How Cal Newport's Digital Declutter Changed My Life | David Peletz
Over the past 30 days, I tried out the digital declutter described in Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. I learned a lot from Newport’s book and highly recommend it. In implementing the digital declutter into my life over the past 30 days, I learned a lot about my habits and what I value.
To start my digital declutter, I outlined, on an index card, the platforms I use and how I would be using them. Below were my limitations:
Snapchat: delete app, don’t use at all
Instagram: delete app, don’t use at all
Facebook: delete app, don’t use at all
YouTube: delete app, don’t use at all
Netflix: delete app, use with constraints
LinkedIn: delete app, use with constraints
Podcasts: don’t listen at all
Email: use with constraints
Medium: use with constraints
News: delete apps, use with constraints
As far as constraints go, for Netflix, I limited myself to only watching with others or while riding a stationary bike. We found that watching 2 hours per night on two weekend-nights per week worked well, as we had something to look forward to throughout the week. I limited my use of LinkedIn to 10 minutes per day at the end of the day (around 5pm), after I’d accomplished my most important work. I checked email 3 times per day on my laptop. I used Medium for 30 minutes per day on my laptop. For the news, I’d read articles others sent me, but I wouldn’t go on websites or apps on my own.
I decided early on that I would fill my time by reading. I have come to love reading and feel that this is a good way to fill my time. I also was able to go on more walks than I have on my own. Following Newport’s guidance, I went on walks without any headphones in and paid attention more to the world around me. At first, this felt surprisingly weird. It was previously rare that I’d go for a walk on my own without listening to a music, podcast, or audiobook. I came to really enjoy walking in solitude over the course of the month. There were many little things that I noticed that brought me joy that I wouldn’t have been able to notice if I’d been “plugged in.”
Throughout the digital declutter, I kept a small Moleskine journal on me to record anything that came to mind.
Week 1
This was by far the hardest week for me. During this week, I was mostly noticing urges. Whenever I had a moment of down time, I quickly felt the need to be scrolling. To avoid giving in to these urges, I tried to have my phone physically away from me. I was often checking my phone even when there weren’t any notifications.
I was surprised to think about how distracting it can be to check your phone every so often. Even if we only check for a few seconds or minutes, this adds up throughout the day and can pull us away from our most meaningful work.
During this first week, I started to realize how much time we have in the day. Even though life still felt busy, it’s amazing how much more time I had when I cut out things that weren’t necessary in my life. I had more time to read, walk, relax, and get work done. Life felt a bit slower, as I no longer had several streams of media constantly competing for my attention.
Before my digital declutter experiment, I’d try to only check my social media once per day. It was beginning to feel like a daily chore and I’d often skip days and miss out on my news feed. When I got rid of social media, it felt like eliminating a task from my daily to do list. This was liberating.
Around the end of the first week, I started to notice that the urge to check my phone seemed to be decreasing.
Week 2
During the second week, things started to feel more comfortable. I had more time to devote to the things I care about and was enjoying a sense of freedom. I wasn’t feeling the urge to constantly check my phone as much.
Week 3
In the third week, I felt like I was in a routine. I had pretty much forgotten about the social media I had previously used every day. Over the course of the first few weeks, there were times when I had to tell friends or family that I wasn’t on social media. This worked out fine, as they knew to text me if they needed me. When I saw them, they’d tell me any of the big things I’d missed if there was anything worth mentioning.
It felt like the effort it took to consciously decide on how to limit my use of media was paying off. I felt a sense of clarity and calm.
Week 4
In the final week of the digital declutter, I began to reflect more on what I valued and what I’d learned from the whole experience. I started considering whether or not it was worth it to get back on social media. Overall, I felt that the amount of time I’d gained in the process was so valuable.
Failures
Throughout the process, I failed. This is to be expected. The most common failure was definitely checking my email too often. Sometimes, I needed to check it frequently for work. I also went on LinkedIn for too long on some days. LinkedIn seems to be a weird platform to me, as there is both mindless scrolling as well as valuable business-related information involved in the platform. I think that deleting the phone app and blocking the site on my phone did a lot of good, as I had to be on my laptop to check LinkedIn.
During the digital declutter, there were times when I felt the urge to scroll through news feeds. While I didn’t explicitly give in, I found myself filling the space in weird ways. I would randomly surf the web, scroll through Craigslist looking for deals, or poke around on Amazon trying to find something to buy. This didn’t happen too often, but it did happen several times. It’s easy to fill the void with other tasks that might seem less bad, but are just as distracting and useless.
Where I’m At Now
Now, I’m evaluating what I want to bring back into my life and under what constraints. For the time being, I’m going to stay off Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. I do miss the groups that I had with my friends on Instagram and Snapchat. These helped me keep in touch with my friends. That said, I feel like communicating via text still works and I think that, for me, the constant interruptions and the need to mindlessly scroll through news feeds outweigh the benefits of using these platforms.
I enjoyed generally structuring things more consciously. I think I’ll continue to try and check email only three times per day and try to limit streaming shows and movies on Netflix and other platforms to only a couple nights per week.
Key Learnings
We have more time in the day than we realize. If we consciously get rid of things that don’t have enough of a net positive impact on our lives, there will be a space to fill that’s surprisingly large. This comes down to a very personal decision. The use of technology platforms means something unique to each individual.
Only use platforms that have a net positive impact. Don’t just use a platform because it has some positive impact. For me, this meant considering the pros and cons of using each platform.
Maximize the things you enjoy doing. During the month, I focused on reading more. I was able to finish 10 books in the month. I don’t think I’ve ever done this in my life. That said, I know that the benefit that I got from reading gave me far more than the hours I would’ve spent on social media.
I hope that you learned something from my experience. I'd encourage anyone to look into the digital declutter and implement it into their own lives. Even if you continue to use social media, I wholeheartedly believe that you'd benefit from consciously deciding how and how much to use it.
