Digital Minimalism

Leisure Lesson #2: Use skills to produce valuable things in the physical world.

“we are interested in the social world because we are built to turn on the default network during our free time.” Put another way, our brains adapted to automatically practice social thinking during any moments of cognitive downtime, and it’s this practice that helps us become really interested in our social world.

Here’s my suggestion: schedule in advance the time you spend on low-quality leisure.

“Leave good evidence of yourself. Do good work.” This then provides our second lesson about cultivating a high-quality leisure life.

Thoreau’s new economics, however, demands that you balance this profit against the costs measured in terms of “your life.”

When seen from this perspective, it becomes clear that this is a battle we must fight. But to do so, we need a more serious strategy, something custom built to swat aside the forces manipulating us toward behavioral addictions and that offers a concrete plan about how to put new technologies to use for our best aspirations and not against them.

Have a careful plan for how you use the different platforms, with the goal of “maximizing good information and cutting out the waste.”

Put simply, don’t click and don’t comment. This basic stricture will radically change for the better how you maintain your social life. PRACTICE: CONSOLIDATE TEXTING A major obstacle in attempting to shift your social life from connection back to conversation is the degree to which text communication—be it delivered through SMS, iMessage, Facebook

describes the experience of taking a temporary break from modern technologies. These intrepid souls almost always report that the disconnection generates a feeling of emotional distress.

Even old ideas require new investigation to underscore their continued relevance.