088- Book | Digital Minimalism
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Show Notes:
Welcome to this month's edition of the Nancy Ray Book Club, where I choose 12 books to read in a year, and I invite you to join me in reading them, and then I share my takeaways in the book of the month every month. I release a podcast episode about them once a month. And this month I am thrilled to be talking about Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.
He argues that social media is crazy, it's out of control, it's addictive, it's unhealthy, and yet it's a very real part of our lives. We have got to learn how to live with it and not just live with it, but to live well with it, which in a big part means limiting it. Digital Minimalism is an answer to this daily, sometimes hourly struggle that we all face and feel. And honestly, I'm really excited about this episode, and to dive in to my three big takeaways from Digital Minimalism.
For the full episode, hit play above or read through it below!
I don't know if you feel this, but we have lost control of our digital lives.
Smartphones and social media have literally changed the way that we live. It seems I can't wait in line at the grocery store, wait at a stoplight, lay in bed, or just watch my kids at a park without reaching down to grab my phone. It has re-wired our brains, and it's crazy.
You might be one of those people that don't have social media listening to this podcast. And if that's you, you might not understand a lot of what I'm going to say today. But I feel like most of us have some form of social media and we understand that it's just crazy addictive.
As the social critic, Laurence Scott put it, "A moment can feel strangely flat if it exists solely in itself, we can't just be any more, we have to be entertained or looking at pictures of what our friends and family are doing. We always have to be engaged."
And this is part of the design of these social media apps and things we involve ourselves in. Just looking at a few of the things that are part of the design of social media:
First, tagging photos, this was a deliberate choice of the developers. When someone tags you in a photo, you get notified, "Hey, you've been tagged in this photo." And now there's quick image recognition so they can do it very, very quickly. It's almost like auto-tagging of photos—I'm just going to be real, if I get a notification that says, "You've been tagged in a photo." I can't not look at it. I can't. I'm like, "Okay, what picture does this person have of me? And what is it? What's it from? How do I look?" I have to look at it. That is part of the design. Tagging photos was designed to increase engagement, to get people looking at these programs more often.
The way that you refresh the page was modeled after a slot machine. Think about on a slot machine, you pull it down to see what you're going to get. Same thing, when you want to refresh your page on Instagram, you kind of swipe down to see what you're going to get.
The “like” button was designed to validate you in your social circles, making you want to come back and check for more and see how many likes you get.
The infinite scroll was designed to feel like you never reached the end of the news or whatever it is you're looking for. You never reach and there's always more, so you can never kind of stop and go to another webpage.
The bottom line is we didn't sign up for any of this.
This is honestly very smart business people trying to tweak their products to bump engagement, which creates more business. And it's really fascinating, honestly, but I think it's incredibly important not to just say, "Oh, look at all these things that they're doing and how addictive they're designing." That is important to know for sure, but it's important not to just point fingers, but to take hold of our own behaviors, to take personal responsibility, to do our own research. And it's up to you and to me to put these technologies in place in our lives.
This is why I'm excited to talk about Digital Minimalism today. Because as Cal Newport says,
"What we need is a philosophy of technology use, something that covers from the ground up which digital tools we allow into our lives, for what reasons and under what constraints. In the absence of this introspection, we'll be left struggling in a whirlwind of addictive and appealing cyber-trinkets, vainly hoping that the right mix of ad hoc hacks will save us."
So let's talk, talk about what digital minimalism is. This is a definition that Cal Newport came up with himself and I love it. He says:
"Digital minimalism is a philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value. And then happily miss out on everything else."
And that last part, in my opinion is key, happily missing out on everything else.
He encourages us to work backwards from our deep values. We have to ask ourselves:
What is most important in my life?
What are my deep values?
What are the things that I want to be remembered for?
What is the kind of life that I want to live?
For me, I'm asking:
Who's the kind of friend I want to be?
Who's the kind of mother I want to be?
Who's the kind of wife, if I want to be?
And then once I decide on those things and I can answer those questions, I work backwards. You work backwards to decide the boundaries and constraints for your technology choices. And it turns these innovations from a source of distraction into tools to support a life well lived.
