How to be a Digital Minimalist.

Getting started on a digital diet.

In the time that I was supposed to write this article, I have spent ten minutes on Instagram, checked my emails twice, read two articles and watched a Kanye West interview. You may go through this daily, and it’s so hard to be focused when you have Youtube and Instagram one click away.

You may feel like crap because the cost of these interruptions may be higher than time, they make you anxious. I am missing out on a WhatsApp conversation with a friend which is giving me FOMO, but I am also anxious about completing this article on time. The stress of missing out on conversations from my friends occasionally makes writing less enjoyable.

I feel like you have to focus on focussing, this is new to all of us. I feel like a kid again. The number of distractions we have isn’t going to decrease, so we have to increase our ability to pay attention to our tasks.

How we became so distracted.

Back in the 1950s, people left farming and factory work to sit in offices. They used to move heavy stuff around to make money, now the highest paying jobs asked you to sit on a desk all day.

Sitting in an office all-day drinking coffee and having bagels is bad for us, our bodies are not used to having a sedentary lifestyle. The epidemic of obesity has been on the rise since office culture began. Peoples’ bodies were falling apart, becoming soft and inefficient, they were not functioning correctly.

To deal with this problem we started going to the gym and jogging became a trend. In the 1980s, we had people in spandex jumping around on VHS tapes looking ridiculous.

Our bodies need challenges, they need to be worked and stressed to a certain degree. Otherwise, walking up a flight of stairs will become difficult, as it already is for some people.

The same way of removing physical stress makes our bodies weak, the lack of mental stress and exercise makes our minds weak.

We live in an attention economy, we unconsciously sell our attention. How do you think Facebook makes money? The people advertising on Facebook are the customers, our attention is what’s being sold.

The same way we discovered gym culture and jogging, I believe it is time to have a culture of mental workouts, we need to force our minds to strain themselves and focus on the stuff that matters, to not crave brainless stimulation.

We have to go on a digital diet.

The Goal of a digital diet.

The first goal of a digital diet is to consciously limit the number of distractions that we are exposed to. Just as we eat less food when we are on a conventional diet, we have to consume less information on a digital diet.

This leads to the second question, what should we pay attention to? In a conventional diet, we have to eat healthily, we have to consume nutritious food. In a digital diet, we have to consume nutritious information and avoid junk information. Therefore the second goal of a digital diet is to find highly nutritious sources of information.

There is no power in knowing more or doing more, the power lies in focussing our attention on less. What is junk information and what is useful information?

Junk information is the stuff that does not affect you in any significant way. It is useless, unreliable and unhelpful. It causes you to binge, for example watching cat videos is junk information or finding out what pasta you are on BuzzFeed is junk information.

Nutritious information is the stuff that affects you in a significant way. It is useful, reliable and helpful. This helps you analyse, it stimulates deep thought and helps you to learn. For example, this article is nutritious information.

I am against YouTube rabbit holes, I am also guilty of falling into these rabbit holes, so are you. Watching YouTube is not bad, it could be a hobby, but you have to make the algorithm work for you. You have to like and subscribe to channels that will affect you positively.

The emotional part of a digital diet.

We often use the internet to escape reality. Junk information is addictive, it takes you away from facing your insecurities and weaknesses, it numbs them. Therefore getting rid of junk information will force you to face your problems, which sucks, you might have cravings and you may even relapse.

That’s okay, dust yourself off and give it one more try.

Step 1: Get rid of Social Media.

Unfriend and Unfollow: Chances are that you follow a lot of people. I would say ninety per cent of those people don’t matter. You don’t need to know what goes on in Kate Hudsons’s life, unfollow her. Ask yourself if the person you follow is adding value to your life or are they making you weak. If the answer to the first question isn’t a hell yeah, then unfollow them. If you are confused about unfollowing someone, unfollow them, be ruthless, this is your mental health we are working on. The fact that you have to linger on whether or not they are worth following is a sign that they are not worth following.

Unfollow ALL news and media outlets: The news isn’t worth it. Most articles are written for clickbait and are inaccurate, they are not written to help you. Media outlets fight for your clicks, providing you with information that you may think is useful, but in fact, it is useless. They create addictive outlets of outrage that fail to inform you, they make you more resistant to facts. As an intelligent human, it is your duty to opt-out of these toxic systems. The best place to start is by deleting and unfollowing all of these news outlets.

Delete Social Media from your phone: If you followed the steps above, you would have realised that your feed is close to empty by now, you only have 10% of the people you follow, the ones that matter. It is so empty that it’s useless to have these apps anymore. Instagram is an annoying thing I have to be on, I used to check it needlessly a million times a day and after deleting it, I felt free.

Step 2: Find Useful information.

Finding news.

I don’t read the news but a friend of mine uses Tanks Good news to keep him uplifted during these strange times. Mark Manson uses Wikipedia, which is good because Wikipedia is curated to remove bias, false information and political favouritism.

This also means Wikipedia is boring. Have you ever gone on the explore page? It’s like reading the mind of a guy who drives a Prius, it is so bland and tasteless. Which is good, since it provides facts, and facts are boring. Plus by reading on Wikipedia, you read about the stuff that truly matters to you.

Reading Articles and Listening to Podcasts.

Some people refer to this as long-form content, so your podcasts, articles, books and documentaries, stuff that takes a long time.

The first benefit to long-form content is that helps you to stay properly informed. It has deeper information and research than short-form media, to quote Mark Manson, Stupidity in a tweet can sound deep. Stupidity repeated for 12,000 words quickly makes itself apparent.

The second benefit of long-form content is that it provides you with an alternate perspective, it gives us space to think, “What if I’m wrong?”

You can use this for entertainment, don’t sit around watching sports, watch a documentary on your favourite player. Listen to a full album from your favourite musician.

Step 3: Implementation.

Use website blockers: I use Cold Turkey, it allows you to block specific websites, pages, apps and even searches. It is available for both macOS and Windows.

Use app blockers: iPhone users have it the easiest here, you can go on settings and set time limits for apps. Google has digital wellbeing, an app that does the same thing, one cool feature is that it has a bedtime mode which makes your phone unusable, I throw my phone in my cupboard when I sleep.

The Conclusion.

If you’re still reading this, I’m impressed. I write to find the solutions to my problems and then share them with the world. So here’s where I stand, I pledge to delete social media off my phone, and to use Cold Turkey to block apps and websites I don’t need. If you want, you can join me, let’s go on a digital diet together.