Speaker 1: There's a huge opportunity cost hit that we get from
Speaker 1: this default, constant companion mode usage of our phones. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have
Speaker 1: recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like
Speaker 1: garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think
Speaker 1: ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 1: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 1: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good wolf. M Hey everybody, this
Speaker 1: is Chris. You know, I was just thinking about how
Speaker 1: difficult it can be to buy some people gifts, and
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Speaker 1: And of course if you're not a Patreon member, we'd
Speaker 1: love it even more if you can go to one
Speaker 1: you feed, dot net slash join. Thanks everybody, Happy holidays,
Speaker 1: thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: Cal Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown University. In
Speaker 1: addition to his ACA demic research, he writes about the
Speaker 1: intersection of digital technology and culture. He's the author of
Speaker 1: six books, including the most recent one, the New York
Speaker 1: Times bestseller Digital Minimalism, Choosing a Focused Life in a
Speaker 1: Noisy World. Hi, Cal, Welcome to the show. Eric. It's
Speaker 1: my pleasure. I'm excited to have you on. Your latest
Speaker 1: book is called Digital Minimalism, Choosing a Focused Life in
Speaker 1: a Noisy World. And we will jump into the book
Speaker 1: in a moment, but let's start like we always do
Speaker 1: with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his
Speaker 1: granddaughter and he says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the
Speaker 1: granddaughter stops, and she thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: looks up at her grandfather, and she says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do. Well. There's an ancient foundation
Speaker 1: to that parable, and assuming it probably has its roots
Speaker 1: back in Plato, and in particular in Plato's Phadrias dialogue,
Speaker 1: where he has the the character of Socrates gives his
Speaker 1: metaphor for the human soul. He doesn't use wolves, he
Speaker 1: uses chariot drivers, or a chariotdriver with two horses. I
Speaker 1: should say, there's the noble steed and the ignoble steed,
Speaker 1: and what is the soul is the chariot driver trying
Speaker 1: to control those steeds that are pulling them forward, but
Speaker 1: make sure that they're aimed in the right direction. And
Speaker 1: you know, I'll be honest, I talked about this at
Speaker 1: least in one draft in my book, and I'm a
Speaker 1: little embarrassed to admit I can't remember it there. It
Speaker 1: is in there, okay, because I've been giving talks about
Speaker 1: it recently, because this gets at the heart of a
Speaker 1: lot of the human condition, but certainly gives us an
Speaker 1: insight into what's happening. I think with technology today that
Speaker 1: it's not it's not just that the sort of darker
Speaker 1: wolf has been fed. It's that we didn't realize it
Speaker 1: was happening. And I think this is a big part
Speaker 1: of the unease that once I started picking up a
Speaker 1: few years ago, realized that this general topic technology in
Speaker 1: our personal lives, this topic was something I had to
Speaker 1: write about, and we can get into it. But I
Speaker 1: think this parable sets up what I think is the
Speaker 1: ground on which this uneased grew, which is this we
Speaker 1: downloaded these things, We signed up for these things, and
Speaker 1: we bop these things for innocent reasons, and we went
Speaker 1: on with our life because we're busy, and the rules
Speaker 1: of engagement shifted when we weren't paying attention, and we
Speaker 1: looked up and that bad wolf that ignoble Steed had
Speaker 1: suddenly got a huge jolt of energy that we didn't
Speaker 1: realize we were delivering it. And we're looking around the
Speaker 1: same amount of our chariot's way off course. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: I think that's a great analogy for what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what are the concerns with our
Speaker 1: digital lifestyle in your mind and the ones that you
Speaker 1: elaborate in the book. Why is this a problem for us? Well,
Speaker 1: one thing that's important to keep in mind as context
Speaker 1: is that although I've been writing with skepticism about some
Speaker 1: of these new technologies for a long time, it was
Speaker 1: really only two thousand seventeen, I would say, before it
Speaker 1: seemed as if most people actually agreed. So there is
Speaker 1: a shift that occurred. I really picked it up right
Speaker 1: around early two thousand seventeen where there began to be
Speaker 1: this uneased where before they used to just be puzzlement.
Speaker 1: You know, there's this ted x talk I gave back
Speaker 1: in two thousand sixteen. Earlier in two thousand sixteen that
Speaker 1: was titled quit social Media, and you know, the audience
Speaker 1: was polite, but as people pointed out afterwards, you can
Speaker 1: actually see in the video of the talk two people
Speaker 1: on their phones presumably using social media, uh during my talk,
Speaker 1: But that was just how the world was that I
Speaker 1: was sort of the strange guy by two thousand seventeen
Speaker 1: that had a hole shifted. That video went on By
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen, video has six million views. So something shafted,
Speaker 1: and so I went out there to find out. That
Speaker 1: was the motivating premise of this most recent book was
Speaker 1: two questions, Why are people suddenly uneasy about this? What
Speaker 1: do we do about it? Real simple, those two questions,
Speaker 1: and the answer to the first had a lot to
Speaker 1: do with this, to my surprise, autonomy. So it was
Speaker 1: not so much what people were doing when they were
Speaker 1: looking at their screens that was bothering them. It was
Speaker 1: how much time they were doing that, right, And I
Speaker 1: think that's an important point because it's a little bit different.
Speaker 1: It's different than what we hear today when we're looking,
Speaker 1: let's say, at major media coverage of the more recent
Speaker 1: social media backlash that really focuses on what specifically are
Speaker 1: you doing when you look at your screen, What specifically
Speaker 1: are these companies doing with your data? And these are
Speaker 1: important issues, but it's not what my research seemed to
Speaker 1: indicate was driving the widespread unease. To me, that was
Speaker 1: a lot more about, Man, I am looking at this
Speaker 1: thing much more than I know is useful or healthy
Speaker 1: it's steering that chariot in the wrong direction. I'm feeling
Speaker 1: like I'm losing control of my life. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: as somebody who interacts with those technologies. That's the heart
Speaker 1: of it really for me is the time and the
Speaker 1: extent to which I find myself back involved with something.