I always like to look at Instagram as a tool, a tool that serves me in my family. And I will be the first to tell you, it doesn't always serve me, I very easily can get sucked into the scrolling. I very easily, especially when it's time for me to clean the kitchen or fold laundry or do something that I just don't want to do, my mind just zones out and I find myself scrolling on Instagram. And I'll probably talk about Instagram the most, because for me, that's the thing that sucks me in the most.
But I just love this definition of thinking about creating a personal philosophy of technology use, deciding where am I going to focus my time and then choosing, how am I going to do that? How much time am I going to spend on this every week? When am I going to do it? And make a plan for that so that you can live the life that you truly want to live, that lines up with your personal values.
So I'm going to do what I do for every Nancy Ray Book Club analysis, which is share with you my three takeaways. I have a feeling this episode is going to be a little bit longer because I loved this book. And I also feel... Well, I'm just going to let it speak for itself. I just feel like the Lord really showed me some things when I was reading this book. And I'm really grateful for that.
So let me just dive right in and get to it.
#1: We have to set our own boundaries
The first takeaway is that we have to set our own solid boundaries. We have to get clear.
Now, Cal Newport talks about taking a month off social media to do a detox. Completely take a month off of everything, like no social media at all for one month. And then he says, as you come back in, that's when you start to set solid boundaries, you actually set the solid boundaries before you ever open up Instagram again, or even look at your emails, he puts that into the category of these technologies that really distract us and take away from our life. Really making sure that we know the boundaries that we want to work within so that these apps really can be tools that serve us well.
And after the detox, he says, technology must do these three things.
It must serve something you deeply value, offering some kind of fringe benefit, it's not enough. It has to serve something that you deeply value.
It has to be the best way to use technology to serve this value, and if it's not replace it with something better.
It has to have a role in your life that is constrained with a standard operating procedure that specifies when and how you use it.
Now, I already have some of these boundaries or habits that I have created up within social media. If you follow me on Instagram, you're probably familiar with the fact that I take off one week from all social media every single month. That's just been a really great rhythm for me, but I wanted to share with you a few other ideas, because what works for me might not work for you, or you might want something more bold or more specific or different, or maybe Instagram is not even a thing for you, or I don't know.
So I just wanted to share some examples from Digital Minimalism, the book, of people and how they have taken this to heart and really explained how they've constrained these technologies within their life.
So a couple of examples:
1 ) A few people said, "I only check social media once a week and I reserve it for the weekend only. So when I'm working, when I'm doing Monday through Friday, I do not look at social media at all."
2) You can take social media apps off of your phones and only access them through a desktop computer. I love this example because they said, "It does take a little bit of extra effort to flip up on your laptop and access them. And it really cuts down the time in which you spend, because it's just not in your pocket.
3) Check the news once a week, as opposed to daily and check it from a different source than Twitter or social media, like get your news feeds or your news sources that you want to check and choose that and check it once a week, instead of daily hopping on Twitter or whatever it is to get your feel of the daily news or whatever.
4) Set up regular calling and texting with friends. I love this because this actually kind of takes away that excuse like, "Oh, I use Facebook to stay in touch with my friends." Well, if you have a regular time to call them or talk with them or text with them and check in, then you don't really need Facebook for that. And then you do have to be okay with missing other events.
5) Setting a curfew on your phone. This is something I've done in the last month or two, where I literally put my phone in the other room, I let it charge in the kitchen overnight. So as soon as I'm getting ready for bed or once I'm in the bed, certainly the phone is not even in my room, which is really nice. So setting some sort of curfew or boundary, physical boundary like that is helpful as well.
So these are just five examples of kind of how you can put social media in its place. And I did want to say, Episode 012 of my podcast is titled Three Habits to Put Social Media in its Place. And I do a little bit of a deeper dive on the things that I practice and do as well as the way that these things have been designed to keep us addicted, which is pretty interesting. So go back and listen to Episode 012, if you haven't.
#2: The importance of solitude
Okay. The second takeaway for me from Digital Minimalism was the importance of solitude. Now this section of the book was incredibly striking to me, mostly because I have realized this is incredibly difficult for me. Cal defines solitude deprivation as a state in which you spend close to zero time alone with your own thoughts and free from input from other minds.
