
On Digital Minimalism - 0x54MUR41
http://calnewport.com/blog/2016/12/18/on-digital-minimalism/
======
adpoe
I strongly agree with Cal on this. I write software and generally spend much
of my time focusing on how to better design digital technologies of various
kinds.

But ultimately, I think that good design is typically subtractive, not
additive. The best digital products improve our lives--our lives in the
physical world--while sucking up as little of our attention, mental effort,
and personal information as possible.

I think it's only a matter of time before we see these attitudes become more
prevalent (precisely because they are controversial/reactionary), and the
general design ethos of Silicon Valley shifts as a result.

One of the key tensions of the near future may be between minimalism and
maximalism in this way: should we throw more and _more_ computation power at
every single "problem", brute-forcing a solution to each for its own sake? Or
should we optimize, and find the smallest, least intrusive, most elegant and
simplest solution? I know which one sounds better to me. But will that drive
business revenue? We'll see.

Perhaps more importantly though, at a certain point--by creating so much
digital detritus and complexity, our brute-force solutions and ever-present
computation create a new set of problems (such as the need to filter
information aggressively to get any useful value from it--which is what
minimalism is all about). So maybe this is just the realization of that. We
need a new layer on top of the computation infrastructure to __reduce__, to
complete our maximalist designs. Either way, interesting.

~~~
anexprogrammer
> The best digital products improve our lives ...

The trouble is, vanishingly few current products are designed to improve our
lives _first._ We became the product existing to provide more data.

So we ended up with social networks that show us what produces most ad views
not what's most helpful to network your friends and relatives. We've got phone
"apps" that are just thin clients and give us todo apps that can't trigger an
alarm unless it's got 4G.

I've ended up with an eclectic, almost intentionally obsolete, version of
digital minimalism. I use old desktop apps, command line, text editors and old
widgets. There's barely a web 2 app installed on phone or laptop, and browser
visits social media less than once a month. Back to the 90s?

I'll visit here, reddit and one or two others for an hour a day. I need the
net far less than 5 or 10 years ago unless I'm working, well researching.

The most interesting thing about the article, some of my tech friends, and
where I've ended up is the number of techies who are starting to reject much
of what we built!

~~~
imagist
> The trouble is, vanishingly few current products are designed to improve our
> lives first. We became the product existing to provide more data.

This, more than anything, is why I refuse to view ads and jealously guard my
data.

------
SuperPaintMan
One of the hardest parts I've found in winnowing the amount of sheer
information I process every day was my iPhone. I solved it by limiting my
access to a few key apps, silencing non-critical notifications(Re: Email) and
deleting Safari. Anything that I can access through a browser and check once a
day (Here's looking at you Instagram) was locked out of my phone/removed.
Downside: The Internet is no longer in my pocket and occasionally I am
required to use 411 and call someone.

Turned my iPhone into a almost-dumbphone using Configurator and have seen
nothing but improvements to daily-life. >
[http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/10/hands-on-securing-
ios-p...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/2012/10/hands-on-securing-ios-pwning-
your-kids-with-apple-configurator-1-2/)

~~~
matwood
That sounds more like an extreme way to deal with the lack of self discipline
(deleting Safari??). If it works for you, great. For me minimalism is about
how do I get what I need/want in the least amount of time and as little waste
as possible.

First was how to deal with news. I find the 5 minute NPR news briefing podcast
from the latest hour is great. Honestly, news just does not change that much,
so listening to that briefing once or twice a day is plenty. If I have more
time that day, I'll also listen to WSJ tech or Planet Money podcasts.

Next, the Google app on the iPhone does a great job at summarizing things I
typically want to know about. I was using the Apple equivalent of this, but it
simply does not know me like Google does (for better or worse). I can open the
Google app and see the weather, traffic, etc..., scan it and go.

For email, Inbox is configurable to only send alerts for certain classes of
email. I get alerts only when they matter, and everything else can wait until
I'm at a computer to check.

~~~
BeetleB
>For me minimalism is about how do I get what I need/want in the least amount
of time and as little waste as possible.

That's not what minimalism is for most people. I want a lot of things. More
than I have time for. Minimalism is about figuring out the marginal value each
of those provides and eliminating all but the top x percent.

It's about reducing the stuff you feel you need. Your approach sounds more
like you are not doing that.

>I find the 5 minute NPR news briefing podcast from the latest hour is great.

