Digital Minimalism - Cal Newport

•  Frenzied activity.... the fact that it's increasingly beyond control. Few WANT to spend so much time online. ... behavioral addictions. The URGE to check Twitter or REFRESH become a nervous twitch that shatters uninterrupted time into shards too small to support the presence neccessary for an international life.
• This irresistible attraction to screens is leading people to feel as though they're ceding more and more of their autonomy when it comes to deciding how they direct their attention.
• They joined Facebook to stay in touch with friends across the country, and then ended up unable to maintain an uninterrupted conversation with the friend sitting across the table.
• In an open marketplace for attention, darker emotions attract more eyeballs than positive and constructive thoughts.
• What Andrew Sullivan meant when he lamented: "I used to be human being."
• This reality creates a jumbled emotional landscape where you can simultaneously cherish your ability to discover inspiring photos on Instagram while fretting about this app's ability to invade the evening hours you used to spend talking with friends or reading.
• I call it digital minimalism, and it applies the belief that less can be more to our relationship with digital tools.
• Marcus Aurelius asked: "You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life?"
• you'll encounter many examples of digital minimalists who experiences massively positive changes by ruthlessly reducing their time spent online to focus on a small number of high-value activities.
• The minimalists would argue that this perception is backward: what's extreme is how much time EVERYONE ELSE spends staring at their screens. The key to thriving in our high-tech world, they've learned, is to spend much less time using technology.
• What's making us uncomfortable is this feeling of LOOSING CONTROLL
• It's not about usefulness, it's about autonomy
• Checking your likes is the new smoking
• "This thing is a slot machine," Harris says early in the interview while holding up his smartphone.
• Well every time I check my phone, I am playing the slot machine to see "What did I get"
• Technology is not neutral  - they want you to use it in particular ways and for long periods of time. Because that is how they make their money.
• If the ap is only one tap away on the phone in your pocked, a moderate behavioral addiction will make it really hard to resist checking your account again and again throughout the day
• (very low hurdle (=cost) to succumb to addiction)
• how tech companies encourage behavioral addiction: intermittent positive reinforcement and the drive for social approval
• rewards delivered unpredictably are far more enticing than those delivered with a known pattern (=slot machine)
• "gambling" every time they post something
• Will you get likes
• one facebook engineer calls "bright dings of pseudo-pleasure"
• sparked by unrpedictable feedback: most articles end up duds, but occasionally you'll land on one that creates a strong emotion
• Facebook: "How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?" - we need to give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone likes or commented on a photo or a post or whatever
• The universal urge to immediately answer an incoming text, even in the most inappropriate or dangerous conditions (think: behind the wheel)
• Compulsive use is not the result of a character flaw, but instead the realization of a massively profitable business plan. 
• We didnt sign up for the digital lives we now lead.
• Our current unease with new technologies is not really about whether or not they're useful. It's instead about autonomy.
• we need to make a serious strategy - to swat aside the forces manipulating us toward behavioral addictions
• What all of us who struggle with these issues need is a philosophy of technology use. Something that covers from the ground up which digital tools we allow into our life, for what reasons, and under what constraints.
• Introspection
• Happily miss out on everything else
• By working backward from their deep values to their technology choices, digital minimalists transform these innovations from a source of distraction into tools to support a life well lived.
• Constrasts starkly with the maximalist philosophy that most people deploy by default - a mind-set in which any potentital for benefit is enough to start using a technology that catches your attentoin
• Why do I need to use facebook - I would ask. I can tell you exactly - what if theres something useful to you in there that you're missing
• minimalists dont mind missing out on small things, what worries them much more is diminishing the large things they already know for sure make a good life good
• that now that his phone is no longer glued to his hand
• he got rid of his smartphone and replaced it with a basic flip phone
• the core question: "Is this the best way to use technology to support my value"
• In true minimalist fashion didnt settle for simply deciding to use instagram, he instead through hard about how best to integrate this tool into his life. Posting one picture every week of whatever personal art project he happens to be working on
• His own father wrote him a handwritten note every week during his freshman year of college.
