Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

optimizing how we use technology is just as important as how we choose what technologies to use in the first place.

Harris quit, started a nonprofit called Time Well Spent

AllSides.com once a day—a news site that covers the top stories, but for each story it neutrally links to three articles: one from a source associated with the political left, one from the right, and one from the center.

“Amish communities are not relics of a bygone era.13 Rather, they are demonstrations of a different form of modernity.”

the Amish still practice Rumspringa. During this ritual period, which begins at the age of sixteen, Amish youth are allowed to leave home and experience the outside world beyond the restrictions of their community. It is then their decision, after having seen what they will be giving up, whether or not they accept baptism into the Amish church.

removed the web browser from her phone—a nontrivial hack. “I figured I didn’t need to know the answer to everything instantly,” she told me. She then bought an old-fashioned notebook to jot down ideas when she’s bored on the tube.

A maximalist is very uncomfortable with the idea that anyone might miss out on something that’s the least bit interesting or valuable.

To allow an optional technology back into your life at the end of the digital declutter, it must: Serve something you deeply value (offering some benefit is not enough). Be the best way to use technology to serve this value (if it’s not, replace it with something better). Have a role in your life that is constrained with a standard operating proced

The problem, then, is not that using social media directly makes us unhappy. Indeed, as the positive studies cited above found, certain social media activities, when isolated in an experiment, modestly boost well-being. The key issue is that using social media tends to take people away from the real-world socializing that’s massively more valuable.