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm not going to do that so much,
Speaker 1: and then there I am, you know, And so I
Speaker 1: think from my perspective, that's largely what it is. Although
Speaker 1: if I wanted to break down what I'm doing on
Speaker 1: the devices a fair amount of time, I probably would
Speaker 1: would categorize it into the trivial, right. I mean, a
Speaker 1: lot of what we do is trivial. A lot of
Speaker 1: what we do is nice but not necessary, and some
Speaker 1: of what we do is really important. And the argument
Speaker 1: that the social media companies in particular have been trying
Speaker 1: to make for a long time was, as long as
Speaker 1: we can identify anything useful that you do with our services,
Speaker 1: stop complaining, right. This was the pushback I used to
Speaker 1: always get, they would, you know. I famously did this
Speaker 1: radio interview back a couple of years ago after I'd
Speaker 1: written this op ed in The Times that was sort
Speaker 1: of critical on social media, and this was before the
Speaker 1: shift had happened in our culture, so people were aghast that.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like wait, it's like you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to say negative things about social media. And I went
Speaker 1: on this national radio show in Canada and it was
Speaker 1: an ambush, like and now joining us live is you
Speaker 1: know such and such artists who only is able to
Speaker 1: market and sell her work because of social media. And
Speaker 1: I think at the time this was seen as a
Speaker 1: shutdown argument. Uh, it is not the case that social
Speaker 1: media is completely useless, so you could stop complaining about it.
Speaker 1: But that, of course is a straw man. This wasn't
Speaker 1: people's issue. The question was not is this technology useless
Speaker 1: or have some use? The question is do I really
Speaker 1: want to be looking at this five hours a day?
Speaker 1: And if not, then why am I doing it? Right?
Speaker 1: You say that our relationship is so complicated with these
Speaker 1: tools because they do mix harm with actual benefit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the ecosystems are also very rich. You know. Something
Speaker 1: that came up often and that people like talk to
Speaker 1: you for the book was Facebook groups. They say, man,
Speaker 1: I waste so much time on Facebook, but I belong
Speaker 1: to this group and it's really important to me. And
Speaker 1: they only organized on Facebook groups. So there's a thousand
Speaker 1: different examples like that where there's some particular kernel utility
Speaker 1: I should say that brings you into the ecosystem, but
Speaker 1: then once in there, you know, Mark Zuckerberg kind of
Speaker 1: sneaks in behind you and and slowly pushes that door shut,
Speaker 1: and then you're in there for the next three or
Speaker 1: four hours. Right, So let's circle back real quick before
Speaker 1: we move into solutions here with a little bit more
Speaker 1: on you know, we mentioned that one of the big
Speaker 1: things people wrestle with is autonomy. But what are the
Speaker 1: other costs of our current digital lifestyle. Well, essentially, what
Speaker 1: happens when you overuse personal devices, which is this core
Speaker 1: issue here is first of all, there's an opportunity cost
Speaker 1: calculation that has to happen, right, and this is something
Speaker 1: that goes all the way back. Throw in his own
Speaker 1: way wrote about this and Walden uh this notion that
Speaker 1: it's not just what value do I get out of
Speaker 1: this time I'm spending right now staring at my phone,
Speaker 1: because the value is probably greater than zero. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know, you're probably getting a little bit more
Speaker 1: value reading Twitter than maybe you are just staring into
Speaker 1: the nothingness. But the real question is what is the
Speaker 1: value I am missing from other activities that might be
Speaker 1: more important. So there's a huge opportunity cost hit that
Speaker 1: we get from this sort of default, constant companion mode
Speaker 1: usage of our phones. And then the other issue is
Speaker 1: when we take activities that we find meaningful and we
Speaker 1: do actually do them. So we sit down with a
Speaker 1: friend at dinner, we go into nature in the someplace
Speaker 1: that's soothing for the soul. We go to a community
Speaker 1: event that we feel is important. The tech has a
Speaker 1: way of fragmenting that experience because you have to keep
Speaker 1: planting and you have to keep quick checking, and it
Speaker 1: takes you out of the experience that fragments and reduces
Speaker 1: the positive affect that it gives you. So you have
Speaker 1: these two things, the opportunity costs of the high value
Speaker 1: things you miss, plus the diminution of the value you
Speaker 1: get when you do participate in these activities. And I
Speaker 1: think what we're what we're experiencing is a non trivial
Speaker 1: reduction of high meaning, satisfying experiences in people's lives lives.
Speaker 1: And again, this whole thing snuck up on us all
Speaker 1: and so we're sort of waking up in the last
Speaker 1: couple of years and saying, man, why do I feel
Speaker 1: a little bit just anxious and off and distracted and frenzied.
Speaker 1: And I think in part it's because we have taken
Speaker 1: that sort of soul affirming, high quality, meaningful activity and
Speaker 1: we've greatly reduced its role in our life. You quote
Speaker 1: the social critic Lawrence Scott describing our current digital existence
Speaker 1: is one in which a moment can feel strangely flat
Speaker 1: if it exists solely in itself. And the key point
Speaker 1: about that is that that reality is both new and contrived.
Speaker 1: So I'm a computer scientist, I'm a big tech nerd,
Speaker 1: I'm a huge internet booster. I think the ability to
Speaker 1: connect with people, find information, and express yourself on a
Speaker 1: decentralized internet is a fantastic Guttenberg level innovation. But there's
Speaker 1: a difference between that and what we do today, which
Speaker 1: is looking at our phones all the time. And if
Speaker 1: you go back and you look at this history, you
Speaker 1: see it really is pretty new. That's about six or
Speaker 1: seven years old. We didn't used to look at our
Speaker 1: smartphones all the time. We didn't used to use social
Speaker 1: media all the time. None of those benefits that I
Speaker 1: just outlined of the Internet require us to look at
Speaker 1: phones all the time. The reason we do that, this
Speaker 1: summarize a long story, is that the major social media
Speaker 1: companies re engineered the experience of their apps so that
Speaker 1: we would give it a lot more eyeball minutes. Why
Speaker 1: because they had to get their revenue numbers up for
Speaker 1: their I p o s about six or seven years ago.
Speaker 1: And so I always hammer home that point that we
Speaker 1: have to separate the miraculous opportunities of an age of
Speaker 1: a global Internet from this very contrived and recent behavior
Speaker 1: that's driving us crazy, which is this I look at
Speaker 1: my phone all the time. And so your response to
Speaker 1: that is what you're calling digital minimalism. And before we
Speaker 1: go into what that is, why don't we contrast that
Speaker 1: with what most of us do, which is sort of
Speaker 1: a maximalist philosophy, because I think that's a really useful contrast.
