Digital Minimalism

Quotes

"Consider limiting your attention to the best of the best when it comes to selecting individual writers you follow... It's a general rule of slow movements that a small amount of high-quality offerings is usually superior to a large amount of low-quality fare."

"This tension between the benefits provided by the attention economy and this sector's primary mission of devouring your time proves particularly problematic for our current goal of cultivating high-quality leisure. It's too easy to be good intentioned about adding some quality activity into you evening, and then, several hours of rabbit hole clicking and binge watching later, realize that the opportunity has once again dissipated."

"The cost of a thing is the amount of what I call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run." - Henry David Thoreau

Paradigm Shift

Digital Minimalism speaks to my soul. Again Cal Newport hits on extremely salient, modern issues around technology and our relationship to it. Ever since reading this book I've been on a personal crusade against the attention merchants, rooting them out wherever I find them. This book is the source of much of my productivity, innovation, and personal development in no small part because he gave me permission to only use technology when it serves me. 

Does that make me some kind of luddite? Heaven forbid; we have many smart home products, I always wear my smartwatch, and I work remotely providing state-of-the-art development around machine learning to medical device companies. I need a lot of cutting edge technology for my work, and we enjoy using it in our family. 

That said, I also have my internet browser on my phone completely shut off, and no entertainment apps are allowed on my phone. I absolutely cripple my browser on my work computers, as I really only need access to google scholar anyway. One important mental model that Newport introduces to readers here is Thoreau's perspective on the “true cost” of material goods we acquire. I’ll write more in an essay I’m sure, but it’s accurate to say this idea is life changing if taken to heart. 

Digital Minimalism paved the way for my own personal tech practices, and really provided me with one of the biggest and most helpful paradigm shifts to date. 

Highly recommended!