Digital Minimalism

"Minimalism is the art of knowing how much is just enough. Digital minimalism applies this idea to our personal technology. It's the key to living a focused life in an increasingly noisy world.

In this timely and enlightening book, the bestselling author of Deep Work introduces a philosophy for technology use that has already improved countless lives.

 Technology is intrinsically neither good nor bad. The key is using it to support your goals and values, rather than letting it use you. This book shows the way."

 

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I would give this book a ★★★☆☆. I first heard of this book from Jenn Im as she mentioned it in one of her vlogs a few months ago. She gave a brief summary of the book and I was intrigued. For a few years now, I have been trying to reduce my time on social media and recently, my time on my phone and laptop. That's one reason why I picked up reading again and paint by numbers during quarantine. 

In the book, Newport goes over what digital minimalism is, how social media is programmed by companies to make it addicting and to have its user constantly be on it. He gives many examples and studies throughout the book which supports or illustrates the success of digital minimalism. Also, providing various methods that could be utilized to live a digital minimalist life.

“Digital Minimalism 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.” 

It was an interesting read, but probably not something I would re-read again. I agree with majority of the points he made, how we need to be more conscious on how we utilize technology (especially social media), the importance of solitude, focusing our time on doing more physical thing rather than spending hours staring at a screen, etc. But for me, some of the methods he provided were a bit unrealistic or too extreme. I felt that some chapters were very repetitive, like he was just saying the same thing in another way. At one point while reading, I almost wanted to drop the book and move onto another one. I did really like the real life examples he provided to support his points. 

I guess going into it, I was expecting a lot more from the book. After reading it, I didn't feel like I gained a lot from it because a lot of the points made are things I have thought about before. This book will probably be more beneficial to someone who doesn't see or realize the harm of social media and isn't aware of how much time being on social media takes away from us.

 I know how addicting social media is and how detrimental it is to my mental health. Reading this book just reaffirmed it even more. Will probably talk more about it in another post though.

“Where we want to be cautious . . . is when the sound of a voice or a cup of coffee with a friend is replaced with ‘likes’ on a post.” 

 Just finished watching The Social Dilemma on Netflix and a lot of Newport's points made on social media is reflected on the show as well. The Social Dilemma goes more into how addicting and manipulating social media is. How it is so powerful that it changes our behaviors and emotions without us realizing it. Really recommend to watch that show on Netflix. It definitely provides a different perspective that is not really talked about often or at least not as much as it should be. It is very scary how manipulating social media can be. We need to be more aware of the effects it is having on our society and changes need to be made.