Digital Minimalization: Day 2 of 30

So, we’ll call yesterday day one, as I finally got around to deleting the social media apps from my phone, one of my long-term goals is to not check social media on the phone… hey, let’s throw down a disorganized list of crap I’ve been ruminating on based on the book.

Minimalist Goals

• No social media apps on phone DONE!
• Social media Saturdays only (for after the 30 day fast, we’ll see if that makes sense)
• Daily blog posts 500 words or under (this is my conversational typing; skipping the blog and writing one on one emails is probably better. I need conversational typing. It’s like warming up for me.)
• Half hour walk without phone daily (phone in backpack in a zipped bag) I walk an hour or two a day. Dedicated some of that time to silent walking, no books, no possible interruption, seems like a good goal. I do it fairly often, just shut off the audio feed, but sometimes I talk to friends instead, which for me, is a dangerous activity. I can talk to friends for fucking hours.
• Turn off notifications, disable that cruft of marketing emails that grow like weeds in the inbox, one by one as they pop up, unless they seem VERY useful. IN PROGRESS.
• Unsubscribe from underused paid services (IN PROGRESS xbox live went yesterday) Not really digital minimalism, but an adjacent idea that Newport cites without naming it’s souce, the Your Money or Your Life movement.
• Cut streaming channels that are under-used (IN PROGRESS Acorn went, but kept BritBox; maybe Shout goes next, but I keep the Rifftrax friends channel)
• Read a print book or kindle or comics on the iPad once a day. ( so far, so good. I read a new issue of Wonder Woman, which was good enough to make me cry. Very much in the vein of Neil Gaiman, it seemed to me, who I love.)
• Shut off all notifications on iPad.
• Listen to ALBUMS on Spotify. As a kid, it was understood that listening to  singles was a juvenile activity. My school-age brother and I listened to the vinyl Beatles albums my parents bought, lifting up the needle to avoid George. Harrisons weird ass sitar music. I would eventually love the whole Beatle cannon, but as a kid a single off putting song had to be stopped. Immediately. As a teen I realized that the songs I liked on an album often taught me to like others, and even if I liked some more than others, that was Okay, albums were supposed to be like that, songs that drifted to the back of your attention, and songs that smacked you in the face.
• Subscribe to the NYT news I want to read as email. Make those emails the whole written news ration.
• Set up a RSS Feed reader with aspirational reading to satisfy the urge to poke around at links
• Unsubscribe from Washington Post (Trump is gone. We helped save journalism. Now just the NYT will do. Yes, I know the NYT isn’t perfect.)
• IMPORTANT: Log the joyless ticks that fill the spaces left by removing these things, the fresh weeds cropping up, because my distraction problem lies deeper than any technology. I delight in the erasure of my own consciousness. I demand immersive narrative, or a perfect work flow state; almost anything between is excruciating. Also, getting into flow is like getting in freezing water. I avoid doing it with time wasting tics.
• Meditate daily again, using some of the empty real estate

That’s more than enough to think about for now.

If you have had issues with interruptive technology, let me know what you have done to limit the damage in the comments below. It might be fun to share.