So basically up until the 1990s and prior to that, think about life—when you're waiting in line, when you're working in your yard, when you're riding on the subway, if you live in a big city or driving your car, or just walking down the street—there really wasn't a podcast to turn on and listen to. Like input from other people's minds, there was not that immediate access. Sure, there was talk radio in your car and there's always music, but everywhere else, working in your yard, working out, it was quiet. It's your own thoughts. We don't have that today. That just kind of boggled my mind, thinking about just the way that my parents grew up when they were working outside or waiting in line, they just sat there, they just stood there, they just planted their garden, they just mowed the lawn. There wasn't anything else to accompany that, which is pretty interesting because now everyone has headphones, AirPods, earbuds, whatever, you're always listening. I'm always listening. I do this too. I think it's a great time to listen to things.
So just this concept that we're in this culture now of solitude deprivation, which means we don't know how to think for ourselves. Like we don't know how to be quiet and not get input and form our own original thoughts. Usually we're kind of making up a mishmash of other people's thoughts that we're listening to, which isn't all bad, I mean, I love learning. I love learning from other people. I love listening to podcasts. I love listening to audio books. This is what I'm doing right now, right? I am sharing what's in my mind and what I have learned from this book with you, and I think there is value there.
But I think it's also important to realize that we, as a generation are missing something and our kids will be missing something. And it's a gift, it's the state in which you have complete solitude in your own brain.
One of the things I appreciate too, is he says, "You can have solitude with other people around."
He's like, "I'm not talking about being completely alone, somewhere. Completely alone in a house or completely alone at a park. No, you can practice solitude when other people are around. It's simply not getting input from other people's minds and letting your thoughts in your brain kind of work out the things that you have been thinking about or struggling with were just life. Just letting your brain relax a little bit."
Oh, that's really interesting. Now, one of the stories he talks about, one of the examples he talks about in his book is this quiet cottage in Washington, DC, a few miles from the White House. And recently it's been restored to recapture how it would have appeared in the 1860s, which is so cool. I love history. And I loved it when he went into this story that he told.
And he shared that it's now a national historic site because each summer in early fall of 1862, 63 and 64, Abraham Lincoln would live there. He would commute back and forth to the White House on horseback. And growing amount of research suggests that the time and space for quiet reflection that Abraham Lincoln had at this cottage that he left the White House so that he could be by himself and reflect and think, a growing amount of research points to the fact that this solitude, this practice of solitude may have played a key role in helping Lincoln just navigate the civil war, makes sense of the traumas in his leadership and tackle some of the hardest decisions he had to face.
Now, he points out, okay, Lincoln was the president of the United States. Of course he had staff around him all the time. Of course he had family there as well. The day that he became president was incredibly stressful, there was no like honeymoon phase of him getting into office and enjoying it, he literally was just bombarded with questions about the war immediately. There were people camped out on the lawn outside of the White House at all times, waiting for a moment with him. And that's why Lincoln would have to leave and go to this cottage. And even while he was at this cottage, he couldn't be alone and yet he still practiced solitude. And the solitude is really what formed a lot of Lincoln's words in his leadership and his decisions that he made.
There's this one example where he says that these two people came to visit president Lincoln. So one was a Colonel in the army, the other worked in the treasury. And they came to visit Abraham Lincoln. It says, "As he arrived, someone brought them in, showed their way to Mr. Lincoln." And it says, "Having thrown off coat and shoes with a large palm leaf fan in his hand..." Think about this, this is the days before AC, "he reposed an abroad chair, one leg hanging over its arm, he seemed to be deep in thought."
That right there, I just imagine President Abraham Lincoln sitting on that chair, no shoes, with his leg over the arm of the chair, fanning himself with like a palm branch or whatever it was, just thinking. Like, who does that? Literally, who does that today? When is the last time you've just sat in a chair and thought?
And this man had the weight of the world on his shoulders. He had a lot to be doing, I am sure. And he just needed time to let his mind process things. And there is value in that. It also talks about his rides on horseback, to and from the White House. I just think about that in and of itself—how quiet, the clip plop of the horse's feet and just the rhythmic motion of it. I used to ride horses as a little girl and like it brings you right back to that feeling of just being outside and just letting your mind be and think.