• cluttering their time - creates an overall negative costs - that swamp the small benefits that each individual item provides in isolation.
• Think carefully about HOW you'll use the technology
• Being more intentional about how you engage with new technologies
• is a nicer-looking window treatment really worth so much of your life? why would you add hours of extra labor to obtain a wagon?
• Things are more easily acquired than getting rid of
• How much of your time and attention must be sacrificed to earn the small profit of occasional connections an dnew ideas that is earned by significant presence in ... twitter, linkedin,...
• The law of diminishing returns can apply to the various ways in which we use new technologies to produce value in our personal lives.
• lets focus in trying to improve the value these processes return in your life - through better selection of tools, the adoptoin of smarter strategies for using these tools
• Not only what technologies to adopt but also how
• netflix not alone (i watch only on bike)
• remove social media apps from phone (only browser)
• news collect and only read dedicated en bloc once a week
• personal emails only laptop not mobile
• replace online news by radio or a news summary podcast
• printed newspaper
• setup schedule for calling and texting with friends
• remove web browser from phone
• 
  
• Start furiously optimizing
• the very act of being selective about your tools will bring you satisfaction, typically much more than what is lost from the tools you decide to avoid
• The sugar high of convenience is fleeting and the sting of missing out dulls rapidly. but the meaningful glow that comes from taking charge of what claims your time and attention is something that persists
• Gradually changing your habits one at a time doesnt work well (like smoking one cigarette less,...)
• My addiction habits were revealed in striking clarity. I'd reach for my phone and then remember that everything was gone.
• The compulsion to browse SOMETHING was too strong to ignore
• trying to rediscover what is important to you and what you enjoy outside the world of the always-on, shiny digital
• reducing the role of digital tools in your life - if you cultivate high-quality alternaties to the easy distraction they provide
• rediscovering what you enjoy
• to put tehcnology to work on behalf of specific things you value.
• This means to and end approach to technology requires clarity on what these ends actually are
• finished 8.5 books that month
• finished 3 books
• organized wardrobe
• setup dinner with friends
• face-to-face with brother
• hunt for a new home
• restarted painting
• computer coding
• start journaling
• listening to records on a record player - from beginning to end
• start own blog
• connect with other hobbyists
• visit local library
• spending real time with his boys
• interacting more intentionally
• playing piano
• far less rushed and distracted
• "perceived lack of time"
• aggresively explore higher-quality activities to fill in the time
• strenuous activity and experimentation
• rediscover activities that generate real satisfaction
• technology serves only a supporting role for more meaningful ends
• the fact that a technology offers SOME value is irrelevant - deploy technology to serve the things you find most important in your life - be HAPPY missing out on everything else
• how addicted he had become to checking news online
• Ignorance is truly bliss sometimes
• This isnt bringing me any kind of happiness - these technologies arent actually adding anything to my life
• Time and space to think
• What made his time at the cottage special  was the lack of people demanding his attention: Lincoln was able to be alone with his thoughts.
• Everyone benefits from regular doses of solitude and anyone who avoids this state for an extended period of time will suffer
• Give your brain the regular doses of quiet it requires to support a monumental life
• to be a subjective state in which your mind is free from input from other minds
• Solitude requires you to move past reacting to information created by other people and focus instead on your own thoughts and experiences - wherever you happen to be
• Edward Gibbon lived a solitary life, but not only did he produce wildly influential work, he also seemed perfectly happy
• Solitude can be just as important for both happiness and productivity
• New technologies help create a culture that undermines time alone with your thoughts, noting that "it matter enormously when that resource is under attack."
• Average user spends three hours a day looking at their smartphone screen and picks up their phone thirty-nine times a day
• Solitude deprivation: A state in which you spend close to zero time alone with your own thoughts and free from input from other minds.
