Digital Minimalism Book Summary

Book Summary

15 min

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Brief Summary

Digital minimalism offers a way to rethink and reshape your relationship with technology to serve your values in the noisy digital age. Newport argues that we should consider that our attachment to our devices, websites, and apps aren’t necessarily serving our interests and distracting us from moving forward with our passions. He also argues that technology is no substitute for time spent with other people, with our communities and with ourselves. Taking time away from our technology can help us understand what we really need to improve our well-being, and we can move forward with more confidence in our digital presence.

About the Author

Cal Newport is an author and computer science professor at Georgetown University. He has written six self-improvement books including Deep Work (2016), So Good They Can’t Ignore You (2012), and How to Win at College (2005). He’s been writing the Study Hacks blog since 2007 where he developed his ideas for deep work and digital minimalism. He holds a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in computer science.

Topics

Self Development Psychology

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Key Insights

Over the past 10 years, people have become increasingly dependent on their smartphones spending large parts of their days swiping through their phones. Newport argues that this preoccupation with digital media has turned into behavioral addiction, costing its users more than it benefits them. Newport’s solution is called Digital Minimalism, or an organized way to resist automatic uses of this technology which has to lead to increased loneliness and depression. He advises taking a 30-day break from the digital activity and replacing this time with activities that bring meaning, purpose, and focus, and then only reintroducing the digital activities that remain essential.

Our smartphones weren’t intended to be addictive. They have evolved to profit from our attention and away from being positive tools.

When cellphones first hit the market, no one suspected they’d evolve into personal and portable computers. As technology changed, smartphones started adding more and more features making them increasingly attractive all-in-one tools. But as people started using the phones for more than phone calls and short text messages, a new incentive emerged for tech and media companies: keep people using our products for increasing amounts of time.

The tech industry has flourished as a result of keeping our attention. The more they can do this, the more money they get from advertising companies. Google and Facebook have ballooned into a billion-dollar powerhouse for its skill at delivering advertisements to its users who return to the service multiple times a day. Users should be aware that companies profit from their attention, and they prioritize this profit over the well-being of their users.

Companies maintain this attention by tapping into our primal need for rewards and social approval. Getting many “likes” on a post or lots of positive comments on an opinion produces a buzz of excitement. We develop a reflexive urge to check for more notifications and post things that will garner attention, a simple way to satisfy these primal feelings. But because digital media is so accessible, we begin to scroll mindlessly on the most pleasurable and instantly rewarding applications. Increasingly, behavior becomes addictive we fill spare moments with continuous scrolling.

Life can be improved by removing distractions and embracing the things that support our values.

Newport’s digital minimalism comes from the broader concept of lifestyle minimalism, or the idea that living with less can improve your life. According to minimalism, the things we most value can bring high reward, and removing distractions can help us live more intentionally. You can consider: which things support your values as no other thing can?

When this thinking is applied to our technology we can ask: what technology can support my values? Is it distracting me from what is most important by taking time and energy away from meaningful pursuits? How can I use technology to maximize the value I get from the time spent on it?

Newport presents three principles that explain the benefits of minimalism in economic terms. The first principle states that clutter is costly. Newport explains that in a practice called New Economics,...