Speaker 1: Maximalist philosophies are calm, and especially in American culture, in
Speaker 1: many different aspects of lives, and the basic idea of
Speaker 1: the maximalist philosophy is that if something could potentially offer
Speaker 1: you some value, then you should probably bring that thing
Speaker 1: into your life because otherwise you might be missing out
Speaker 1: on that value. So the maximalist is always looking for
Speaker 1: missed opportunities or missed pieces of value, looking for that
Speaker 1: proverbial quarter on the sidewalk that you might have otherwise
Speaker 1: walked right past. That's how we deal with a lot
Speaker 1: of things in our lives right now. It's how we
Speaker 1: end up with so much clutter, for example, in our households,
Speaker 1: but we also tend to do it in our digital life.
Speaker 1: You hear about an app that could be interesting downloaded.
Speaker 1: Here about a service, Oh, I could think of a
Speaker 1: scenario in which that might give a small boost to
Speaker 1: my business, you sign up for it. Here about a
Speaker 1: device that has let's say three cameras on it? Now
Speaker 1: instead of to you're like, I could imagine exactly scenario
Speaker 1: when that might be interesting by the device. That's maximalism
Speaker 1: and our digital lives. I actually think it's a core
Speaker 1: of a lot of the issues we're having right now.
Speaker 1: And so what is minimalism? So minimal realism generally speaking
Speaker 1: says no, no, no. You don't want to try to
Speaker 1: bring into your life everything that might bring you some value.
Speaker 1: What you should do instead is carefully find to things
Speaker 1: that bring you really big value, double down on those
Speaker 1: things and ignore everything else. And the reason why that
Speaker 1: works is those costs I talked about before, Because if
Speaker 1: you actually are doing like the mathematical calculations on total value,
Speaker 1: you're much better dedicating your time to high return activities
Speaker 1: and trying to take that same finite amount of time
Speaker 1: and spread it out over many, many low value activities
Speaker 1: because you get much more return per your time for
Speaker 1: the high value activities, and the low value activities can
Speaker 1: diminish the benefit you get from the high value ones.
Speaker 1: So the minimalists, whether it be in their possessions or
Speaker 1: be in their digital life, says, let me figure out
Speaker 1: what the big winds are. Let me double down on
Speaker 1: the big winds, and then ignore everything else, even if
Speaker 1: those things might offer you some small bit of value
Speaker 1: or some opportunity or connect you to something that one
Speaker 1: day might be useful. If you want to maximize the
Speaker 1: net value you receive from a particular part of your life,
Speaker 1: it's almost always better the focus really intentionally on the
Speaker 1: small number of things that give you the biggest returns. Right,
Speaker 1: And you also describe this in the book I think
Speaker 1: in a sentence that is good. You say that it's
Speaker 1: a full fledged philosophy of technology use that is rooted
Speaker 1: in our deep values. Yeah, so if you're going to
Speaker 1: apply minimalism to your digital life, you have to figure out, well,
Speaker 1: what are the digital activities to give me a lot
Speaker 1: of value? Which means you've got to know what your
Speaker 1: values are. And so you actually start, if you want
Speaker 1: to be a digital minimalist, you start with reflection and
Speaker 1: experimentation to try to figure out what do I actually
Speaker 1: care about? What do I actually want to spend my
Speaker 1: time doing. What are the activities that are worthwhile? And
Speaker 1: we're talking here primarily outside of work. Okay, work is
Speaker 1: its own issue, but in my life outside of work,
Speaker 1: what do I want to do? What's important? What's meaningful
Speaker 1: to me? You know those deep values, and then you
Speaker 1: work backwards from them and say, okay, well what is
Speaker 1: the optimal, biggest return way to deploy technology to help
Speaker 1: these small number of things I really care about? And
Speaker 1: then you let the answers to those questions basically define
Speaker 1: the tech you use, and let's go into how to
Speaker 1: do that process in a moment. But I think that
Speaker 1: what you're saying there is really important because in essence,
Speaker 1: that's the heart of any good life, really right, is
Speaker 1: to be able to think about what's important and then
Speaker 1: spend your time and energy in that direction. And I
Speaker 1: think we get lost in both those directions. Either we
Speaker 1: don't think about what's important very often we we sort
Speaker 1: of choose by default, or we have a vague sense
Speaker 1: of what's important, but then our our actions don't carry
Speaker 1: out those values. This is why this notion of minimalism
Speaker 1: is nothing new. It goes all the way back to
Speaker 1: the Ancients. You can see Marcus are really is walking
Speaker 1: to talking about this. You see it come up in
Speaker 1: the Eastern Wisdom traditions. You see it in the Row,
Speaker 1: you see it in the radical simplicity movements. You see
Speaker 1: it in Wendell Berry. It comes up again and again.
Speaker 1: You see it in Meri Condo. The reason why this
Speaker 1: idea keeps coming up again and again is because it
Speaker 1: seems to be touching on something true about the human condition,
Speaker 1: which is an almost every aspect of your life. Focusing
Speaker 1: intensely on the things that really matter to the exclusion
Speaker 1: of things that matter less is almost always better than
Speaker 1: trying to also squeeze in all those low value things
Speaker 1: along with the big valuable things. I mean, that's really
Speaker 1: just at the core of a successful human life and
Speaker 1: almost all aspects. So in some sense, to say let's
Speaker 1: apply this to our digital life now that that's such
Speaker 1: a big part of our existence is a really obvious
Speaker 1: thing to do, right. It makes me think of the
Speaker 1: old analogy. I use this one when it comes to
Speaker 1: planning time, but it it speaks to everything, which is
Speaker 1: this idea that if like you're planning time. The illustration
Speaker 1: that's often used is like you've got to You've got
Speaker 1: a big bowl, right, and you drop a bunch of
Speaker 1: rocks in it, big rocks, and you say, is the
Speaker 1: bowl full? And it looks and it goes yeah. But
Speaker 1: then you pour in a bunch of gravel and is
Speaker 1: the Is the bowl full? It looks like it is,
Speaker 1: But now you pour in sand, you know. The and
Speaker 1: the idea is that you can always keep adding little things,
Speaker 1: but the key is you've got to put the big
Speaker 1: rocks in first. The most important things have to go
Speaker 1: in first. And that's really what we're talking about here,
Speaker 1: is those things are in place now. The problem in
Speaker 1: this case is that what's happening is we're filling the
Speaker 1: bowl up with the water before we put any of
Speaker 1: the big important rocks in. It's a fair analogy that
Speaker 1: almost completely fits, except for the minimalist might even say, well,
Speaker 1: you put in the big rocks and don't bother with
Speaker 1: the sand, right right, that you have the sand in
Speaker 1: there in between the big rocks, it's going to make
Speaker 1: it harder to get around and have access to those
Speaker 1: big rocks. If I can, if I can stretch this analogy,
Speaker 1: Uh so, Yeah, the big rocks are what's important. And
Speaker 1: if you don't prioritize, and I think that's that's the
Speaker 1: piece that I think is quite accurate there. If you
Speaker 1: don't make that the foundation of what you do, If
Speaker 1: you don't, as Cubby says, do first things first, it's
Speaker 1: not going to happen. You've got a line in the
Speaker 1: book that I think says this very well. You say,
Speaker 1: minimalists don't mind missing out on small things. What worries
Speaker 1: them much more is diminishing the large things they already
Speaker 1: know for sure make a good life good. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's exactly the divide between maximalist and minimalists.
