In My Digital Minimalism Era

Recently, I’ve been trying to get into digital minimalism, which is a term coined by Cal Newport whose meaning boils down to having a healthier relationship with tech. 

To tie in with the theme above, I read a book called Stolen Focus by Johann Hari which really cemented a few points on how social media has been engineered to keep you on the app for non-social reasons rather than give you features to get you off the app and actually socialize.  

I am also using a new app called Beeper which takes the DMs of many but not all social media and aggregates them into a single app. This is the perfect compromise for me, as I can still message my close ones who prefer different apps without being sucked into doomscrolling.

I’m also toying around with making AI, specifically, Google Gemini my default "search engine". I'm sure that's probably where all search tech companies are headed anyway and that we're just in the transition period, but I figured I might as well make the jump now.

I've also made two iOS shortcuts: one to turn on "reduce white point" and "grayscale display" modes and the other turn it off to bring it back to normal. Combined with automations that get triggered with certain apps, it makes everything look dull so that I'm more intentional with what I need to look at and I can quickly get out.

All of these hacks are nice, but honestly they’re not the main thing. The biggest game‑changer has been:

• Turning off almost all notifications except from VIPs, and
• Setting intentional “office hours” for when I communicate with people and consistently communicating with them during those periods.

These days I strongly prefer voice or video calls over endless texting. It's not the texting itself that bothers me, but the attention reboot time cost. Additionally, a call lets the conversation flow, with immediate feedback, instead of that anxious “ding” every few minutes. Honestly, if someone starts texting me once a minute, I might just make a rule to call them instead.

This is just the beginning of my experimentation with digital minimalism.

“… you figure out what you care about in your life … then work backwards and say for each of these things I care about, what's a really useful way or effective way to use technology to support it. Your answer to those questions describes the technologies you use. Everything else you don't use.” – Cal Newport (quote resurfaced using Readwise)

Thanks for reading,

Soroush