Sorry for changing the topic, but as a former news junkie, I've long wanted to
write a lengthy essay on how/why to read the news. If there is one thing I
would want people to get out of that essay, it is that when it comes to news,
the path of moderation is the one that will make you the _most_ misinformed.

There's so much misinformation out there that the only way I could get an idea
of what was going on was to spend many hours a month reading up news from
_multiple_ sources, and potentially _multiple_ analyses. Only then would you
get a fuller picture. Any given single story was highly likely to be missing
or misreporting key information. And certain stories would not be covered by
some organizations but covered by others. By listening to a given news outlet,
you _have no idea what important stories are not being told_.

I did this for several years before calling it quits (too much time for not
much personal value). But I knew from my past experience with dealing with
people who only "scanned" the news (or listed to the news summary on BBC/NPR)
that they tended to be quite misinformed. So the only option was to more or
less quit altogether.

Even then, a few months later, I found myself having opinions on current
events. Why? Because I still randomly scanned newspaper headlines while
walking or listened to NPR broadcasts while driving. I had become the
misinformed person.

The person who doesn't follow news altogether tends to be less misinformed.
They are certainly ignorant, but they have fewer faulty notions.

These days, have I really gone cold turkey? Not really. I do still read/listen
to it. _But I do it while refusing to draw any conclusions._

Long story short: If you want to follow the news, either do it wholeheartedly
or quit. No middle ground in this world.

~~~
matwood
There is a difference between being aware events are happening, and
researching because I need to make some decision. By your logic, everyone is
misinformed because there is literally an infinite amount of news and sources
now. Even when you thought you were informed, you were just as misinformed as
anyone else as there was no way you had ready everything.

Regardless, what I was really getting at is following the 24 hour news cycle
treadmill is a pointless game. It is far better to get summaries and dive
deeper when something interesting comes up and/or you have time. At no point
did I talk about drawing conclusions. For those, of course you have to dive in
a little deeper and even then you have to be aware those conclusions are only
valid until the next bit of information comes out.

Learning to summarize and understanding the limitations of that summarization
is a learned skill. We all do it every day.

~~~
barrkel
You seem to suggest that being informed vs misinformed is a binary state: that
people who consider themselves more informed are also misinformed because they
haven't read _everything_.

Being informed is a probabilistic game. Every news source is from a particular
perspective, with some bias and some error. But unless they are all ultimately
controlled by a conspiracy, or have systematic bias / error, consuming more
news sources will increase the amount of correct information one has about the
world. There is a definite trend towards being more informed when consuming
more news sources, particularly if they are from different ends of the
political spectrum but with high reputation for accuracy.

Whether being informed is useful to the average citizen most of the time is
another question entirely. News as entertainment, hyped headlines, the
continuous need for updates that drive 24-hour news - I don't think these
things are good for anyone. They always search for sensationalism, always look
for a hook that drives an emotional response, outrage, anger, fear,
nationalism, racism, bigotry - they appeal to our worst impulses.

~~~
jdietrich
Your third paragraph really contradicts your second. There is indeed a
systematic bias in the news media - the preoccupation with rare, sensational,
controversial and emotive stories. I would argue that this is one of the
fundamental causes of misinformation in modern society. The news media
conditions us to be fearful and suspicious, to believe that things are only
getting worse.

No newspaper would ever run the headline "Majority of People Safe and
Prosperous" or "Dems, Reps Agree on Most Things". Nobody would ever read a
newspaper that gave an accurate depiction of the world around us, because it
would be dismally boring. That's the big lie of the 21st century.

~~~
barrkel
I think you can triangulate. It's 24-hour news in particular that needs to
exaggerate; the bias isn't wholly systematic.

Different media sources focus on the fears of different subsets of people, so
they'll exaggerate different things. I think these things cancel out too.

------
huhtenberg
> The modern minimalism movement ...

... is an oxymoron.

It is plenty obvious from a quick scan of
[https://reddit.com/r/minimalism](https://reddit.com/r/minimalism) where they
struggle with reconciling all different interpretations of minimalism on daily
basis. For some it's asceticism, for others it's having just one Rolex instead
of 10 Seikos. There's also a separate circus from the "Help, my SO wants to
buy a 2nd fork!" variety.

