Book Review: Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport
Moderation and minimalism are the art of realizing what amount is barely enough. Digital moderation applies this plan to our own innovation. It’s the way to carrying on with an engaged life in an inexorably noisy world. A few days ago I was wondering to deactivate my social media accounts and leave for a cleanse trip. It’s a radical step that might have walked through your life once or maybe more than once. Somehow I realized how closely I am tied to the vicious social cycle since my work life revolves around it. So I ended up dropping the idea. However, during this process of decluttering, I realized how hard it is to cut ties off and shift towards digital minimalism. And today with this topic we feature Cal Newport, a computer science professor at Georgetown University who authored Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World.
Cal Newport
Calvin C. Newport is an American non-fiction author and a professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University. He authored eight books including Digital Minimalism. The list includes How to Win at College (2015), How to Become a Straight-A Student (2006), How to Become a High-School Superstar (2010), So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion In The Quest For Work You Love (2012), Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World (2016), The Time-Block Planner (2020), and, A World Without Email (2021).
Review: Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport
In this profound book, Newport recognizes the battles that countless individuals have with accomplishing balance in their social media use. He brings up that people are unfit to retaliate the urge to not use social media. Cal Newport divides his book into two parts Foundations and Practices, which further divides into focusing on the problems and their solutions.
Foundation and Practices
As Newport clarified, technology or innovation can be an exceptionally valuable and powerful asset. Be that as it may, it can likewise be dangerous whenever utilized for manipulative purposes. We are in a period where web-based media is being utilized to control our consideration at the hindrance of different exercises.
Newport focuses on how the attention garnering social media sites is created. One of the key innovations is the ‘cell phone. ‘ As a result of cell phones, individuals have progressively gotten dependent on the gadget and its distractive nature. With basically every other execution of a program like Facebook, it was not difficult to not utilize it. The distractions are still a part of it.
Digital declutter
Newport draws examples from Amish ranchers to Silicon Valley’s software engineers. He furthermore identifies the common practices of digital minimalists and the ideas that underpin them. Additionally, he shows how they are rethinking their relationship to social media, rediscovering the pleasures of the offline world, and reconnecting with their inner selves through regular periods of solitude.
Newport then shares strategies for integrating these practices into your life, starting with a thirty-day “digital declutter” process that has already helped thousands feel less overwhelmed and more in control.
Final thoughts
So with this book, you can rethink your relationship with social media and prioritize high bandwidth conversations over low-quality text chains, and last but not least rediscover the pleasured of the offline world. So if your phone usage, Netflix binging and Twitter addiction are getting excessively engaging for you. Give this book a read. You might hit the deactivate button quicker!
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FAQ
Cal Newport was born on June 23, 1982, in Los Angeles, California. He earned a PhD after completing his undergraduate studies at Dartmouth College in 2004. From 2009 to 2011, he worked as a postdoctoral associate at the MIT computer science department.
Sketch a Study Schedule
Work in Hermit Mode
Never (ever) use Rote Review
- Manage your time in 5 minutes each day.
- Always have a plan.
- Be organized.
- Take care of your physical health.
- Don’t cram.
- Set up a distraction-free study area.
According to Cal Newport, “Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.”