In the book, Cal Newport kind of reports. He did all this research about Abraham Lincoln and why he got away in his solitude. And he often broke away from the cavalry that was appointed to him to protect him. He would just leave them and be like, "Nope, I'm going to do this by myself." At great risk because there were known assassination plots. And he was even fired at once or twice during this horseback ride from the White House to this cottage. And yet Lincoln still saw the value in solitude. He still kept doing it. He knew he just needed to be alone to think, to process. And it's recorded the cottage is where Lincoln spent weeks of his time leading up to the Gettysburg Address. It was the setting where he wrestled with the Emancipation Proclamation and he wrote the initial drafts of it.
The bottom line: he had to get away, he had to be alone with his own thoughts in order to lead the country well.
Some of the most significant turning points in our country, when our country was in the height of a civil war was led by a man who valued solitude. I think it's just important to recognize that solitude, like I said, it's not being absent of anyone else being near you. This is an encouragement to me as a mom, because I feel like people are always around me. And I really crave solitude, like actual aloneness, but it's not about that. It's about what's happening in your mind. Solitude is having your mind be free from the input of other minds. You can do it at a coffee shop. You can do it on a park bench. For me, when I take my kids to the playground, I want to try to practice just sitting on the bench and practicing solitude there.
I love this quote, Blaise Pascal said,
"All of humanity's problems, stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."
I don't know if I 100% believe that's true, but I feel like there is some truth there. Like we could learn a lot about ourselves and just about how to interact if we just gave ourselves the gift of pausing.
Benjamin Franklin said,
"Solitude is an agreeable refreshment to a busy mind."
It's clear, solitude's good for us. It's good for our minds and technology at our fingertips, in our pockets, it robs us of that.
So Cal Newport kind of suggests three practices to practice solitude.
1) Leave your phone at home. That kind of gives me anxiety because I always feel like I always want it on me in case of an emergency, but also like emergencies don't happen that often, like in reality, we can leave our phone at home once or twice a week and it would probably be just fine.
2) Take long walks. Now, I talked about this in Rhythms of Renewal, the last book club podcast episode I did, because that was a really big takeaway for me. And I feel like this is a theme that God is telling me, I just need to take some walks. I just need to go out and walk and let myself process things.
3) I love this—to write letters to yourself. Cal Newport has these moleskine journals, the small ones that he takes with him. And whenever he has a decision to make, a difficult emotion he's processing, or just a surge of inspiration, he grabs that moleskine and he writes a letter to himself to gain clarity. Now I don't write letters to myself, but you know I love journaling. I did a whole podcast episode about why I think journaling is important, and why I have a business journal. I think written processing is so good and it helps us make sense of what's going on in our minds.
So, I thought those three practices were really helpful for practicing solitude.
And I'll never forget the mental image that came up for me when I pictured Abraham Lincoln in that chair, in the midst of the civil war, by himself, just thinking. And I just think it would do a so good in the midst of our busy lives to give ourselves the pause and the gift of solitude and thinking.
#3: At our core, we are social beings
Okay, moving on. My third biggest takeaway from the book is that we are social beings at our core. And not only that, but that is how the default mode network of our brain actually works.
Aristotle wrote, long, long time ago, "Man is by nature, a social animal." But now, science actually backs up his philosophical statement to be true.
There was this study done in 1997 of the brain, and they were asking the question, okay, is there a region of the brain that's involved in all types of brain activity? The results, honestly, weren't great. There weren't many parts of the brain that were engaged in all types of brain activity, but it led them to ask a different, better question:
What parts of the brain are active when someone's not trying to do anything? When you're not trying to do a task, what's firing? What's happening? And that by them, to discover the default mode network.
Okay, pause. Do you remember back then in Episode 042, if you've been part of my book club this year, you remember Dr. Caroline Leaf's book Switch On Your Brain? She talks about this in her book, she talks about the default mode network. It was one of my favorite parts of the book.
And so when Cal Newport starts talking about this here, I'm like, "Hold up, wait, you're talking about the same thing." Because they share how incredibly healthy it is for our brain to not do tasks, to not try to do anything. And it's actually like our brain takes a rest and gets a reboot. It's really good for it. And Dr. Caroline Leaf in her book says that when you begin to pray, when you start talking with the Lord, when you start daydreaming about things you want to do, when you spend time in self-reflection, that is when you're in default mode network, it turns on, it fires, it lights up. The default mode network, it's that place...
