Minimalism is an extremely cool invention of the 20th century and is soon becoming the favorite strategy of millennials to use in everything.
Regardless of whether digital minimalism is adapted in personal or professional life, it has been known to reap some amazing results. Of course, a boost in productivity and focus come as guaranteed perks to it.
Every day we see our surroundings and think about the fact that our lives are increasingly becoming more and more dependent on other things rather than just our willpower to do something.
These other things can be our mobile devices or some other appliances that we use around the house or workspace. But in this article, we are going to talk about all of the digital clutter that litters our lives; a day in; day out.
This digital clutter can be any website, any social media platform, or any other online service that we may use which takes us away from our goals and milestones that we have to achieve.
So, without ado, let us get to know what Digital Minimalism is, what are the different steps to make the perfect strategy to incorporate Digital Minimalism in our lives, and what are the best practices to perform if you want to maintain a minimalistic lifestyle for a longer period.
What is Digital Minimalism?
Lately, the concept of minimalism has gained an incredible amount of traction as more and more millennials have started incorporating it into their professional and personal life.
Why is that happening? Well, as our lives get more and more sucked into the cycle of over-consumption and ‘more’, more and more millennials are realizing that their lives are not that perfect, and they are getting less and less happy with each passing day because of the overconsumption of “everything” around them.
This overconsumption can be of anything from their mobile devices or social media platforms or some other content viewing platforms that cause their day to be less productive.
Lucky for millennials, they are blessed with something that their predecessors didn’t have, as Cal Newport explains in the book “Digital Minimalism”:
What this means is that millennials are equipped with radical thinking and whatever they want to do to improve their life, they will do it on impulse and are not going to wait for any traditional methodology and steps to help them shape their lives for the better.
But don’t think that just deleting your accounts on social media platforms is going to cleanse your life and make you more productive, you have to actively work on this to get rid of everything that is causing you to procrastinate.
Check this out:
https://productivityland.com/80-hour-work-week/
And even if you don’t get rid of those platforms, you need to shape your usage in a way that it doesn’t affect your productivity and you’re no longer dependent on those social media platforms and other entertainment outlets for your happiness and positive morale.
Let’s take a look at the core elements of digital minimalism and find out how they are so effective in increasing your productivity.
- Choice and Intention
- Optimizing the Tools that You Use
- Eradicate FOMO from Your Life
Let’s take a look at all of them in detail.
1. Choice and Intention
The first core element of digital minimalism is Choice and Intention where you select your daily drivers or the apps or services that you will use in your everyday life, but you have to make sure that you don’t abuse that privilege and use those services in only those ways that are going to help your productivity.
2. Optimizing the Tools that You Use
The next item on the list is to make sure that the tools that you are using in your personal and work life must be at their highest optimized capacity. This means that the tools that you are using should work for you according to your needs and requirements.
You need to separate the good from the bad apps to make sure that your productivity is increased and not declined due to poor choices.
3. Eradicate FOMO from Your Life
The worst thing about social applications and other online platforms that we use nowadays is that they are designed to keep you in a loop to know everything that surrounds you and what that does is creates a condition called “Fear of Missing Out”.
It means that you are terrified of missing out on anything that is happening around you and if you don’t know that, you are going to freak out be less productive.
But the great thing about digital minimalism is that it helps to eradicate your FOMO and helps you be calmer and more productive so that you don’t freak out in missing anything which is not going to bring value to their lives.
Practices to Incorporate Digital Minimalism in Your Life for a Longer Time
Knowing about Digital Minimalism is all well and good, but what to do if you want to incorporate the strategy of Digital Minimalism in your daily life for prolonged durations.
Let’s take a look at the best practices to do that.
1. Solitude
The first thing that you have to do is to be more solitude friendly and spend more time alone physically or mentally.
What this will do for your life and your body is that it will help you think more clearly and help you feel more satisfied within yourself and with your own company rather than craving social media platforms to do that for you.
You can even go further and leave your phone at home for a while and go out for a walk with just you and your thoughts so that there are no distractions, and you can just focus on more real things like nature and other elements around you.
2. Redefine Relaxation
Remember how you used to relax in your childhood days? Always playing outside or playing a board game or some other analog physical activity that didn’t include any digital technology or social interactions on the internet?
You need to incorporate that routine in your life again. You have to redefine relaxation. The best thing you can do if you are intertwined in your work or professional life is that you can incorporate your hobbies in your life again.
Spend your working hours with an absolute concentration on your tasks, but when you get free from them, you can spend more time on your hobbies, so that you can be entertained without using any social media platform and be more productive and happier while working the next day.
3. Invoke a Monetary Tax on Every Click, Swipe, or Tap
If you think that you are not able to stop using the social media platforms and you are not going to click, tap or swipe on those apps, you can assign a monetary tax on yourself for every single interaction that you have with the app in question.
For example, if you click on a video link, you need to put $1 in the tax jar, and if you swipe 10 pictures on Instagram, you have to put $10 in the jar.
At the end of the day you have to spend all that money on something that you don’t like, otherwise, if you spend that money on something you like, it’s not going to make a difference.
But if you do everything accordingly, it is going to change your life.
4. Don’t Click Like
Building on the upper mentioned strategy, you need to make sure that you don’t use social media platforms to fuel your entertainment, but if you have to use them to stay in contact with the people in your life, don’t be liking posts left and right, and just use it to contact people when you talk to them.
Different Steps to Create the Perfect Strategy to Incorporate Digital Minimalism in Your Life in 30 Days
Here are the steps that we are going to discuss in this article, which can be used to create the perfect strategy to incorporate digital minimalism in your life in 30 days.
- Define your core values
- Drop all optional technologies for 30 days
- Actively ignore the rest
Let’s take a look at all of them in detail.
1. Define Your Core Values
The first thing you have to do to create your digital minimalism strategy is to define your core values and also highlight all of your short-term and long-term goals. You do this to see for yourself how technology affects those goals and values for better or worse.
When you have mapped out the effect that technology has on your personal and work life, you can easily make more effective and informed decisions about your life and how you can change both aspects of your life (work and personal), so that you are in control of the technology in your life, not the other way around.
2. Drop All Optional Technologies for 30 Days
The next thing that you have to do is to get rid of all of the optional technologies that you use every day, for at least 30 days. You do this to ensure that there are no distractions when you are working, and you will be more productive.
The 30 days mantra is to ensure that you will get used to this routine and when those 30 days end, you will most likely resume this strategy for a longer time.
3. Actively Ignore the Rest
When you have distinguished the important from the optional tools, the last and most important step is to ensure that you actively ignore the optional tools for a considerably long time and not go to the same routine when the 30 days are over.
Conclusion
There you have it; our guide to digital minimalism and how you can incorporate it into your life to improve productivity.
If you think that we missed something or if we mentioned something wrong, contact us and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
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