There's no single prominent movement, it's very much all over the place and to
each his own.

~~~
imgabe
The problem I had with /r/minimalism is that it's more focused on the
aesthetic movement rather than the lifestyle movement. A 4,000sf house with
sparse furniture and clean straight lines is minimalist in an aesthetic sense,
but not really in the sense of owning only exactly what you need to do what
you want and no more. The two meanings of minimalism seem to create a lot
confusion and conflict about whether a given thing is "minimalist".

~~~
huhtenberg
> not really in the sense of owning only exactly what you need to do what you
> want and no more

It's one and the same really. Once you have a bit more money the pragmatic
live-in-a-shoebox minimalism tends to transform into the "aesthetic" variety -
you still own a bare minimum that makes you happy, but you can now afford a
better quality of the same. Be it a larger place or a more expensive pair of
jeans.

~~~
icebraining
But a larger place is by definition not the bare minimum - you have more
square footage than you need.

~~~
huhtenberg
For bare minimum you can sleep on a park bench :)

"Need" is subjective and the rest follows from there.

------
miguelrochefort
I'm obsessed with minimalism. I want all my possessions to fit inside my
backpack. I own one pair of socks. I sleep on the floor.

I still struggle with digital minimalism. The current state of software is
unbelievably fragmented. I have literally created over 500 accounts in my
life. I have more than 100 apps on my phone. This so-called software diversity
makes my life miserable.

I've been attempting to solve this problem for the past 10 years. I came to
the conclusion that we need to create a single app that does 80% of things.
Somehow, people still don't believe this is desirable or possible. I can't
grasp why.

~~~
Davidp00
Being able to fit all my possessions in a backpack is something I think about.

Can you go in to more detail on the stuff you own?

In what kind of climate do you live in? It seems a lot easier to not have a
lot of stuff when you don't have to have cloths for multiple seasons.

~~~
throw9383412
I live in western Canada, a pair of long johns, jeans and a coat are enough to
spend an hour in -25 °C. I own a few things that I don't mind getting rid of
when I move like a snowboard and a mattress, otherwise my clothes + toiletries
+ laptop/phone is it.

------
ivan_ah
A couple of years ago I was _forced_ to buy a smartphone (to get into Android
dev), but I didn't get a data plan. I've been very happy with this decision.
Most of the useful mobile apps I use (transit/maps/email) work well enough
offline, but I don't get any notifications or interruptions.

I still struggle with internet addiction through my laptop, but at least the
phone isn't adding to the problem.

------
jtcond13
Do people feel that reading Hacker News meets these principles? On one hand
there's a lot of good links and discussions here, but a significant portion is
either too obscure or just not very interesting (e.g. most medium.com links).
How do you optimize your HN reading to maximize time spent learning?

~~~
ycmbntrthrwaway
Actually I use a habit tracking app, where one of the habits is "no news but
HN". HN is an improvement compared to reading any other news source or various
reddits.

------
glaberficken
I think the keyword here is "tool". Using a piece of software as a tool as
opposed to the software using you.

~~~
drdeadringer
Right. "What do I want to do? Here is the tool for me to do that."

------
xkarga00
I ditched Facebook two years ago for all the principles stated in the article
(among other reasons) and I have never looked back. I am literately a
healthier person ever since. Minimalism is a way of life, having to think
about or deal with less things or situations helps me handle those better.
Great article.

Edit: One nit, the author mentions Orwell to describe today's social media. I
would say it's more like what Aldous Huxley described in Brave New World and
Neil Postman embodied in Amusing Ourselves To Death rather than an Orwellian
world.

------
vinay427
> GPS helped solve a problem that existed for a long time before it came along
> (how do I get where I want to go?), so did Google (how do I find this piece
> of information I need?). Snapchat, by contrast, did not. Be wary of tools in
> this latter category as they tend to exist mainly to create addictive new
> behaviors that support ad sales.

I agree, in the case of Snapchat, but I don't see this as a very convincing
argument that tools that solve new problems should induce caution because of
potentially addictive behaviors. It seems like the author is using a few
choice examples to make an assertion when perhaps a better argument (that I am
hoping someone can provide) could be made.

~~~
andrewfong
I think the larger point is that if you didn't perceive the problem as a
problem before the tool existed, it might not actually be a problem. This is
applicable outside of Internet technology too (e.g. fashionable clothing
solves the problem of not being fashionable, but they also create the problem
in the first place).

------
csense
I ditched Facebook back in 2008, and haven't regretted that decision since.