Speaker 1: The maximalist looks around and says, oh my god, what
Speaker 1: if I miss out on some opportunity, wouldn't that be terrible?
Speaker 1: Where the minimalist says, oh my god, what if in
Speaker 1: my search for these opportunities, I don't spend nearly enough
Speaker 1: time whatever being with my kids or working with this
Speaker 1: community group, or exercise or doing these things that I
Speaker 1: already know for sure really really valuable, that really give
Speaker 1: me a lot of a lot of positive benefit. And
Speaker 1: so it's two different ways of looking at the same thing.
Speaker 1: But I think if you look at philosophy, if you
Speaker 1: look at psychology, even if you look at the sort
Speaker 1: of utilitarian calculus behind it, the minimalists almost certainly have that. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had an example in my own life of this
Speaker 1: this week that your book sort of helped with, and
Speaker 1: it was that idea of like, well, if something offers
Speaker 1: a little bit of benefit, I should do it. And
Speaker 1: it has to do with running and having an application
Speaker 1: on my phone that tells me how far and how
Speaker 1: fast I'm running, which occasionally is useful. But where I
Speaker 1: was going to run is around a loop that I
Speaker 1: know exactly how far it is, And I thought to myself,
Speaker 1: why am I carrying this thing along with me when
Speaker 1: I know how far I'm going. Yes, it'll tell me
Speaker 1: how fast I'm going, but I'm not really training for anything.
Speaker 1: And I suddenly realized, like that was an example of
Speaker 1: me trying to maximize that moment, let me know exactly
Speaker 1: how fast I'm going, versus what was really important was
Speaker 1: being running and being outdoors, and for me was being
Speaker 1: present to the outdoors, and so leaving the phone behind
Speaker 1: became an easy choice when I framed it that way. Well,
Speaker 1: I think this is one of the one of the
Speaker 1: clear indicators that at least in our digital lives, we've
Speaker 1: we've really fallen out of touch with what matters. Is
Speaker 1: this completely to me perplexing trend that really hit its
Speaker 1: peak a few years ago, where tech companies even stopped
Speaker 1: trying that hard to sell these new apps. They would
Speaker 1: just put them out there and essentially leave it to
Speaker 1: the user to figure out why it was useful to me.
Speaker 1: This is peak maximalism, right, And so when you're talking
Speaker 1: about those apps like Strava, kind of think about that, right,
Speaker 1: Like a lot of runners just feel vaguely obligated. I
Speaker 1: guess I should have this. I'm not really sure why,
Speaker 1: but like it exists, I guess I should have this,
Speaker 1: I'll figure it out. The peak of this was probably
Speaker 1: the Apple Watch debut. When the Apple Watch came out,
Speaker 1: they essentially didn't try to explain why you should buy
Speaker 1: an Apple Watch. It's just it was like, here's this thing,
Speaker 1: it looks cool. We'll talk about these different apps that
Speaker 1: are on it. And users were like, great, I can't
Speaker 1: wait to get this. I can't wait to start figuring
Speaker 1: out why this is useful. And after a couple of
Speaker 1: years so like, a ha, maybe health is why it's useful. Okay,
Speaker 1: but they didn't know that right off the bat, And
Speaker 1: to me, that's almost deranging, right when what other aspects
Speaker 1: of our economy could you imagine a company putting out
Speaker 1: a product and their ad is basically, I don't really
Speaker 1: know why you need this, but what if there is
Speaker 1: some use you better get it just to find out.
Speaker 1: I mean it, almost every aspect of our life would
Speaker 1: be like, are you kidding me? I'm not going to
Speaker 1: spend money and time and attention on this. But the
Speaker 1: digital realm in the last let's say ten years or
Speaker 1: so has had that type of deranging effect on us.
Speaker 1: I mean, this idea that it's just it's maximalism that
Speaker 1: has been purified and refined and sort of you know,
Speaker 1: snorted directly into beyond the brain barrier or something. We're
Speaker 1: just at this peak stage of just my god, there
Speaker 1: might be some value to that gadget app or service.
Speaker 1: What if I missed it? Okay, let's commit to this
Speaker 1: right now. I just think it's with any type of
Speaker 1: minimalist reflection, it really shows how far off the rails
Speaker 1: we've gotten. Yeah, it's why people end up with two
Speaker 1: apps on their phone. You know, Like I said, for me,
Speaker 1: was sort of looking at it through that lens just
Speaker 1: sort of flipped it. The other thing that it did
Speaker 1: is that looking at it through that perspective, it just
Speaker 1: gave me a perspective that wasn't so much good and bad,
Speaker 1: but gave me a useful framework to think about it
Speaker 1: in a way that it just gave me more visibility
Speaker 1: into it. And this is what a lot of people report.
Speaker 1: It's why I ended up calling the first part of
Speaker 1: the book that gets in all these ideas foundations, because
Speaker 1: it just gives you a foundation for thinking about these things.
Speaker 1: I think essentially we were just driftless, Like I don't know,
Speaker 1: we're just we're aimless we're drifting. This seems kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: That seems kind of interesting, That seems kind of high tech,
Speaker 1: and and I think was making everyone a little bit unhappy,
Speaker 1: a little bit anxious. I mean, that's just that feeling.
