Reflections on Digital Minimalism

2024/03/18

Recently, I read the fantastic self help/philosophy book Digital Minimalism By Cal Newport. This book takes the ideas and lifestyle choices minimalism dictates and applies them to our modern digital age; wherein we are constantly bombarded with information. I wanted to share some thoughts I have had since reading this book and explain some philosophies behind my relationship with technology.

Introduction

By and large, when someone gets on their phone or computer recreationally they do not get on with an idea in mind. This leads to opening one of many social media apps which tell them what to consume. The worst offender of this is any platform promoting short-form vertical video such as Tiktok or YouTube Shorts. When you open these services, you are immediately brought straight to a video recommended based on preferences and behaviors specific to you collected by the respective apps. They are trying to bait you into scrolling (which by the way, the gesture of scrolling is proven to release dopamine) and mindlessly consuming whatever videos are thrown at you. This tactic is highly effective, and often I find myself opening the YouTube app and immediately clicking a short; other times I open the app and it navigates to the shorts tab for me. All of this to say, our attention is up for grabs to be sold to the highest bidder. For this reason, it is important that we become more self aware of these habits being pushed onto us and in general be more conscious of how we use our electronics and specifically smartphones, computers, smart TVs, tablets, etc. This book gave me a lot of great ideas for how I can adjust my lifestyle and how I choose to spend my time.

Conscious Consumption

It begins with choosing how you spend your time. For me, this means before I even turn on my computer, phone or TV, I need to have a purpose for using that device. For example, I took my computer out of sleep to write this blog post and put into words what has been going through my head since reading this book. After this, I might decide to deliberately watch and episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm before I commence a reading session. Beyond recreation, this also means being aware of when I want to be productive and when I want to relax and do something leisurely. To that end, I have decided to implement the change that for every leisurely activity I do that is akin to junk food (video games, YouTube videos, TV binge watching, etc) I must do something that is akin to health conscious food (Hiking, skiing, sports, exercising, etc). I believe that making the conscious choice to create this balance will give me the opportunity to discover new hobbies and activities I can fill my time with, alongside making the junk food all the more satisfying. I often feel guilty when I have only done junk food recreation without balancing it out with something more fulfilling; I hope this change in behavior can help with curbing that feeling.

Ethical Software

I am a bit of a radical when it comes to what I feel would be ideal in regards to societies relationship with software. At the moment, a strategy that has proven to be effective in making money with software is to cram as much functionality into one service. Look at something like Facebook. Off the top of my head, Facebook’s feature set includes:

Why are we okay with Facebook being a 1000-in-1 product when we scoff at the idea of jamming any other products together in a similar manner? Everyone knows 3-in-1 shampoos and kitchen appliances which do the job of several other kitchen appliances are complete garbage, so why do we not draw the same line for social medias? For Facebook, centralizing everything to one service means you spend more time on their network in turn meaning they present you more advertisements; if it was not in social media conglomerates best interest to do as many things as possible they would simply stick to whatever they do best, not unlike a toaster only providing one function. I believe it would be in everyone’s best interest to start finding tools that serve one purpose and do it well. Here are some tools I use on my computers and phone to try and meet this goal

Use A Linux Based OS

A lot of people will scoff at this idea, but I truly believe it is in societies best interest to shift from using proprietary operating systems to free and open source Linux based OSes. While MacOS is the lesser of two evils, it is still trying to sell you on the Apple ecosystem alongside providing the option to subscribe to several subscriptions for media alongside cloud storage. Meanwhile, Windows is a whole different beast. Windows used to be less evil, but since Windows 10, things have gotten a lot worse. Microsoft has started to integrate ads into the operating system anywhere they can cram them, and they also collect user data to sell to advertising agencies. Your computer’s operating system is at the core of your computers functionality, and to the end of single purpose applications, Linux serves one purpose: facilitating computing. Linux is not trying to sell you on their web browser, or recommend you play Candy Crush Saga; Windows tells you what to do while Linux waits for your command. It is vital you reverse the paradigm of modern computing by using an operating system that gives you complete control. My recommendation for dipping your toes into Linux is trying out Fedora Linux. It showcases the latest and greatest in the Linux world while still maintaining stability. Once you have gotten comfortable in Fedora, you may choose to call it home, or move to an OS where you do everything from scratch ala Arch Linux or Gentoo Linux. Whatever Linux distribution you decide on, it will be better than the mainstream offerings.

Use tools that give you the option to look under the hood

Generally speaking, black boxes should make people uncomfortable. When you use an Amazon Alexa or other modern internet of things tech, you have no idea what the hell it is doing and that should be concerning. I am not suggesting it is necessary to fully understand the implementation of everything you use, but having the option is a good sign it isn’t trying to do anything it should not be doing. Beyond ethics, tools that offer great deals of customization generally are a better bet than a set it and forget it alternative as they let you fine tune the tool to your use case.

Create a concise computing environment

In general, simpler tools are better than convoluted tools. This goes back to the idea of single purpose tools which do not convolute fulfilling their purpose. Recently, I have been trying to move closer to this goal by shifting much of my computing time to the command line. The command line imposes limitations that forces a program to be simple in functionality and usage. Once you have learned the paradigm most command line programs follow, the gains in productivity are tremendous. Additionally, it is an environment where distractions are scarce. I find myself more productive the more I simplify my workflow and computing experience. My favorite programs that run in the terminal include Vim and Cmus. These programs both serve a single purpose: Vim edits text and Cmus plays audio files. For any graphical program, barring programs centered around graphics, there is more than likely a command line alternative.

Create a clean computing environment

Windows and MacOS revel in complicating computing with their user interfaces. I have switched all my computers to using the i3 tiling window manager for the sake of simplifying the way I interact with my computer. i3 Does one thing: it manages your open windows. When you open a new program, it makes space for it and appropriately aligns it with the other programs you have open. When I open a new program, there is no shuffling around windows to line everything up perfectly which for me reduces a lot of cognitive load I could be using to accomplish what I am actually trying to do. Other parts of my desktop are handled by entirely different programs; feh gives me a desktop wallpaper, polybar gives me a status bar on the top of my monitor, and dmenu allows me to open new programs.

Make your smartphone stupider

Your phone is probably doing too much by entertaining, educating, and providing communication all at the same time. I am too young to have solid memories of before phones became do-everything-devices, but I think it is time we pull the reigns on what we expect the smartphone to do. In my life, this meant uninstalling basically every app that didn’t come with my phone (and beyond that, I did purge some pre-installed apps that I felt diverged too far from what I want out of a phone). I expect my phone to a few tasks, and I do not expect it to do any of them simultaneously. The apps I do choose to keep on my phone all serve a single utilitarian purpose, and they all bring great enhancements to my day to day life. These apps include music, maps, texting, calling, and authentication; everything else has to go. I also find that it is beneficial to keep my phone either at home, in the car, or in my backpack when not in use. I have gotten into the habit of doing this and have found living day to day life a lot more fulfilling than I did when my phone was an appendage to my body.

Conclusion

Digital Minimalism covers some of the topics I discussed, but a lot of the book is about meaningful lifestyle changes, and these were some of the applications of those changes I find beneficial. You might find that digital minimalism looks different in your day to day life, but regardless, the main point is to be conscious about how you are using technology. Don’t let yourself become a zombie who slobbers over the newest tech and instead decide what technology will enhance your life the most; leave the rest behind.