At its core, Digital Minimalism is an invitation to spend our most precious resource – time - in more meaningful activities, in solitude and in strengthening relationships that truly matter. And in doing so, enriching our lives – offline. Because, as the good professor says, humans are not wired to be constantly wired.

1. Digital Minimalism
On Living Better with Less
Technology
Cal Newport
Book Summary

2. In today’s modern hyper-connected existence ‘a moment can feel
strangely flat if it exists solely, in itself.’

3. These technologies as a whole have managed beyond the minor roles for
which we initially adopted them. increasingly, they dictate how we behave
and how we feel, and somehow coerce us to use them more than we think
is healthy, often at the expense of other activities we find more valuable.
What’s making us uncomfortable is this feeling of losing control.

4. Tech companies encourage behavioral addiction through intermittent
positive reinforcement and the drive for social approval.
Technologies are in many cases specifically designed to trigger addictive
behavior. Compulsive use, in this context, is not the result of a character
flaw, but instead the realization of a massively profitable business plan.

5. It’s hard to permanently reform your digital life through tips and tricks alone.
To reestablish control, we need to move beyond tweaks and instead rebuild
our relationship with technology from scratch, using our deeply held values
as a foundation.

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

7. The core principles of Digital Minimalism;
Principle #1. Clutter is costly
Principle #2. Optimization is important
Principle #3. Intentionality is satisfying

8. 1. Clutter is costly. Cluttering your time and attention with too many devices,
apps and services creates an overall negative cost that can swamp the
small benefits that each individual item provides in isolation.
2. Optimization is important. Digital minimalists first decide if a particular
technology supports something they value. Then to truly extract its full
potential benefit, they think carefully about how they’ll use the technology.
3. Intentionality is satisfying. Derive significant satisfaction from the general
commitment to being more intentional about how they engage with new
technologies.

9. The Digital Declutter process.
1. Put aside a thirty-day period during which you will take a break from
optional technologies on your life.
2. During this thirty-day break, explore and rediscover activities and
behaviors that you find satisfying and meaningful.
3. At the end of the break, reintroduce optional technologies into your life,
starting from a blank slate. For each technology you reintroduce, determine
what value it serves in your life and how specifically you will use it so as to
maximize this value.

10. Don’t think of declutter as only a detox experiment. The goal is not to simply
give yourself a break from technology but to spark a permanent
transformation of your digital life.

11. Solitude is valuable. Insights and emotional balance comes from unhurried
self-reflection.
Solitude is a subjective state in which your mind is free from input from other
minds. It requires you to move past reacting to information created by other
people and instead focus on your own thoughts and experiences –
wherever you happen to be.

12. We now suffer from solitude deprivation – a state in which you spend close
to zero time alone with your own thoughts and free from inputs from other
minds.
The idea of being ‘alone’ can seem unappealing and we’ve been sold the
idea that more connectivity is better than less.

13. When you avoid solitude, you miss out on the positive things it brings; the
ability to clarify hard problems, to regulate your emotions, the ability to build
moral courage and to strengthen relationships.

14. Humans are not wired to be constantly wired.

15. Need to alternate between regular time alone with your thoughts and
regular connection.
There is nothing wrong with connectivity, but if you don’t balance it with
regular doses of solitude, its benefits will diminish.

16. A shift that’s occurred over the past decade. The transformation of the cell
phone from an occasionally useful tool to something we can never be apart
from. The rise of cell phone as a vital appendage.
90% of your daily life, the presence of a cell phone doesn’t really matter.
They’re useful, but its hyperbolic to believe its ubiquitous presence is vital.
Practice this. Leave your phone at home.

17. Take long walks. Walking is a fantastic source of solitude.

18. Write letters to yourself. Write a journal, its an excellent mechanism for
generating solitude. It not only frees you from outside inputs, but also
provides a conceptual scaffolding on which to sort and organize your
thinking,

19. We are interested in the social world because our brains are adapted to
automatically practice social thinking during any moments of cognitive
downtime.

20. The key issue is that using social media tends to take people away from the
real world socializing that’s massively more valuable. The more you use
social media, the less time you tend to devote to offline interactions.

21. Make the distinction between connection (the low band-width interactions
that define our online social lives) and conversation (the much richer, high
band-width communication that defines real-world encounters between
humans)

22. The philosophy of conversation-connection argues that conversation is the
only form of interaction that in some sense counts towards maintaining a
relationship.
In the philosophy, connection is downgraded to a logistical role.

23. The conversation-centric communication requires sacrifices. If you adopt
this philosophy, you’ll almost certainly reduce the number of people with
whom you whom you have an active relationship.
Real conversations take time, and the total number of people for whom you
will uphold this standard will be significantly less that the total number of
people you can follow, retweet or ‘like’.

24. Don’t click ‘Like’ or leave comments on social media.
Taking a hard stance against these seemingly innocuous is that they teach
your mind that connection is a reasonable alternative to conversation. If you
eliminate these trivial interactions, cold turkey, you send your mind a clear
message: conversation is what counts – don’t be distracted from this reality
by the shiny stuff on your screen.

25. By refusing to use social media icons and comments to interact means that
some people will inevitably fall out of your social orbit. Let them go.
The idea that its valuable to maintain vast numbers of weak-tie social
connections is largely an invention of the past decade.
Adopt the baseline rule that you’ll no longer use social media as a tool for
low quality nudges.

26. Consolidate texting.
This practice suggests that you keep your phone in Do Not Disturb mode by
default. Or set a schedule that turns the phone to this mode in
predetermined times.
To major motivations for this. 1) allow you to be more present when you are
not texting. Provides anxiety reduction as our brains don’t react well to
constant disruptive interruptions. 2) it can upgrade the nature of your
relationships.

27. Hold conversation office hours.
Put aside set times on set days when you are always available for
conversation. Once you set these hours, promote it with people you care.

28. The most successful digital minimalists start by renovating what they do with
their free time –cultivating high-quality leisure.
When the void is filled, you no longer need distractions to help you avoid it.

29. High quality leisure lessons.
1. prioritize demanding activity over passive consumption.
2. use skills to produce valuable things in the physical world.
3. seek activities that require real-world, structured social interactions.

30. How to develop high quality leisure.
1. Fix or build something every week. Learning and applying new skills is an
important source of high-quality leisure.
2. Schedule your low quality leisure
3. Join something
4. Follow leisure plans. Without a well considered approach to your high
quality leisure, it’s easy for your commitment to these pursuits to degrade
due to the friction of everyday life.

31. Developing Leisure plans.
1. Seasonal leisure plan. A good seasonal plan contains objectives and
habits that you intend to honor in the upcoming season.
2. Weekly leisure plan. At the beginning of each week set aside time to
review you seasonal plan. Come up with a plan for how your leisure
activities will fit into your schedule for the upcoming week.
This weekly ritual can lead you to begin fighting for more leisure
opportunities. Being systematic about your leisure activities can significantly
increase the relaxation you enjoy each week.

32. If you are going to use social media, stay away from the mobile versions of
these services, as these pose a significant risk to your time and attention.
Delete social media from your phone.

33. Turn your devices into single purpose computers.
If you don’t need social media for your work, set up a schedule that blocks
sites and apps completely with the exception of a few hours in the evening.
The ideal single-purpose computing is more compatible with our human
attention systems.

34. Embrace slow media.
In the age in which the digital attention economy is shoveling more and
more clickbait towards us and fragmenting our focus into emotionally
charged shards, the right response is to become more mindful in our media
consumption.