Speaker 1: That's why I keep going back to the word unease,
Speaker 1: because that somehow seems to be the right adjective. It's
Speaker 1: not sickness, it's not anger, it's not necessarily outrage, is
Speaker 1: not necessarily exhaustion. It's uneased because you can't quite put
Speaker 1: your finger on it. You just think something here is
Speaker 1: not right. As you download that two app before before
Speaker 1: you go for the run, and look at your Apple
Speaker 1: Watch and realize you haven't used in the three days
Speaker 1: because you're not quite sure what it's for. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: that unease. And you're right. This gives you some foundation,
Speaker 1: you and stand on something and say, what am I
Speaker 1: trying to do with my life? What am I all about? Great?
Speaker 1: Let me deploy tech to support those things I care
Speaker 1: about and get the rest of the stuff out of
Speaker 1: my face. I have life to live, you know. It's
Speaker 1: it's almost empowering once you have that foundation under your feet,
Speaker 1: and it puts tech to great use. I mean, as
Speaker 1: far as the digital minimalist is concerned, they're better off
Speaker 1: today than they were ten years ago because the tech
Speaker 1: they do deploy gives them big wins. They're doing it
Speaker 1: on their own terms and not just being sort of
Speaker 1: aimlessly pushed around by let me try this, let me
Speaker 1: try that, I guess I have to do this, let
Speaker 1: me look at my phone, and just waking up and
Speaker 1: feeling completely uneasy about the whole thing. And so one
Speaker 1: of the things that you say is that most of
Speaker 1: the writing in this space about this gives a lot
Speaker 1: of minor corrections or tips or a vague hack to
Speaker 1: do this, And you say that it's becoming increasingly clear
Speaker 1: that these do not seem to be sufficient to tame
Speaker 1: the ability of these new technologies. Well, I think a
Speaker 1: good analogy here is probably food and obe City. So
Speaker 1: let's say you're you're having trouble with food. Let's say
Speaker 1: your weight is not where you want it to be,
Speaker 1: You're not healthy because of that, you want to really
Speaker 1: turn around your health. We know that one off tips
Speaker 1: usually don't work. So if you come and say, well,
Speaker 1: here's what you should eat healthier, or you know, here's
Speaker 1: the food pyramid, see you know, use fat sparingly or whatever. Right,
Speaker 1: This doesn't This has never really turned anyone around. Who
Speaker 1: are the people that have dramatic turnarounds in their health
Speaker 1: and fitness. They almost always have some sort of internally
Speaker 1: consistent philosophy, either vegan or paleo or primal, and this
Speaker 1: philosophy allows them to make consistent decisions day in and
Speaker 1: day out about what they do, and make those decisions
Speaker 1: in the right direction. We're in the same place with tech.
Speaker 1: I mean I mentioned before that we started looking at
Speaker 1: our phones all the time because the social media companies,
Speaker 1: followed by other attention economic companies, re engineered the experience
Speaker 1: so that we would do that. Well, the details of
Speaker 1: that re engineering are such that it's very hard to
Speaker 1: resist looking at that phone all the time. And then
Speaker 1: you ow in the social pressures. The way that has
Speaker 1: intertwined itself into into people's social and community existence makes
Speaker 1: it doubly hard just on your own s m I'll
Speaker 1: start stop looking at this moral trumps and notifications. That
Speaker 1: should be enough. I'll do a I'll do a detox
Speaker 1: every once in a while. That should be enough. Of course,
Speaker 1: it's not going to be. The forces are too powerful
Speaker 1: and So if you really want to solve this issue,
Speaker 1: you really do need a philosophy based on your values
Speaker 1: that allows you to consistently make the right decision and
Speaker 1: you know why you're making the decision, and you can
Speaker 1: stand behind the decision and do it again and again
Speaker 1: and again until finally you see some real change. Exactly,
Speaker 1: So you bring up three principles that sort of underlie
Speaker 1: this philosophy. Can we go through what those are real
Speaker 1: quickly before we move into the actual steps to implement this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fine. So Principal one clutter is costly. So this
Speaker 1: is this opportunity cost notion that we talked about briefly before,
Speaker 1: which is when you bring lots of things into your
Speaker 1: life to have a small amount of value, it's incorrect
Speaker 1: to only just add up those small bits of value
Speaker 1: as the maximalist does. You have to, in true minimalist fashion,
Speaker 1: also add up their cost. And this is a point
Speaker 1: that I think Thorow makes wonderfully in Walden, where he
Speaker 1: actually goes through this math. I mean, people think about
Speaker 1: Walden as a nature book. It really is not. It's
Speaker 1: an economics book, and it's a book about economic minimalism.
Speaker 1: And he goes through exactly, you know how much like
Speaker 1: in that book we talk about economic minimalism, he goes
Speaker 1: through exactly and adds up, Okay, what's the bare minimum
Speaker 1: costs it actually cost for me to sort of survive.
Speaker 1: That's what he's adding up to be in this cabin
Speaker 1: in the woods and Walden, I spent this much on
Speaker 1: beans and this much on nails to build the wall
Speaker 1: to build a cabin. I spent this much on coffee
Speaker 1: or whatever it was. And then he calculated and figured out, okay,
Speaker 1: that would take about one day per week of labor
Speaker 1: if I rented myself out as a farm labor to
Speaker 1: one of the farmers who knew and conquered. And She's like,
Speaker 1: that's the foundation. And so beyond that bare subsistence level,
Speaker 1: I have to think about the trade off between how
Speaker 1: much additional stuff do I get by working more versus
Speaker 1: how much time do I give up. So he was
Speaker 1: sort of the first person to think about what are
Speaker 1: these costs and not just the value of the trinket
Speaker 1: you buy? How much did that cost you to get it?
Speaker 1: And that is definitely an applicable idea to our digital world,
Speaker 1: where here the cost is really in time and attention.
Speaker 1: So when you think about the value that you might
Speaker 1: get from downloading this one app or using the service,
Speaker 1: you also have to think about the cost of what's
Speaker 1: it going to do to my time and attention? That is,
Speaker 1: how much time am I going to lose to it?
Speaker 1: What better things is that going to take me away from?
Speaker 1: And how is it going to degrade my experience of
Speaker 1: those better things? And when you do these type of
Speaker 1: calculus is almost always what happens is when you throw
Speaker 1: a lot of things into your digital life that I'll
Speaker 1: give you a little bit of value, those costs of
Speaker 1: all that clutter usually adds up to something that's much
Speaker 1: worse than the sum of the value it gives you.
