they won\u2019t be accessible as a knee-jerk response to boredom.<\/li>\r\nTrack time on your phone and computer, evaluate the data, and make judgements on how to best spend your time. More details on this below.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nTime Tracking<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOver the last year both iOS (Apple) and Android (Google) have deployed time tracking utilities on their smartphone platforms specifically for the purpose of observing usage patterns. Apple calls this Screen Time<\/a> and Google calls it Digital Wellbeing<\/a>, but they do the same thing: they inform you of how much time you\u2019re spending on your phone, and which apps occupy you the most (note: there are alternative apps available also, like the one I’m using which is <\/em>ActionDash<\/em><\/a> – it has Digital Wellbeing’s functionality plus much more<\/em>).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nActionDash<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe results of tracking your phone usage will probably shock you: almost all of us spend much more time looking at our phones than we realize. For many this is a great first step. Track time on your phone first, and then on your laptop. Two tools which I\u2019ve used and can recommend for time and app tracking are Qbserve (Mac) and Rescue Time (Windows & Mac).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIf you’re interested in hearing the principles of this book explained in a podcast, this is a good episode<\/a> with the author of the book featured as a guest on The Minimalists<\/a> podcast.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nUnlike smoking or drinking alcohol, the negative effects of digital distractions are less apparent. Instead of killing you or making you sick, they consume countless small fragments of time, which cumulatively have a hampering effect. Identify, target, and eliminate these and you\u2019ll be better off.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nView all of my highlights from Digital Minimalism<\/a><\/li>\r\nDigital Minimalism by Cal Newport<\/a> on Amazon<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’m vulnerable to digital distractions and you probably are too. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[182],"yoast_head":"\nDigital Minimalism<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n
“Thoreau establishes early in Walden: \u201cThe cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.\u201d<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
The cumulative effect of unessential distractions accumulate to outweigh the price that we pay for them: time we won\u2019t get back.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Online interactions with friends and family generally occur on a narrow band of information: a like, a comment, or a short message. By comparison, offline interactions are rich and occur on a broad band because we utilize massive neuronal power to deduce what\u2019s happening in a face to face social situation. It\u2019s through millions of years of evolution that we perform complicated computational feats in social situations without thinking about it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
An example which the author of the book uses to demonstrate this phenomenon is competitive Rock Paper Scissors players.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
\r\n“A strong Rock Paper Scissors player integrates a rich stream of information about their opponent\u2019s body language and recent plays to help approximate their opponent\u2019s mental state and therefore make an educated guess about the next play. These players will also use subtle movements and phrases to prime their opponent to think about a certain play.<\/p>\r\nUnderstanding Rock Paper Scissors champions is important to our purposes because their strategies highlight a foundational endowment shared by every human being on earth: the ability to perform complicated social thinking.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nMaking Optimizations<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nA few optimizations are encouraged in the book, some of which I\u2019ve put into practice and found effective.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nDon\u2019t watch television or movies alone. This restriction allows you to still enjoy these things, but in a more controlled manner that limits their potential for abuse while strengthening social bonds at the same time.<\/li>\r\nRemove social media apps from your phone. You can still access these services from your computer browser when you need, but you might find that you won\u2019t bother much, because they won\u2019t be accessible as a knee-jerk response to boredom.<\/li>\r\nTrack time on your phone and computer, evaluate the data, and make judgements on how to best spend your time. More details on this below.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nTime Tracking<\/h2>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOver the last year both iOS (Apple) and Android (Google) have deployed time tracking utilities on their smartphone platforms specifically for the purpose of observing usage patterns. Apple calls this Screen Time<\/a> and Google calls it Digital Wellbeing<\/a>, but they do the same thing: they inform you of how much time you\u2019re spending on your phone, and which apps occupy you the most (note: there are alternative apps available also, like the one I’m using which is <\/em>ActionDash<\/em><\/a> – it has Digital Wellbeing’s functionality plus much more<\/em>).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nActionDash<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe results of tracking your phone usage will probably shock you: almost all of us spend much more time looking at our phones than we realize. For many this is a great first step. Track time on your phone first, and then on your laptop. Two tools which I\u2019ve used and can recommend for time and app tracking are Qbserve (Mac) and Rescue Time (Windows & Mac).