You know the feeling I'm talking about, like when you get to just kind of zone out and process, or you're praying and worshiping, it's like a different level that you're kind of working with in your mind. It allows you to see solutions to problems. It's where you come up with new ideas and you see, "Okay, big picture, what do I need to change in my life, in my heart? What's going on?"
Really, I kind of think of it when I'm connected with the Holy Spirit. And I'm talking with him and listening to him, that's default mode network stuff. So the more time you spend connecting with the Lord and in self-reflection and prayer, the more that network strengthens, which improves brain function and mental, physical, and spiritual health, which it's just so cool.
So Dr. Leaf says, this is kind of an aside, and I'll get back to Digital Minimalism in just a second, but I think this was so cool how all this ties together, Dr. Leaf says,
"When you pause your activity and enter into a directed rest, you will emerge far ahead of where you would have been if you just operated within the realms of a shifting shuffling, limited conscious mind.”
This is what God meant when he said, “Be still and know that I am God.” I just thought that was really cool. I don't know if that's what God actually meant when he said, "Be still and know I am God." I think God can speak a million different ways through that one powerful verse. But I think she makes such a great point—it's so important for us to enter into that directed rest and just trust the Lord and connect with him.
Okay. So circling back to what Cal Newport talks about in Digital Minimalism, their discovery back in 1997 was that the default mode network is social. He says,
"Our brains adapted to automatically practice social thinking during any moments of downtime, any cognitive downtime. And it's this practice that helps us become really interested in our social world."
For me, this was fascinating to read about, and it gave me a good dose of self-awareness because this is what it looks like for me in my life. Kids get down for nap, grab my phone to text someone, driving in my car, usually call my mom or my sister or I marco polo a friend. I feel burnt out from laundry or other dishes, rest for a second into default mode network, and then grab my phone to check social, right? It's like this default thing where I'm constantly trying to connect socially. Tired in the bed at night, look at Instagram, waiting in line at the grocery store, check my email. Always, always, always, it's like I'm always craving some sort of social connection.
Now, I could be totally off and wrong about this, but I think when we instantly connect, when we try to enter into that default mode network, but instead we reach for our phones or we call someone or we write an email or check our email, we don't actually allow our brain to rest. We don't allow it to sit in that default mode network that's so healthy for us, and our minds and our spirits and our bodies. It's actually healing, it's good for our health and our brain to just sit in there that default mode network, because it gives us the reboot that we need.
Dr. Leaf says, "If we don't allow our brains ever to rest in that, it will put our bodies and minds into toxic stress. It's just the outcome of what it happens."
This I think is why we often feel so good when we take breaks from social media and also how we can't really put our finger on like, why we need a break from it. We get tired of it, we're stressed. And we can't even put our finger on why we just know we need to be done with it for a little bit. This is why.
So my conclusion is kind of bridging together what Dr. Caroline Leaf said with what Cal Newport said, that when we are in default mode network, we're social, but it's also the place that God created in us to commune with Him—to quietly pray, to worship, to listen, to practice his presence, to be aware of him and who he is and what he's telling us.
And social media and this habit that we are forming and have formed.—and I'm just as guilty as anyone—it doesn't only rob us of a healthier state of mind that allows us to rest and reboot, which it does, it also robs us of intimate time to worship and be with the Lord throughout our day and practices his presence.
And that to me, was like, "Whoa." Knowing that when our brains kind of go into default and rest that we're social, and that's all also the network where we interact with God, I was like, "Oh my goodness, put two and two together. Holy cow, the Lord made us to socially connect with Him, not our gadgets and our technologies and our phones."
So that to me, right there, for me personally, that was worth the whole book. To know that my mind at rest is always there, and I always grabbed my phone and I shouldn't be, I wasn't wired to grab my phone, I was wired to commune with God, to me that that's worth the whole book.
So that was my third and biggest takeaway. It was kind of bridging this whole idea back together. But I hope it encourages you, I hope that that hopefully turns on a light bulb for you, too, to say that research actually shows, it actually shows that we were made to be social, and in that default mode network, it lights up when we pray, when we worship, as well.