Speaker 1: That there is just a cost of having so many
Speaker 1: different things pulling out your time and attention, fragmenting your
Speaker 1: time and attention. And so one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: minimalism works so good in this sphere is that by
Speaker 1: cutting down to a very small number of things things,
Speaker 1: they're reducing a lot of those hitting costs, and the
Speaker 1: minimalist ends up there for much better. You talked in
Speaker 1: your previous book Deep Work a lot about this idea
Speaker 1: of attention switching cost, which I think applies here right.
Speaker 1: There is for sure a really big cost of switching attention.
Speaker 1: I think it's something that we should emphasize more in
Speaker 1: both the professional and personal sphere. Uh. We we've known this,
Speaker 1: that there's some cost of this all the way back
Speaker 1: to research I've been I've been looking to this more recently,
Speaker 1: go all the way back to psychology research from the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties when they first began documenting, Oh, when you
Speaker 1: switch your attention, there's a cost to that switch. We
Speaker 1: now know a lot more about it. But the short
Speaker 1: version of it is, it's not so much let's say,
Speaker 1: if you're going to be distracted by something, it's not
Speaker 1: so much how much time you spend on the distraction
Speaker 1: that determines its impacts the cost of the actual switch itself.
Speaker 1: And so one of the things these phones brings into
Speaker 1: our life is this persistent background hum of attention switches.
Speaker 1: Because I can glance at my text messages, I can
Speaker 1: glance at Twitter, I can glance at Instagram, I can
Speaker 1: glance at Facebook, whatever it is that you're using. Every
Speaker 1: one of those glances has a massive impact to your brain,
Speaker 1: which has to completely start re orienting your attention towards
Speaker 1: this new target, and then when you come back to
Speaker 1: the original thing, which is the friend across from you
Speaker 1: at the table, it takes a long time to try
Speaker 1: to switch that back, and it all gets jumbled up,
Speaker 1: and you're essentially only partially there for these activities that
Speaker 1: you otherwise think are important. So you're right, the cost
Speaker 1: is in the switching, not in the duration of the distraction.
Speaker 1: And smartphones are essentially switching machines. They get us doing
Speaker 1: that all day long, and that has a real cost. Right,
Speaker 1: So not only is are we paying for it in
Speaker 1: the actual minutes, which we are, I mean at an
Speaker 1: hour spent on candy crushes, an hour lost, it's you know,
Speaker 1: the fact that we can go back and forth and
Speaker 1: and you know you mentioned it earlier, this sense of
Speaker 1: unease and and I've often said on this show, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, I don't have the right word for it.
Speaker 1: I don't have the right way to explain it. But
Speaker 1: a day spent where I'm on the phone a lot,
Speaker 1: or I'm you know, kind of doing a lot of
Speaker 1: different online activities, I end up strangely drained at the
Speaker 1: end of the day in a way that I can't
Speaker 1: quite articulate and I can't quite put into words. Yes.
Speaker 1: And this is what's important, because if you're if you're
Speaker 1: talking to let's say, a social media apologist, they would
Speaker 1: want to zoom right into one particular thing you're doing
Speaker 1: during the day, like, well, what are you doing like
Speaker 1: at this moment when you're looking at your phone, and
Speaker 1: it's probably something that's not at all bad, like well,
Speaker 1: I guess I was leaving a comment on an Instagram
Speaker 1: post from my brother posted a picture of my nephew,
Speaker 1: and I was saying, this is like a nice looking
Speaker 1: picture and there's nothing negative about that in isolation. In fact,
Speaker 1: you can go to the lab. There's experiments to say
Speaker 1: that we feel a little bit better when we comment
Speaker 1: on family or close friends Facebook pages, for example, and
Speaker 1: they say, so, see, there's no problem. But when you
Speaker 1: zoom back out and say yeah. But I was doing
Speaker 1: that again and again and again and again, and I
Speaker 1: did it all throughout the day, and I was kept
Speaker 1: away from multiple things that would have been more nourishing,
Speaker 1: and the small number of nurishing things I did, I
Speaker 1: frustratingly fragmented up and sort of sapped away my attention
Speaker 1: and value from it. You added up up and you
Speaker 1: get that draining feeling. Okay, So principle number two is
Speaker 1: optimization is important. So at piece I somewhat glossed over
Speaker 1: is that once you start thinking about technology from the
Speaker 1: perspective of values, that is, when you're saying, I use
Speaker 1: this particular technology because it supports this other thing that
Speaker 1: I really care about. That opens a door for what
Speaker 1: one of the most crucial pieces of minimalism is, which
Speaker 1: is optimizing. So once you know why you've decided to
Speaker 1: use a technology you can actually optimize, you say, great, well,
Speaker 1: how can I use it in such a way that's
Speaker 1: gonna help this thing I care about as much as
Speaker 1: possible and get rid of all other uses. And this
Speaker 1: is a sort of miraculous mindset shift once you start
Speaker 1: taking a sort of b a myth of a service
Speaker 1: like Instagram or Facebook, and instead of just saying I
Speaker 1: use Facebook or I don't, but instead say, oh, I
Speaker 1: use Facebook because this community group I care about organizes
Speaker 1: on Facebook and that's important to me. Now you have
Speaker 1: a lot of control in how Facebook shows up in
Speaker 1: your life, and this type of optimization. So optimizing tech
Speaker 1: for particular values takes this cost benefit ratio that we
Speaker 1: all we all grapple with, and it puts it massively
Speaker 1: in your favor. So I give a bunch of examples
Speaker 1: in the books, for example, on those Facebook group type scenarios,
Speaker 1: and what quickly becomes apparent when you realize that that's
Speaker 1: the main reason why you use Facebook is there's all
Speaker 1: sorts of ways to hack Facebook so that all you
Speaker 1: do is check on that group and you don't see
Speaker 1: a news feed, and it's not on your phone, and
Speaker 1: you do it on your desktop, and you do it
Speaker 1: once a week and it takes fifteen minutes of your life.
Speaker 1: Completely different experience with Facebook. I also talked with a
Speaker 1: bunch of visual artists that did something similar with Instagram.