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIf you’re interested in hearing the principles of this book explained in a podcast, this is a good episode<\/a> with the author of the book featured as a guest on The Minimalists<\/a> podcast.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nUnlike smoking or drinking alcohol, the negative effects of digital distractions are less apparent. Instead of killing you or making you sick, they consume countless small fragments of time, which cumulatively have a hampering effect. Identify, target, and eliminate these and you\u2019ll be better off.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nView all of my highlights from Digital Minimalism<\/a><\/li>\r\nDigital Minimalism by Cal Newport<\/a> on Amazon<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’m vulnerable to digital distractions and you probably are too. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[182],"yoast_head":"\nDigital Minimalism<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n
“A strong Rock Paper Scissors player integrates a rich stream of information about their opponent\u2019s body language and recent plays to help approximate their opponent\u2019s mental state and therefore make an educated guess about the next play. These players will also use subtle movements and phrases to prime their opponent to think about a certain play.<\/p>\r\n
Understanding Rock Paper Scissors champions is important to our purposes because their strategies highlight a foundational endowment shared by every human being on earth: the ability to perform complicated social thinking.”<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
A few optimizations are encouraged in the book, some of which I\u2019ve put into practice and found effective.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
Over the last year both iOS (Apple) and Android (Google) have deployed time tracking utilities on their smartphone platforms specifically for the purpose of observing usage patterns. Apple calls this Screen Time<\/a> and Google calls it Digital Wellbeing<\/a>, but they do the same thing: they inform you of how much time you\u2019re spending on your phone, and which apps occupy you the most (note: there are alternative apps available also, like the one I’m using which is <\/em>ActionDash<\/em><\/a> – it has Digital Wellbeing’s functionality plus much more<\/em>).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nActionDash<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nThe results of tracking your phone usage will probably shock you: almost all of us spend much more time looking at our phones than we realize. For many this is a great first step. Track time on your phone first, and then on your laptop. Two tools which I\u2019ve used and can recommend for time and app tracking are Qbserve (Mac) and Rescue Time (Windows & Mac).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nIf you’re interested in hearing the principles of this book explained in a podcast, this is a good episode<\/a> with the author of the book featured as a guest on The Minimalists<\/a> podcast.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nUnlike smoking or drinking alcohol, the negative effects of digital distractions are less apparent. Instead of killing you or making you sick, they consume countless small fragments of time, which cumulatively have a hampering effect. Identify, target, and eliminate these and you\u2019ll be better off.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nView all of my highlights from Digital Minimalism<\/a><\/li>\r\nDigital Minimalism by Cal Newport<\/a> on Amazon<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’m vulnerable to digital distractions and you probably are too. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[182],"yoast_head":"\nDigital Minimalism<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n
The results of tracking your phone usage will probably shock you: almost all of us spend much more time looking at our phones than we realize. For many this is a great first step. Track time on your phone first, and then on your laptop. Two tools which I\u2019ve used and can recommend for time and app tracking are Qbserve (Mac) and Rescue Time (Windows & Mac).<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
If you’re interested in hearing the principles of this book explained in a podcast, this is a good episode<\/a> with the author of the book featured as a guest on The Minimalists<\/a> podcast.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nUnlike smoking or drinking alcohol, the negative effects of digital distractions are less apparent. Instead of killing you or making you sick, they consume countless small fragments of time, which cumulatively have a hampering effect. Identify, target, and eliminate these and you\u2019ll be better off.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nView all of my highlights from Digital Minimalism<\/a><\/li>\r\nDigital Minimalism by Cal Newport<\/a> on Amazon<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I’m vulnerable to digital distractions and you probably are too. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[182],"yoast_head":"\nDigital Minimalism<\/title>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n
Unlike smoking or drinking alcohol, the negative effects of digital distractions are less apparent. Instead of killing you or making you sick, they consume countless small fragments of time, which cumulatively have a hampering effect. Identify, target, and eliminate these and you\u2019ll be better off.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
I’m vulnerable to digital distractions and you probably are too. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[182],"yoast_head":"\n