The Digital Minimalist
How to regain time, attention, and creative energy by using digital devices less
The venture capitalist Fred Wilson famously said: “The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates and a monthly salary.” I would add a fourth: social media.
If you want to use your digital device less and spend your time on what matters more, you need to rethink how you use social media, design a better everyday strategy than just use it for endless entertainment and consumption.
Why? Because, just like Michael Easter writes in his excellent book Scarcity Brain, every social media application is designed to, as all addictions, from alcohol to drugs and gambling, tap into your biological thirst for more.
“In the human brain less equals bad, worse, unproductive. More equals good, better, productive. Our scarcity brain defaults to more and rarely considers less. And when we do consider less, we often think it sucks.” – Michael Easter
It was the innovation of today’s slot machines in the 1970s when they came up with the very simple model that social media companies use today and what the journalist and professor Michael Easter calls the scarcity loop:
Create the opportunity (your phone is easily accessible in your hand or pocket with endless notifications as triggers)
Offer unpredictable rewards (you never know if you’ll hit the jackpot with the next swipe or scroll)
Introduce quick repeatability (social media offers you the endless opportunity to play over and over again, all the time)
And once you’re hooked, just like on processed foods and drugs, you’re hooked. Getting unhooked is hard and takes a lot of mental strength and new better habits.
And as anything in Vegas, the house always wins in the long term, and you, will always loose. The only strategy that really works is to scale back your usage to create more time, attention, and creative energy for things that matters more.
Thanks to social media, smartphones have become so addictive and fun that you can spend all your awaken hours browsing, swiping, and scrolling. So you need to ask yourself: where do I draw the line?
Here are a few tips: