"Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World" by Cal Newport
A how-to-guide in curbing your social media addiction.
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Deleting my Facebook account was one of the most paramount decisions I’ve made in the last decade. At the same time, it wasn’t at all. My hesitations stemmed from what I’m sure others are also scared of: losing that connection with family and friends, not being able to share your life through photos, not being caught up with social events, losing memories. I’m sure the list goes on, but about 4 years ago is when I decided to pull the plug. Why? My productivity and other leisure time was more valuable to me than endlessly scrolling through someone else’s life that I hardly communicated with anymore. That is what Cal Newport tries to explain in this book.
I feel like I’m much better at controlling my social media addiction. The only distracting social media app I have on my phone is Instagram, and even so, I use Focus Mode to disable the app from 9-5. Reading Newport’s book solidified what I was doing right, and what I could do better. To curb the addiction, his advice was this:
Give it up completely - delete all apps on your phone for 30 days.
Once those 30 days are up, think. Think about each app and what specifically about it, added value.
If that app did give value, then reinstall it and only use it for that purpose.
Newport goes into more details of course, and talks about the importance of solitude and different ways to adjust your phone clicking behavior based on feedback from his readers. He puts up a good and obvious argument that social media is making us less human by replacing real and valuable interactions with surface and numbing interactions such as “liking” a post about your friend’s baby rather than calling them and asking how the baby is doing.
After deleting my Facebook account, it was not the end of the world. In fact, what I felt most was relief. Through this, I found out who the most meaningful people in my life were and, since it’s a smaller group, I’ve been able to spend time in deepening our relationships. With more time I’ve been able to focus on more reading, working out, enjoying peaceful moments in cafés, and then of course, sharing these posts with you. If you’re looking for ways to put down your phone, I recommend reading this book. Otherwise, I’m happy to have a conversation at the café down the street.
| Pub Date: | February 5, 2019 | Page Count: | 304 Pages | ISBN: | 9780525536512 |