Why digital minimalism is painful, and what to do about it

I recently wrote about my nearly six months long digital minimalism experiment where I took a series of 30 days breaks from social media.

The idea behind digital minimalism is to help create a strategy for sustainable technology use, starting with a rapid digital declutter process, where all optional technologies are avoided for 30 days. Afterwards, each technology is evaluated for the value it serves before introducing it back into one’s life, if at all.

Digital minimalism is a concept created by Cal Newport, an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University, and described fully in his book Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World.

I believe in Newport’s concept, but there are some characteristics that limit it only to the hardheaded. I’ll explore these next in detail.

What makes digital minimalism too hard

• The threshold to start the digital declutter process is very high. When the problem is overuse of technologies and the cure is to let go of them all at once, just picturing it mentally can feel devastating. A person who can’t finish a sprint is supposed to run a marathon.
• Creating a strategy for sustainable technology use is as much leaving something behind as it is discovering something new and meaningful. Leaving things behind causes pain, and it attracts no one.
• The experiment is a lone ride, with a social burden twist. As described in Solitude: In Pursuit of a Singular Life in a Crowded World by Michael Harris, one pursuing solitude has to get over not only one’s own discomfort of disconnection, but also everyone else’s. Avoiding technologies is indeed solitude management.
• One can’t get anywhere with digital minimalism without understanding something fundamental about oneself. I didn’t go through serial declutter periods because it’s fun (it’s not). I simply wasn’t satisfied with my evaluation of my own values. According to Newport, when the declutter period is over, each technology should be targeted with a question asking if it directly supports something that one deeply values. Obviously, it’s pointless to start evaluating technologies against something you can’t see clearly.

That being said, I believe that digital minimalism is pointing in the right direction. I just think the path itself should be easier.

One way to ease the transition is to do something about the declutter period. The process could start with offline minutes and eventually extend to hours, days and weeks. The end result would be the same, but there’d be more time to organize the building blocks of life before complete disconnection.

Another way would be to turn the problem around and target more deep-rooted issues. While wondering how to go forward with this, I bumped into something inspiring that does exactly that.

From waste to food

In The Intergalactic Design Guide ﹣ Harnessing the Creative Potential of Social Design, author Cheryl Heller walks through a collection of fascinating social design cases. It was the story of Salvage Supperclub that caught my eye, the concept for popular dinner parties where dishes are made from food intercepted from landfills.

Before his breakthrough, designer Josh Treuhaft tried to raise awareness on food waste and find out the limits of what people find acceptable to eat. This triggered feelings of guilt, apathy and revulsion. He understood that waste wasn’t the key. Food was.

“The big shift in his [Josh Treuhaft’s] thinking came when he realized it was more engaging for people to talk about the food they like to cook and eat rather than try to wrap their heads around not wasting it.”

﹣ Cheryl Heller

In digital minimalism, letting go of technologies is the waste, something we should stop doing. But what is the food? What is it that would attract us, making technologies less relevant?

According to Newport, a digital minimalist builds the strategy for sustainable technology use around values. This means that if technology doesn’t serve something one deeply values, or isn’t the best way to serve this value, it should be let go. Following this rule, we’d gravitate towards activities supporting these values.

Based on my minuscule empiricism, this leads to the following assumption:

• What if we don’t have enough capacity or knowledge on how to discover our values and meaning in life? How can we get support in order to make these discoveries?

Another problem branch grows very close. Based on discussions I’ve had with people regarding how they are spending their time and how they’d like to spend it, I’ve found one repeated element that at least frustrates or even blocks people from pursuing things they find meaningful. It’s the what-if case for our brains:

• What if our insufficient ability to concentrate doesn’t allow us to do things we find meaningful? How can we learn how to maintain focus?

Both assumptions need to be validated, but it’s obvious already that this thinking is going the other way than the one lingering around technology avoidance. This is a discussion that needs to get started with as many people as there are curious about this topic and willing to contribute ﹣ maybe you? This is a wicked problem indeed, but I’m comforted by Heller’s remark:

“Seeing the solution in its final form makes it easy to forget that Treuhaft had no idea what would work when he began his journey.”

﹣ Cheryl Heller

Neither do I, and it’s alright.

If you’re interested in learning more about digital minimalism and related topics, there’s a lot of literature to study. The following books explore the concept thoroughly, as well as the impact of social media, habit creation and thinking processes:

• Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport
• Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked by Adam Alter
• Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier
• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
• Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
• Solitude: In Pursuit of a Singular Life in a Crowded World by Michael Harris