digital-minimalism.md

digital-minimalism.md

Introduction:

• How can we maximize the benefits and minimize the harms of the internet? The book tackles that question.
• Too many people think that they have become a slave to their devices.
• Why can't we just resolve to be more mindful, make resolutions or use will power? It's increasingly clear from data that this doesn't work for most (almost all) people.
• You need a more deep seated philosophy for technology use. Digital minimalism is a philosophy that the author thinks will be most effective.
• Ruthelessly reduce time spend online on a handful on meaningul activities. The key to thrive is a high-tech word is to spend much less time using technology.
• Solution: take a drastic step of not using anything that's not essential for 30 days. Slowly integrate only the most valuable technologies into your life.

Chapter 1:

• Technological tools (like facebook and iPhone) started off as good to have things at the beginning. But now, we're hooked, few predicted this. We wouldn't have picked them in the first place if we knew how much time we'd be spending on these platforms.
• All of this is driven by companies who learnt that the way to maximize profits is to maximize the time people spend on these devices. This is an example of what the Ted Kaczynski suggested: that the industrial system cares more about itself than the well-being of people.
• All these big companies are competing for the bottom of your brain stem. They are putting slot machines in our pockets.
• Addiction: the use of substance or behavior which are compulsively persued despite adverse consequences.
• Why social media is addictive? Intermittent positive reinforcement and drive for social approval.

Chapter 2:

• Small changes such as turning off notifications are temporary fixes. And easy to fall back (we're basically on an unstable maxima).
• 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."
• Use Facebook because you might miss something there -- this is a ridiculous argument. You should only use something if they give you clear and precise benefits.
• If you want entertainment and connection with friends, there are likely better ways to get there instead of using technology.
• Work backward from your deeply held values and let in only things that matter. "Is this the best way to use technology to support this value?"
• Principles of digital minimalists:
  • P1: Clutter is massively costly (even if each individual elements provide minor benefits)
    • 5 hours of occasional Facebook every week is very expensive. It interrupts deep work sessions, adds attention residue, and make you tired. If you remove Facebook, it's more than 5 hours that you get. You get long uninterrupted hours to focus which massively increase your value in the long term.
    • If you're using Twitter for getting interesting ideas, can't you get the same ideas from getting up an RSS feed to top blogs? Or by attending conferences?
    • The minutes of our life are the most expensive commodity. Give them out sparsely.
  • P2: Optimization is important (to counter all the things big organizations are doing to control our minds)
    • Law of diminishing returns. As you increase the resources invested in a process, the output diminishes over time. So optimize to some extent, and don't optimize it further.
    • Eg. don't watch netflix alone, remove social media apps from phones, etc.
  • P3: Intentionality is satisfying (doing the above is satisfying)
    • Amish don't reject technology. They act backward on what's most useful. They carefully monitor the benefits of each technology, trying it (on person) and carefully observing outcomes before adopting it. They adopt only if they have good evidence that it is good.
    • Intention trumps convenience. Adopt things intentionally. Losing small positives is okay.

Chapter 3:

• How can you best adopt digital clutter? Using digital declutter.
  • Remove optional technologies for 30 days
  • Rediscover other activities and behaviors that you find meaningful.
  • Reintroduce technologies from a blank slate.
• Steps for decluttering:
  • S1: Define rules. Specify which ones.
    • Remove all tools that won't significantly interrupt your current life.
    • Decide how, when, where you'll be using each tool. Have a blanket ban whenever possible.
    • Or alternatively, pick only tools that are extremely necessary for you and blanket ban everything else.
    • Eg. Facebook, Messenger, YouTube, sports news websites (MMA, cricket, etc.,), Instagram, Twitter, Whatsapp, Phone.
  • S2: Take a 30-day break
    • Initial days are going to be hard. You have the urge to do something distracting, but won't find anything. Take abouve 2 weeks to flip this.
    • Find high quality alternatives. Explore extensively what they can be in the free time (eg. exercise, learn a new skill, socialize, read books, etc).
    • Eg. you can finish 8 books in a month that you wouldn't have otherwise read. helps people engage in creative pursuits.
  • S3: Reintroduce technology
    • Does this technology clearly and unambigously support any of my deep values? If yes, think, is this the best way to support this value? If yes, think closely about how to use it to maximize benefits and minimize harms (specify when and where to use it). Then introduce it.
• My thoughts:
  • Setting rules for myself, thinking closely about each platform:
    • Phone: Turn the phone on for only 4 hours everyday. All messages I get outside of these hours are not important. (11am - 1pm, 6pm - 8pm)
    • Whatsapp: Use whatsapp only in the hours that my phone is turned on.
    • Facebook, Instagram, Twitter: It doesn't provide any notable value, it would be okay to leave these platforms for 30 days.
    • YouTube: It occasionally provides massive value. It's possible for me to get that value by downloading the video and then watching it (instead of entering their website).
    • News: I need to avoid all kinds of news including MMA, cricket or the new york times.
  • How do I implement the above rules?
    • Mac: Turn on content restrictions (with passcode to change anything).
    • Windows: Always keep the blockers on, on chrome.
    • iPhone: Turn on content restrictions (with passcode to change anything).
    • iPad: Each time I take iPad to my bed, I need to forget WiFi.
    • Tag it on the calendar each time I break a rule.
    • Go out of my way to avoid unnecessary information (eg. just watching the image of a chess board triggers the desire to play chess, listening to friends talk about cricket makes me want to watch it, etc.)
    • I'm starting a dry run of this today (20th July), and will lock this in for 30 days soon. In this period, I'll keep observing my distraction activity and keep changing my routines.
    • Exceptions:
      • Saturday morning, 9am - 2pm.
  • High quality replacements:
    • Reading books on the iPad while listening to audible.
    • Reading papers and annotating them.
    • Talking to friends and family on calls.
    • Workout. Cook. Meditate.
    • Mindful eating.
    • Listen to podcasts. (Lex, Sam Harris, Tim Ferris)
    • Go on solitude walks.

Chapter 4:

• Spending time without distraction for long periods has historically shown to be massively effective for people who did high impact work.
• Lincoln left the white house to a cottage nearby: it gave his the time and space to think.
• Solitude: a subjective state in which your mind is free from input from other minds. Even any kind of technology or books. Just take a pen, book and write.
• What are the benefits?
  • "All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone"
  • New ideas, understanding the self, closeness to others.
• People who spent long periods of time alone: Descartes, Newton, Locke, Pascal, Spinoza, Kant, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard. They were able to live influential lives without social connection.
• Technology interrupts solitude. They give us inputs from other minds in short doses.
• Most people underestimate the amount of time they spend on their smartphones. (by around 3x)
• Solitude Deprivation: A state in which you spend close to zero time alone with your own thoughts and free from input from other minds.
• This is evidenced by teenages use of smart phones (they spend upto 9 hours per day on them). What kinds of problems does such a demographic face?
  • Anxiety suddenly shot up in students who were raised in the smartphone era.
  • Higher rates of teen depression and suicide skyrocketed. They're having the biggest mental health crisis in decades.
  • Not having solitude time, doesn't give their mind the time to reflect or redirect that energy to household chores.
• "Humans are not wired to be constantly wired."
• How can we find solitude in this new world? We need to setup a way to switch from solitude to connection easily. Practices:
  • Leave your phone at home.
    • In 90% of your life, having a phone only provides incremental benefits.
  • Take long walks. While taking a book with you.
    • If you want entertainment, take walks in good weather.
  • Write letters to yourself.
    • Just continously writing clearly helped Cal clarify his thoguhts. On a wide range of topics. (eg. helps think about clearly about what's a good environment to live in, etc.)

Chapter 5:

• Brain devotes a massive amount of resources towards mentalizing (developing a theory of mind). Our brains are social computers. So be careful before you make changes to them.
• Default mode network gets activated when you take a break, or when you do tasks that involve social cognition. This is evidence that when you're doing nothing, your brain defaults to thinking about your social life. Latest research: DMN triggers interest in social life.
• Data: the more time you spend on social media, the more isolated you become. The more links you click, the sadder you feel.
• Offline interaction is much more rewarding than online interaction. Have a few deep relationships instead of a lot of surface level ones.
• Texting doesn't count towards connection. Video call or face to face conversations do.
• Practices:
  • Don't click like, don't leave comments. It can be used to manipulate you. You can trick yourself into thinking of it as a good way to maintain social life. Conversation is the only think can count.
  • Tell people you're not using social media to avoid people thinking you're being rude.
  • Reply to texts in chunks. Reply, brief back and forth before telling them that you have to go.
  • Hold conversation office hours. 5.30pm everyday online? Offline hours: 6pm every Saturday at this place.

Chapter 6:

• High quality leisure: leisure activities that you enjoy in themselves.
• The Money Mustache is a good example of something who found HQL. Spends most of his time doing the things he likes. Especially building things with their hands.
• Roosevelt regularly boxed (until a hard blow detached his left retina), practiced jujitsu, skinny-dipped in the Potomac, and read at the rate of one book per day.
• Bennett principle: screen tapping makes us more tired than what we started with. You'll feel better if you instead actually do something that's hard.
• People like building things with their own hands. Can provide deeper satisfaction.
• Chunks of having nothing to do and wasting time are over rated. Just sleep to recover.
• Leisure lessions:
  • Prioritize demanding activity over passive consumption.
  • Use skills to produce physical things in the world.
  • Supercharged socializing with board games.
• Practices:
  • Fix or build something every week.
  • Schedule low quality leisure. Plan high quality leisure (weekly, monthly, quarterly).
  • Join something (MMA / Gym).

Chapter 7:

• Facebook tries to misrepresent data by saying "it really comes down to how you use technology", keeping most of their focus on the small positives.
• Practices:
  • Convert your devices into single purpose computers.
  • Dumb down your phone.

Action steps:

• Don't follow unnecessary things and people. Follow only things that are most valuable to you.

Thinking:

• How much better would my life have been if I spent all of those minutes being addicted (to whatever platform) on somehting more productive like reading a book? Massively. The compound effect would have taken me to the next level.
• What are the platforms that I've been wasting time on? Facebook, YouTube, instagram, chess, etc., You know these are bad, if you're continuing to use them, it means that you're addicted.
• One way to overcome addiction: clearly see the dynamics of what's happening in such situations. How the companies are actively working on exploiting your neuro circuitry.
• The human brain always want to pick the path of least resistance. Having network tools handy gives a least resistance path to the brain. To live a meaningful life, you need to setup your environment in such a way that the path of least resistance is the one that enables you to get closer to your goals.