Speaker 1: They said, look, I have to see pictures of other
Speaker 1: people's artwork. That is the core fuel for my creative process.
Speaker 1: Is very, very important to me that artwork is on Instagram.
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, great, you you need to keep Instagram
Speaker 1: in your life. But once they realize why they need Instagram,
Speaker 1: they could greatly optimize their experience to get that benefit
Speaker 1: and get rid of the other cost. And so what
Speaker 1: a lot of these artists did is they said, he
Speaker 1: I'm going to curate who I follow. So it's just
Speaker 1: this handful of artists whose work really inspires me. Be
Speaker 1: I'm going to take it off my phone because it
Speaker 1: doesn't take me that long to see what they posted
Speaker 1: each week. There's no reason for me to have it
Speaker 1: on my phone and see, I'll have some schedule and
Speaker 1: when I check. In fact, what I'm gonna do is
Speaker 1: I'm gonna check before my studio time on Saturday mornings.
Speaker 1: And they're getting of the deep value that they were
Speaker 1: getting out of Instagram while cutting out about the cost,
Speaker 1: which really rears his head when it's just there is
Speaker 1: a a passive distraction through throughout all of their day.
Speaker 1: So once you know why you're using tech, you can
Speaker 1: optimize it. And once you can optimize it, it is
Speaker 1: advantage you decisively. So excellent and principal number three intentionality
Speaker 1: is satisfying. One of the concerns people have about minimalism,
Speaker 1: let's say in the digital realm, is that there will
Speaker 1: be more inconveniences, there will be some opportunities lost. I mean,
Speaker 1: there will be specific things that you know, hey, this
Speaker 1: is kind of a pain that I don't always have
Speaker 1: my phone with me. There'll be cases where that's a problem.
Speaker 1: I don't have Instagram on my phone. Oh, you're in
Speaker 1: a situation where it really would be nice if it was,
Speaker 1: because you could take a picture on your phone and
Speaker 1: upload it directly. And now it's going to be a
Speaker 1: pain that you don't have your phone, right, it's going
Speaker 1: to be inconveniences if you're minimalist. But you don't really
Speaker 1: have to worry about that, because it turns out there's
Speaker 1: this sort of deep principle of human satisfaction which says
Speaker 1: being very intentional gives you way more satisfaction than the
Speaker 1: conveniences that leads you to miss out on. And so
Speaker 1: the satisfaction you get out of being so intentional about
Speaker 1: your tech, I can almost guarantee you is gonna far
Speaker 1: swamp the satisfaction as you miss by having certain parts
Speaker 1: of your life be less convenient. And so I emphasized
Speaker 1: that point. Intention is satisfying in itself. Intention, as I
Speaker 1: sometimes say, can trump convenience, and it's really important to
Speaker 1: recognize that you're going to get a lot of satisfaction
Speaker 1: just out of that very human act of taking control
Speaker 1: of some part of your life. In the intro to
Speaker 1: this show, one of the lines is it takes conscious,
Speaker 1: constant and creative effort to make a life worth a living,
Speaker 1: sort of speaks to that idea. Yeah, we're wired for
Speaker 1: that type of conscious effort. It makes us feel good.
Speaker 1: I can guarantee you that that's going to be more
Speaker 1: important to you than the fact that it was a
Speaker 1: real pain to get that photo on Instagram that one time. Excellent,
Speaker 1: So let's real quick walk through the three step process
Speaker 1: here for implementing digital minimalism. When I was looking into minimalist,
Speaker 1: when I was looking into how do people become minimalist,
Speaker 1: it it seemed to me that it's hard to do
Speaker 1: in a gradual fashion. So this idea that let me
Speaker 1: just tweak this and tweak that, and and maybe over
Speaker 1: the course of four or five months I'll come out
Speaker 1: on the other end and things will be more minimalist.
Speaker 1: That tends not to work. This is why when you
Speaker 1: look at minimalism in the context of people's physical clutter,
Speaker 1: there's almost always a radical transformation. Right. So Mary Condo says,
Speaker 1: don't just work on your closet a little bit, empty
Speaker 1: the whole thing and then just put back in the
Speaker 1: stuff you really care about. Well, that's essentially what I
Speaker 1: preach for digital minimalism. So it's sort of inspired I
Speaker 1: suppose by that condo analogy. I call it the digital declutter,
Speaker 1: and there are three steps to it, but the high
Speaker 1: level idea is that you actually clean out the proverbial closet.
Speaker 1: You sort of take out of your life temporarily all
Speaker 1: of these optional personal digital technologies that have been cluttering
Speaker 1: your mind and pulling out your attention, and then you
Speaker 1: just put back in the ones that you really really need.
Speaker 1: So I recommend sort of the the t l DR
Speaker 1: summary is, instead of trying from the top down the
Speaker 1: tweak your digital life, go from the bottom up get
Speaker 1: rid of everything art from scratch. But this time, when
Speaker 1: you choose what apps to have and services to sign
Speaker 1: up for and gadgets to buy, you do it with
Speaker 1: a lot of intention. And so this is sort of
Speaker 1: the define your technology rules. Yeah exactly. So if you
Speaker 1: want to do this, I broke it down into three
Speaker 1: steps so you can think about it this way. The
Speaker 1: first step is, and there's different ways to break it down,
Speaker 1: with the way I've been summarizing it recently is that
Speaker 1: you know the first step is figure out, uh, well,
Speaker 1: what are these optional technologies. What are the things that
Speaker 1: you actually can walk away from, at least temporarily without
Speaker 1: it causing trouble. So minimalism is really about your personal life.
Speaker 1: So we're not talking here about let's say your work
Speaker 1: email or your work slack. You know, Unfortunately you can't
Speaker 1: use me as an excuse to stop answering your boss's email.
Speaker 1: That's a different issue. But for most people, these are
Speaker 1: things like social media, streaming videos, video games, online online news, gossip, entertainment.
Speaker 1: These are sort of the the they're called optional digital entertainments.
Speaker 1: And then for some people there's an overlap, so there's
Speaker 1: some limited social media used to have to do for work.
Speaker 1: And in those cases, I say, we'll just build fences
Speaker 1: around it. So, okay, like I use a lot of
Speaker 1: social media personally, but I also have to post once
Speaker 1: a day on Facebook for my company. We'll just put
Speaker 1: some fences around it and say, I'll still post once
Speaker 1: a day from my company. I'll do it from my
Speaker 1: desktop computer at work and no other social media use. Um.
