Why Everyone is Talking About Digital Minimalism

Note to Self

WNYC Studios

Self-improvement, Tech, Note, Npr, Education, Public, Wnyc, Manoush, York, To, New, Self, Radio, Business, Technology, Relationships, City, Society & Culture, Zomorodi, Newtechcity

4.7 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 7 October 2019

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Computer scientist and cult-blogger, Cal Newport, wants you to take 30 dates off from all your personal tech. A month off, he claims, is the only way to truly adopt Digital Minimalism, his method for finding tech-life balance and the name of his latest book. Manoush loves a digital detox as much as the next overloaded person, but she explains to Cal why she has issues with his particular prescriptions.

Manoush writes a newsletter that comes out every other Thursday. Sign up at StableG.com/newsletter and find her other podcasts at ZigZagPod.com and IRLPodcast.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	From luminary media, WNYC studios and stable genius productions, this is Note to Self.
0:06.6	Put down your phone! Unplug! Do a digital detox. We hear those phrases all the time.
0:13.9	And we get it, we all want to do it, we're all trying. But look, it's not like those hours I spend
0:20.0	looking at my little screen are all about checking Instagram or playing Candy Crush or shopping on Zappos.
0:27.2	When my kid broke his finger at camp, how did I find out? A text? Why am I yacking away on my walk
0:34.5	to the subway? Because I'm on a conference call with the team that makes this podcast and we all
0:40.1	work remotely. All those times I'm frowning and tapping in a corner at my local coffee shop.
0:46.7	It's because I'm struggling to arrange appointments in my calendar like little Tetris blocks.
0:52.1	I'm a new summer Odie and this is Note to Self, the text show about being human. And I wrote a book
1:02.1	about how changing our digital habits can spark creativity and paradoxically make us more productive.
1:10.5	And yet I have come to the conclusion that I am only able to parent, run a business, and be a
1:17.6	journalist because my phone acts as a clearinghouse for my brain. Do I hate how much I'm on my phone?
1:27.5	Yes. But do I love my life and accept the responsibilities I have for the people in it? You bet.
1:35.6	And so until we get chips in our heads, this is how we busy people make it all work.
1:43.2	This is one of the core tensions we have out there right now.
1:49.2	It's constant accessibility has proven to be much more of a two-sided coin than we thought.
1:54.9	That the advantages come with these disadvantages. And so we really have to step back now and say,
1:58.3	okay, what can I reconfigure? But we have to keep scrambling with how do we just move beyond
2:04.4	just a solution of I just need to be constantly accessible because that's easiest.
2:08.3	How do we mediate between that and I'm completely inaccessible and bad things happen?
2:15.5	Cal Newport is an associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University.
2:20.9	But you may have heard of him for another reason. He's got kind of a cult following
	...

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