[Digital Minimalism] What's your approach?
Question: What's your personal take on digital minimalism?
Being indie hackers our relationship with time is the source of many struggles. Every day, willpower and working hours quickly run out. It appears urgent to do more of what matters, doing less of what doesn't.
Minimalism is three-dimensional: both physical and intellectual, but also digital. There is a need to undigitize, to automate, or to simply eliminate some aspects of our numerical counterpart.
I believe deep work to be the root of productivity. I can go deeper into my work by practicing digital minimalism wherever it is relevant.
Back in Telecom engineering school, I was taught the Internet is simply a network of networks. In a similar fashion, we can consider the Internet is a community of communities. You can try belonging everywhere, but in the end, it's the surest way to not belong anywhere. Moving out of online communities which do not bring you any form of fulfillment is healthy to you, and thus others. Owing to this point I left Product Hunt Makers to focus on Makerlog and Indie Hackers, and I envision leaving Facebook in favor of Twitter, Instagram, and other communities I'd like to try, such as Venture Cost.
Social networks benefit to creators first and foremost. This thought inspired me a habit of "Log in to Create", meaning to visit a given social network with the intention to contribute before beginning to browse and consume a feed.
Another habit I started taking is offline writing. I wake up, have breakfast, and sit down to my desk to write down my thoughts or document experiences from the day before. I then log in for the editing work. I almost forgot how good it feels to hold a pen and materialize thoughts in the world, on a piece of paper. There is no Grammarly to stop the flow of ideas, no tab to distract me. Only the sound of the wind in the trees, the cars crushing the road, and me bleeding ink.
I can see many benefits to this approach but I'd like to gather more opinions on the matter. What do you think?
#ask-ih
Nice thoughts, another Cal Newport fan here :D. Besides deep work and connecting to relevant communities (instead of communities that don't align with our values or goals), I also value more and more alone time. Alone time walking on nature on the street, observing my daughter playing or doing her thing or meditating without reading, listening to podcasts or doing anything at all at the same time, as proven to me to be useful to appreciate my self worth more, value the mundane moments and build up my own ideas and thoughts.
I like that! More mindfulness activities!