• In 1990s still there were many situations in everyday life that forced you to be alone with your thoughts.
• This prioritization of communication over reflection becomes a source of serious concern.
• ability to clarify hard problems
• regulate your emotions
• build moral courage
• strengthen relationships
• the quality of your life degrades
• She had begun seeing major shifts in student mental health
• We NEED solitude to thrive as human beings we've been systematically reducing this crucial ingredient from our lives.
• Humans are not wired to be constantly wired.
• Assuming you accept my premise that solitude is necessary to thrive as a human being, the natural follow-up question is: How can you find enough of this solitude in the hyper-connected twenty-first century
• I've always had a sort of intuition that for every hour you spend with other human beings you need X number of hours alone. Now what that X represents I dont really know... but it's a substantial ratio.
• Practice: Leave your phone at home
• Everyone secretly fears being bored
• in 90% of your daily life, the presence of a cell phone either doesnt matter or makes things only slightly more convenient. They're useful, but it's hyperbolic to believe its ubiquitous presence is vital.
• life without a cell phone is occasionally annoying, but it's much less debilitating than you might expect.
• The urgency we feel to always have a phone with us is exaggerated.
• Smartphones are the primary enabler of solitude deprivation, therefore it makes sense to try to spend regular time away from these devices - re-creating the frequent exposure to solitude
• I recommend that you try to spend some time away from your phone most days
• It does aim to convince you that its completely reasonable to live a life in which you sometimes have a phone with you and sometimes do not.
• Practice: Take long walks
• Nietzsche began to walk up to eight hours a day. During these walks he would think, eventually filling six small notbooks
• key property of walking - its a fantastic source of solitude
• solitude = Freedom from input from other minds
• contrast the originality of walk-stimulated ideas with those produced by the bookish scholar locked in a library reacting only to other people's work
• but honest-to-goodness, depp-in-the-woods, Nietzsche-on-the-slope-of-a-mountain-style long journeys - these are the grist of productive aloness.
• I sometimes start a walk with the intent of tackling one of these goals, and then soon discovery my mind has other ideas about what really needs attention.
• how hard it would have been to pick up these signals amid the noise that dominates in the absence of solitude (if not walking)
• On a regular basis, go for long walks, preferably somewhere scenic. Take these walks alone, without your phone.
• The hardest part of this habit is making the time. You'll have to invest effort to clear the neccessary hours from your schedule
• Broaden your definition of "good weather"
• The power of specialized craftsmanship in an age of general-purpose computing
• Journaling
• uneven pacing - sometimes I'll fill dozens of pages in a single week, while othe times many months might pass without any new notes
• they provide me a way to write a letter to myself when encountering a complicated decision, or a hard emotion, or a surge of inspiration. 
• Composing my thoughts in the structured form demanded by written prose
• habit of regularly reviewing these entries
• It's the act of writing itself that already yields the bulk of the benefits
• Solitude as time spent alone with your own thoughts
• Writing a letter to yourself is an excellent mechanism for generating exactly this type of solitude
• The key is the act of writing itself. This behavior necessarily shifts you into a state of productive solitude - wrenching shifts you into a state of productive solitude - wrenching you away from the appealing digital baubles and addictive content waiting to distract you, and providing you with a structured way to make sense of whatever important things are happening in your life at the moment.
• Social Media
• The more you use social media to interact with your network, the less time you devote to offline communication.
• The negative associations of Facebook use are comparable in magnitude to the positive impact of offline interaction - suggesting a trade-off
• The key issue is that using social media tends to take people away from the real-world socializing that's massively more valuable
• The small boosts you receive from posting on a friends wall or liking their latest Instagram photo can't come close to compensating for the large loss experienced by no longer spending real-world time with that same friend.