Speaker 1: So that's the first of the three steps of just
Speaker 1: figuring out what is on this metaphorical closet shelves that
Speaker 1: you are going to pull out, and so it's really
Speaker 1: just a question of definitions that step one, and you
Speaker 1: say that your general rule for what's optional is consider
Speaker 1: it optional unless it would harm or significantly disrupt the
Speaker 1: daily operation of your professional and personal life, which you
Speaker 1: kind of discovered. Yeah exactly. I mean, if, for example,
Speaker 1: text messaging is how your daughter tells you she's ready
Speaker 1: to be picked up from school, you probably don't want
Speaker 1: to take a break from text messaging because your daughters
Speaker 1: are gonna get home from school. So in some degree,
Speaker 1: at some common sense. And I will just mention that
Speaker 1: different people answer this question differently. So this sort of
Speaker 1: three step process we're talking about here briefly, I ran
Speaker 1: about people through it as part of the research for
Speaker 1: the book, so I have a lot of feedback on
Speaker 1: how it actually unfolds for different people in different walks
Speaker 1: of lives and different situations in life. And I can
Speaker 1: tell you this list of what people walk away from
Speaker 1: and how they do it can really vary depending on
Speaker 1: who you are and what's going on in your life, right,
Speaker 1: And that's the personal philosophy part of it. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: You know, so then once you've done that, so that's
Speaker 1: the first step to figure out what I recommend doing
Speaker 1: is actually spending an entire month away from these optional technologies.
Speaker 1: And here we're getting a little bit different than let's
Speaker 1: say physical clutter. When you clean out your closet with
Speaker 1: Mary Condo's method, you do it, you know, in a weekend.
Speaker 1: And I'm saying you actually spend a month. And the
Speaker 1: reason why why I say you spend a month is
Speaker 1: twofold one. You actually do need a bit of a
Speaker 1: detox effect before you can make strong, smart decisions about
Speaker 1: your digital life, and that can take one to two weeks.
Speaker 1: So this is what I learned from my experiment. It
Speaker 1: can take about one to two weeks before you lose
Speaker 1: that knee you're impulse to have to look at this.
Speaker 1: I have to look at this, and if you can't
Speaker 1: clear that out, you're not gonna be able to make
Speaker 1: very strong decisions about what's valuable. The second reason why
Speaker 1: I think you need a month is that it turns
Speaker 1: out that most people actually need that amount of time
Speaker 1: to figure out the values question that that's actually hard
Speaker 1: for a lot of people. They underestimate the degree to
Speaker 1: which just being able to look at this thing all
Speaker 1: the time has has kept them away from any serious
Speaker 1: self reflection about what's important to them, what they're all about,
Speaker 1: what their values are. It's a way to paper that
Speaker 1: all over and just be distracted. And so people actually
Speaker 1: have to do a non trivial amount of reflection and experimentation,
Speaker 1: trying things, joining things, going and doing things, re exposing
Speaker 1: themselves to things. They have to do this for a
Speaker 1: while before they really have a good answer to the question, Okay,
Speaker 1: what is it I really want to do with my
Speaker 1: time outside of work. So that's the second step is
Speaker 1: get away for a month and during that month experiment
Speaker 1: and reflect. I'm a recovering alcoholic and addict from substances,
Speaker 1: and that totally resonates and makes sense with me, that
Speaker 1: idea that it takes your brain awhile to start to
Speaker 1: even be able to see what's important again because it's
Speaker 1: been so clouded for so long. And just as a
Speaker 1: quick aside about that, what I'm talking about in the
Speaker 1: substance abuse community is a sort of classical detox program
Speaker 1: in the sense that you have to first reduce the
Speaker 1: actual sort of physical connection, but then there's this very
Speaker 1: important sort of rebuilding of your life that also happens
Speaker 1: with it. But that term in a way that's been
Speaker 1: frustrating to me, has really been co opted and corrupted
Speaker 1: by the digital wellness movement, and they've they've taken this
Speaker 1: notion of detox, which is played such an important role
Speaker 1: uh in the substance abuse community, and it's been corrupted
Speaker 1: into just break for the sake of taking a break.
Speaker 1: You know that the digital detox has become oh, we'll
Speaker 1: just take a week away from these things that are
Speaker 1: causing you trouble and then go right back to them
Speaker 1: after that week is over. That's the that's the the
Speaker 1: the opposite of what a detox originally was in the
Speaker 1: substance abuse text. It's the first step towards a complete
Speaker 1: reinvention correct that word detox has been perverted in many
Speaker 1: different places besides just technology. But I agree, and so
Speaker 1: then step three is reintroduced the technology after you've taken
Speaker 1: a thirty day break. So now that you know what
Speaker 1: you actually want to do, what you actually care about
Speaker 1: for each of those things you've identified, say what's the
Speaker 1: best way to use technology to support this? For each
Speaker 1: of the technologies that that you bring in because it
Speaker 1: supports something you care about, put those optimization rules around it,
Speaker 1: so you say not just how, but what, So you
Speaker 1: know you bring in Okay, I I am going to
Speaker 1: use Instagram to support my creative art practice, but my
Speaker 1: optimization rules is not on my phone curated list check
Speaker 1: it once a week. So you bring back in the
Speaker 1: technologies that support to things that you identified as really
Speaker 1: caring about. You put rules around it to optimize the use.
Speaker 1: And then the crucial last piece of this is you
Speaker 1: ignore everything else, and there is you walk away this
Speaker 1: month later are with a brand new, very intentional, high return,
Speaker 1: minimalist digital life. Excellent. Well, I think that is a
Speaker 1: good place. We've kind of run out of time here.
Speaker 1: I think that's a good place for us to sort
Speaker 1: of wrap up now that we've gotten through all the
Speaker 1: basic parts of it. You and I are going to
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more in the post show conversation, uh,
Speaker 1: specifically about the Amish and their relation to technology, and
Speaker 1: it's not often what people think, so we'll do that
Speaker 1: in the post show conversation. Listeners. If you're interested in that,
Speaker 1: you can go to one you feed dot net slash
Speaker 1: joint and become a member of the community. Cal thank
Speaker 1: you so much for taking the time to come on
Speaker 1: I've really enjoyed the conversation. Okay bye. If what you
Speaker 1: just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a
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