[2022-10-13] Digital minimalism: step one
I recently received an email from a writer, Lili North, who liked my post on Digital decluttering. Lili thought I would appreciate a similar piece on Digital Minimalism: Habits & Tips to Declutter Your Devices. I wasn't previously familiar with the term "digital minimalism" but liked it immediately. My electronic devices and the apps and information on them can create many distractions for me.
As the Digital Minimalism article reflects, minimalism is about avoiding the unnecessary to focus on the important, clearing the clutter to make room for the valuable, eliminating the noise to hear the essential. More specifically, digital minimalism is about optimizing our use of communication devices (such as phones, tablets, laptops, computers) and managing our online activities (such as email and our engagement in cyberspace). At its core, digital minimalism is about putting a premium on our attention and making deliberate choices about where we will spend our time. It is about using apps, utilities and information to enhance our peace and sense of accomplishment, not to create stress and exhaustion.
The article includes many useful tips on how to minimize our use of digital technology—too much to cover in one post—so I'll come back to various aspects of the article as I take steps to achieve digital minimalism. Today, I was captivated by the article's seven habits of a digital minimalist, the first of which is to understand what's important to us and what that means for our use of communication technologies. It advises us to start by defining our priorities and viewing our use of technology through these lenses.
Fortunately, I have already defined my priorities, which you may recall are sleep, health, family, friends, writing, food, organizing, learning and peace. I decided to look at my phone first because that's where I spend the bulk of my online time. I reviewed my apps to determine how well they were contributing to my priorities. I concluded that Spotify was a keeper given that I love music (it's a sub-element of my peace priority) and that I like listening to stories at night, which helps me sleep. I then looked at Google News, acknowledging that it doesn't contribute significantly to my priorities (in fact, it detracts from them by presenting many stories that reflect discord rather than harmony) and admitting that it robs me of time to spend on more fulfilling activities. Not quite ready to ditch Google News entirely, I demoted this app from my first to my fourth screen.
By the time I was done reviewing all my apps, I had uninstalled 16 of them. While I was at it, I unsubscribed from any emails associated with the deleted apps. I grouped the remaining apps according to their frequency of use and organized them in alphabetical order on each page, which should facilitate my finding them in future.
Digital Minimalism reminded me of a tidbit I shared in What are you here to teach me?: "Life brings with it many distractions: turn off the distractions when you can so that you can be present for the ones you love." One of the best ways to turn off distractions is to eliminate them or to put them out of sight (and therefore out of mind).