So anyway, I just think there's like a healthier, deeper way that we can do life than just constantly grab for our phone. And that's why it's stressing us out. Oh, you all this book was so good. I feel like I could go on and on.
Honorable mention: reclaiming leisure
There's one last thing I want to mention just because it really was that good. It almost made my top three takeaways, but this is going to be an honorable mention. He has a whole section on reclaiming leisure in your life, and this is Work and Play and leisure is a big part of playing.
He talks about how you can't just do a social media detox and put all these boundaries in place without having some really solid ideas for leisure in place. You have to plan, make like a weekly plan for your leisure life, which sounds weird, leisure life—it just sounds weird—but it's a great point, because if we don't have something that we want to do with our time to replace that with, what are we going to do?
It could be practicing the guitar. It could be reading a book. It could be just picking up a new hobby or working on a project. I love so many things about what he said in the leisure section. It was so fascinating, again, worth the book, but I just don't have the time to dive that deep.
Bottom line is you got to think about what would make your life rich.
And when I think about that, I don't think social media, what I think of is training for half marathon or learning a new skill or taking my kids to a local new hike, just books, reading so many books is why I love my book club. That is the life that I want to live. That's what makes my life rich, not social media. And so we have to kind of have this list ready to go.
Okay. Moving on, those are my three big takeaways with an honorable mention for Digital Minimalism.
To recap, I'm just going to share one quick little paragraph from the book,
"Digital minimalists, see new technologies as tools to be used to support things they deeply value, not as sources of value themselves. They don't accept the idea that offering some small benefit is justification for allowing an attention gobbling service into their lives and are instead interested in applying new technology in highly selective and intentional ways that yield big wins. And just as important they're comfortable missing out on everything else."
Friend, this is less about technology and it's more about the quality of your life.
Are you living the rich life that you want to live?
What role does social media and technology play in your life?
Like I said, I take one week off social media every month, but after reading this, I'm starting to feel like it might not be cutting it. Maybe I need to do more, maybe I just need to refine my use of these tools, set some solid boundaries, get some new hobbies. I'm all about doing a social media detox. And I just might do that.
I also just wanted to add a few notes kind of towards the end of this episode, in addition to this book, which clearly I loved this book. I also recommend Hands Free Mama, The Tech-Wise Family and watching The Social Dilemma on Netflix, which is pretty recent, but we're about halfway through and we've really enjoyed it so far. It's pretty fascinating.
My hope for you all in all is that you would walk away from listening to this episode, maybe plan sometimes of solitude in your own life to really think about this and then really get good boundaries in place for your use of social media.
Because the goal here in our work and in our play is to live rich lives, and I just think it's so important to constantly take a step back and ask questions and make sure that we're living the lives that we want to be living.
Work and Play Cornerstore
Now, it's time for the Work and Play Cornerstore, which is where I share a book I'm loving and a thing I'm loving. I'll get a small commission for anything bought through these links, which help me to continue to bring this podcast to you every week. But the price is normal for you, so it's a win-win.
Today the book is of course Digital Minimalism, but the thing I'm loving is actually software that you can install on your computer, Cal Newport mentioned it in Digital Minimalism as a way to really hone in your focus and your work time and not be as distracted during your work hours or whenever you're using your computer or trying to do something, and it's called Freedom.
Basically, you set it up on your computer, you download it and you choose how you want it to block all other apps. So that, let's say you're writing a book, you can open up whatever it is that you're writing the book in and block everything else. And it literally won't let you get distracted. It won't. I just paid, I think $20 for the entire year to have this feature, I thought, $20 for this, for me to stay focused while I'm prepping my podcast or doing my work is gold. Sometimes we have the best intentions and we still get distracted on social media. So this is just a really cool program that I found and I wanted to share with you as something that I'm loving.
Thanks again so much for listening to Episode 088 of Work and Play with Nancy Ray. You can find me @nancyray on Instagram almost daily (and that's why I put almost in there because I take one week off a month).
All right, I'm going to close with words from Cal Newport:
"Simply put, humans are not wired to be constantly wired."
Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next week.
