I skimmed through deep work and bought digital minimalism, mostly because I had already subscribed to the idea mostly due to the vitriol that has developed on social media, and the constant dopamine hits that come with constant notifications.
I've deleted IG, Twitter, and FB with Hacker News and Reddit being my only vices left. I would say that I'm a lot happier.<p>I'm not sure that we really need to know all the worlds problems at our finger tips and avoiding the most disingenuous of these interactions is healthy, although I'm thinking about deleting reddit for this reason and leaving HN as my only bastion left.
Since my RPi4 is my workstation for a couple of weeks now, I find myself treating this little machine more gently, as in I close programs more often when I don't need them. I noticed I do this also with Thunderbird and not constantly having my email program open is a breeze of fresh air. You should try it.<p>NB What's also a breeze of fresh air (or rather, a lack of a thunderstorm) is the thing doesn't have a fan.
> It’s more sensical to instead measure the value gained by the activities you do embrace and then attempt to maximize this positive value.<p>> Optimizing your use of the tools that really matter, can significantly improve your life.<p>> Focus on the much smaller number of activities that return the most value for your life. This is a basic 80/20 analysis: doing less, but focusing on higher quality, can generate more total value.<p>> Will this add significant value to something I find to be significantly important to my life?<p>-<p>In other words: Stop obsessing about social media! Start obsessing about self-optimization!
Somehow the idea of digital minimalism spans a spectrum from<p>> don't waste too much time and attention on things you don't really enjoy<p>all the way to<p>> delete every social media account, never listen to a podcast or an audiobook, don't watch any videos, throw out your phone, and if you ever even glance at a screen for reasons other than work, your precious brain will be damaged<p>The first position seems reasonable to me. The second one is only mildly exaggerated from an opinion a lot of people actually seem to have, it's pseudoscientific at best and it's just a reason for people to feel smug about themselves while achieving absolutely nothing (or to feel bad about themselves when they fall short).<p>In some ways it's similar to the "nofap" community where a very small group of people with porn addictions or sexual health problems snowballed into a large cult full of people who all think that any form of masturbation is always wrong. The similarities are in all the talk about your brain "resetting", the fact that they take some reasonable idea and distort it to an extreme, and of course the lack of evidence and all the broscience that's used to justify all of this.
I just happen to have read an article complaining about how “Orwelian” is almost always used in ways that seem to have little connection to Orwell’s writings; even more so with invocations of <i>1984</i>. Early in this article we encounter “culture’s increasingly Orwellian allegiance to social media ”. I have no idea what this means. The word “allegiance” confuses me here. Is it what he really intends? Because I’ve never met anyone with allegiance to Twitter, etc. Even people I know who use them obsessively don’t have any allegiance to them. I guess some of their employees do, but I don’t think that’s what the author has in mind. And what is “Orwellian” doing there? This was even more puzzling.
I've found the web apps for IG and Facebook (mbasic.facebook.com) to be a good balance. I keep in touch with interests (cycling, travel, music) yet don't have the push notifications or apps tracking my every move.<p>The limitations of mbasic are perfectly acceptable to me.
I'm leaving this here... Drew Gooden on Joshua and Ryan a.k.a. The Minimalists
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAvs-RqTIhk" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAvs-RqTIhk</a>