Digital Minimalism is 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.

Principles of Digital Minimalism

The cost of anything is the amount of life (time) which is required to be exchanged for it.

1. Clutter is costly — Cluttering our time and attention with too many devices, apps, and services creates an overall negative cost that is greater than the small benefits that each individual item provides in isolation.

2. Optimization is important — To truly extract full potential benefit of a technology we should evaluate how the technology supports something that we deeply value.

3. Intentionality is satisfying — We can derive significant satisfaction if we commit to being more intentional about how we engage with new technologies.

For Practicing Digital Minimalism

1. Spend Time Alone

We need solitude to thrive as human beings, and in recent years, without realizing it, we’ve been systematically reducing this crucial ingredient from our lives.‍

‘Solitude is about what’s happening in your brain, not the environment around you. It is a subjective state in which your mind is free from input from other minds.’ - Kethledge and Erwin

Avoiding others’ minds intruding on our own is crucial for solitude. Solitude also requires us to move past reacting to information created by other people and focus our inner thoughts and experiences. The state of Solitude allows us to explore new ideas, develop a better understanding of the self and value social interactions post solitude.

Solitude Deprivation is a state in which you spend close to zero time alone with your own thoughts. Smartphones are the primary enabler of solitude deprivation. To avoid this state, we should spend regular time away from these devices and intentionally seek solitude.

Achieving solitude by isolating at some remote locations is not practical for most people. However, in our everyday life it can be done by going on long walks, leaving your phone behind. If you cannot leave the phone behind, you can make it hard to access by keeping it in the car or at the bottom of your sack. Writing your thoughts in a journal or as personal letter could help in understanding yourself deeper.

2. Don’t Click Like

The Social Media Paradox

Depending on whom you ask, social media is either making us lonely or happy.

In March 2017, the NPR published a story titled ‘Feeling Lonely? Too Much Time on Social Media Might Be Why.’ The story was based on two studies which asked questions to the participants to measure their Perceived Social Isolation (PSI) — a loneliness metric. The researchers found that the more someone used social media, the more likely they were to be lonely.

After NPR story two members of Facebook’s internal research team published a contradicting blog. The authors pointed to several research studies which found that when users received ‘targeted’ and ‘composed’ information (comments) written by someone they know they felt better.

These duelling studies seem to present a paradox — social media makes us feel both connected and lonely, happy and sad.

The studies that found positive results focused on specific behaviours of social media users, while the studies that found negative results focused on overall use of these services. And that is why they led to different conclusions. The reason being the more you use social media to interact with your network, the less time you devote to offline communication.

Offline interactions require our brains to process large amounts of information about subtle analog cues like body language, expressions, voice tone etc. The low-bandwidth chatter supported by many digital communication tools leaves most of our high-performance social processing networks underused, reducing these tools’ ability to satisfy our intense sociality.

Using social media isn’t directly making people unhappy but it tends to take people away from the real-world socializing which is more valuable for our well-being. The value generated by a Facebook comment or an Instagram like is minor compared to the value generated by an analog conversation or shared real-world activity.

Reclaim Conversation-centric Communication.

The theory of ‘Conversation-Concentric Communication’ argues that conversations are the only form of interaction that is important for maintaining a relationship.

Anything textual or non-interactive — basically, all social media, email, text, and instant messaging — doesn’t count as conversation and should instead be categorized as mere connection.

Low quality connections are unwanted distractions. Replying throughout the day to text messages results in pseudo-conversations. Clicking like or commenting on social media posts make us feel that these interactions are a reasonable alternative to proper conversations. Reducing ‘connections’ from your life will force you to engage in more meaningful conversations.

· Limit texts for information gathering or coordinating but not for open-ended topics.

· Keep your phone in Do Not Disturb mode by default.

· Schedule specific times for consolidated low-quality connections.

· If someone instigates a low-quality connection suggest a call or meeting.

· Set aside and communicate specific time set times when you will be always available for conversation.

3. Reclaim Leisure

“We live in a world that is working to eliminate touch as one of our senses, to minimize the use of our hands to do things except poke at a screen.”

Value you receive from a pursuit is often proportional to the energy invested. High-quality leisure is crucial for human happiness. We forget about insufficient high-quality leisure we have because we fill this time with digital noise.

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.

4. Join the Attention Resistance

Attention resistance is using high-tech tools with disciplined operating procedures to conduct surgical strikes on popular attention economy services — dropping in to extract value, and then slipping away before the attention traps spring shut.

If you think quitting social media is not feasible for you,

1. List the most important benefits it provides you — specific activities that you would really miss if you quit.

2. Imagine if the platform started charging you for usage by the minute, how much time would you really need to spend per week for those specific activities.

3. For most people, the answer is significantly small as compared to the time they spend. (e.g. keeping up with friends and family on Facebook would take 20–30 mins per week but users spend more than 300 mins per week on Facebook, scrolling aimlessly).

Smartphones are the preferred Trojan Horse of the digital attention economy, before them social media companies could only monetize your attention when you were sitting at the computer. Smartphones enabled companies in the attention economy to deliver advertisements to users at all points during their day and gather data from the users to target advertisements with unprecedented precision.

The smartphone versions of social media services are much more adept at hijacking your attention than their websites. Attention traps like the slot machine (new random posts every time you refresh your feed) are mobile only innovations.

So, if you cannot quit social media, delete the apps from your mobile and use websites. That way you can use specific features which are important for you but on your own terms.

To join the attention resistance, transform your devices (laptops, tablets, phones) into computers that are general purpose in the long run, but are effectively single purpose in any given moment. Tools like ‘Freedom’ allows its users to control when then can access any website or app.

Instead of occasionally blocking some sites when working on a particularly hard project, block them by default and make them accessible on an intentional schedule.

Carrying a basic non-smart phone for essential communication could also help in resisting distractions provided by smart phones.

Professionals who must use social media for their work do not consider it as a source of entertainment. Rather they have following approach:

· Define purpose of each service (Facebook for family/friends, Twitter for professional development).

· Follow selected small number of accounts/handles related to your specific purpose.

· Have a careful plan for how they use different platforms for “maximizing good information and cutting out the waste.”

For news, opt for ‘Slow Media’ to maximize the quality of what you consume and the conditions under which you consume it. It’s counterproductive to expose yourself to incomplete, redundant, and often contradictory information. Vetted reporting appearing in established newspapers tends to provide more quality than social media chatter and breaking news.