• Distinction between connection (low-bandwidth interaction) vs the much richer, high-bandwidth communication that defines real-world encounters between humans
• Fully present to one another, we learn to listen
• young employees who retreat to email because the thought of an unstructured conversation terrifies them
• My argument is not anti-technology. It's pro-conversation
• Anything textual or non-interactive doesn't count as conversation
• conversation-centric communication requires sacrifices. You'll almost certainly reduce the number of people with whom you have an active relationship. Real conversation takes time.
• Just five days at a camp with no phones or internet was enough to induce major increases in the campers' well-being and sense of connection.
• Instead of seeing these easy clicks as a fun way to nudge a friend, start treating them as poison to your attempts to cultivate a meaningful social life. Stop using them. Dont click "like". Ever.
• Stop leaving comments on social media posts as well
• teach your mind that connection is a reasonable alternative to conversation
• Despite your good intentions, the role of low-value interactins will inevitably expand until it begins to push out the high-value socializing that actually matters.
• Dont be distracted from this reality by the shiny stuff on your screen
• The more you text, the less neccessary you'll deem real conversation, and, perversely, when you do interact face-to-face, your compulsion to keep checking on other interactions on your phone will diminish the value you experience.
• Keep your phone in Do not Disturb mode by default
• Turn off notification when text messages arrive.
• Adjust the settings so calls from a selected list do come through
• Anxiety reduction
• If people are used to grabbing your attention at any time,... (EDUCATE the people around you by not reacting and replying)
• If they need you urgently, they can always call you
• When someone instigates a low-quality connection, suggest they call or meet you during your office hours sometime when it is convenient for them.
• People deploy daily walks for this purpose - (join me for a conversation on the walk)
• low-quality digital distractions play a more important role in people's lives than they imagine
• more and more people are failing to cultivate the high-quality leisure lives that Aristotle identifies as crucial for human happiness
• It's now easy to fill the gaps between work and caring for your family and sleep by pulling out a smartphone or tablet, and numbing yourself with mindless swiping and tapping
• He didnt know what to do with himself once his general access to the world of connected screens was removed
• Cultivating high-quality leisure
• "I never understood the joy of watching other people play sports, cant stand tourist attractions, dont sit on the beach, dont care about what the celebrities and politicians are doing. I seem to get satisfaction only from making stuff
• I'll have a joyful time rotating between carpentry, weight training, writing, playing around with instruments, making lists and executing tasks from them
• for me, inactivity leads to a depressive boredom
• the mental faculties are capable of a continuous hard activity, they do not tire like an arm or a leg. All they want is change - not rest, except in sleep
• Expending more energy in your leisure, can end up energizing you more.
• We might tell ourselves theres no greater reward after a hard day at the office than to have an evening entirely devoid of plans or commitments. But we then find ourselves, several hours of idle watching and screen tapping later, somehow more fatigued than when we began
• "craft" describes any activity where you apply skill to create something valuable
• high-value behaviors
• craft is a good source of high-quality leisure
• People have the need to put their hands on tools and to make things. We need this in order to feel whole.
• Many people experience the world largely through a screen now. 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.
• the building stands, the car now runs, the lights are on.
• Become handy
• start with small projects
• Join something
• sports clubs
• Social events
• Gaming evenings, poker round
• Strategize your free time, quarterly plan and reflect
• Go on a hike
• Doing nothing is overrated
• Invest energy into something hard but worthwile almost always returns much richer rewards
• Attention resistance movement
• Its instead quite natural, once you recognize that the power of a general-purpose computer is in the total number of things it enables the user to do, not the total number of things it enables the user to do simultaneously.
• the ideal of single-purpose computing that much more compatible with our human attention system
• "low information diet" in which you aggressively eliminate sources of news and information to help reclaim more time for other pursuits
• focus only on the highest value sources
• limit your attention to the best of the best
• I feel less anxious. I hadnt realized how anxious i had become
• the key to sustained success with this philosophy is accepting that it's not really about technology, but it is instead more about the quality of your life.