Stop Doom Scrolling & End The Social Media Distraction - Declutter Your Life Today

00:00:00.000 | So one of the things I'm most known for is the fact that I have never used social media.

00:00:07.640 | My 2016 TED talk, which is titled "Quit Social Media" just passed the 10 million view mark.

00:00:15.760 | My 2019 book "Digital Minimalism" has sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

00:00:21.880 | In recent years, I've been extensively covering the social media industry from a critical

00:00:26.340 | perspective for the New Yorker.

00:00:29.120 | So this is something that I am deeply associated with.

00:00:32.340 | It occurred to me recently, however, how do I know I'm not missing out on something special?

00:00:39.160 | What if social media really has evolved into something that is a true source of value in

00:00:44.180 | a way that I am forgetting?

00:00:45.720 | So I thought today it might be fun if I was to actually live here in the show, load up

00:00:53.360 | some actual social media apps and see what's going on.

00:00:57.400 | Jesse, you can attest I did not look at these in advance, so God knows what we're going

00:01:00.460 | to find.

00:01:01.460 | But we're going to look at some social media together and then talk about how we might

00:01:06.200 | repair our relationship with these tools.

00:01:09.000 | Jesse, it would be funny if when I turn on these tools, it turns out that I'm in the

00:01:14.080 | middle of like a global canceling campaign that I didn't realize.

00:01:19.000 | That "Cancel Cal" is like the number one trending hashtag would be a funny way to figure that

00:01:23.560 | out.

00:01:24.560 | All right.

00:01:25.560 | Let's look at some real social media.

00:01:26.560 | For those who are watching at home, I'm bringing this up on the screen.

00:01:29.240 | We're starting with Twitter, or as the kids call it today, X.

00:01:33.960 | Let's see what we can find.

00:01:34.960 | All right.

00:01:35.960 | Right off the bat, there is a tweet response here.

00:01:40.120 | So there's a tweet.

00:01:41.120 | I don't know if you can see this.

00:01:42.960 | There's a tweet, first of all, that's showing Taylor Swift hugging Travis Kelce after their

00:01:49.040 | Super Bowl win.

00:01:50.040 | We're recording this a couple of days after the Super Bowl.

00:01:53.760 | The original tweet says, "Imagine being against this," all right?

00:01:57.920 | But this tweet is being responded to.

00:02:01.560 | This response says, oh Lord, okay.

00:02:04.160 | This response from SmugFacundity, so I'm sure this is going to be very well-reasoned and

00:02:09.680 | compassionate, is the following, "Look, I hope everyone finds a wonderful spouse and

00:02:15.160 | brings 10 kids into the world and raises them together.

00:02:18.280 | Here's why this falls flat for 'the audience.'

00:02:21.760 | There is no hero's journey, no character arc.

00:02:23.960 | This is a perfect example of potential marriage as the capstone to a perfect life, and I'm

00:02:29.640 | against this message."

00:02:30.800 | Jesse, I don't even know if I know what that means.

00:02:33.120 | I don't know what that means either.

00:02:34.600 | Okay.

00:02:35.600 | SmugFacundity is upset that Taylor Swift is hugging Travis Kelce.

00:02:39.240 | I wonder if she's whispering into his ears, "Only two receptions for serious yardage?

00:02:45.720 | Come on, Travis.

00:02:47.320 | You can do better."

00:02:48.320 | See, that could be on Twitter.

00:02:49.320 | So what I want you to do is think of something mean to say and hope that you get clout for

00:02:53.000 | it.

00:02:54.000 | Let me click on something else on here, #farmersprotest, all right?

00:02:59.200 | Let's just see what else is going on on Twitter.

00:03:06.080 | This is a protest going on in India, it looks like, and then there's a lot of arguing back

00:03:10.560 | and forth about what's going on.

00:03:14.520 | So let me read this, "They're fighting for regime change on behalf of opposition parties,

00:03:18.560 | said the professional protester, Chitra Singh," and here's some video of what looks like tear

00:03:25.880 | gas and a crowd.

00:03:29.000 | There's a drone flight.

00:03:30.000 | All right, look, I think this is like classic, as I would expect, this is classic Twitter,

00:03:35.320 | and I don't mean this in a dismissive way because what we're seeing here is both the

00:03:38.360 | good and the bad in Twitter.

00:03:40.180 | The bad, I think, is let's all just take a pop culture event involving people that are

00:03:45.340 | impossibly distant from us, like Super Bowl champions and Taylor Swift, and just take

00:03:49.480 | turns seeing who can say like the more mean thing or smarmy thing and sort of hope we

00:03:56.000 | get clout.

00:03:57.000 | On the other hand, we also see Twitter highlighting here a protest happening in India that maybe

00:04:04.880 | you otherwise wouldn't come across it unless you were reading a newspaper.

00:04:07.600 | All right, so there's Twitter.

00:04:09.360 | Let's check in on some other social media, see what we are missing.

00:04:13.000 | All right, let me load up a browser here.

00:04:16.200 | We've jumped now on the Instagram.

00:04:18.840 | The gram, as I'm told, it's called.

00:04:22.520 | I'm on the page here, Jesse loaded up, is popular hashtag, so I don't know if that actually

00:04:27.960 | means popular post or post that just happened to be associated with the word popular.

00:04:33.040 | I'm going to click on one.

00:04:34.280 | All right.

00:04:35.280 | I should be nervous, Jesse.

00:04:36.960 | If I click on this post, is it going to be something, let's see, it looks harmless.

00:04:41.080 | It looks like a nice couple in their young thirties, well-dressed with complicated glasses,

00:04:47.320 | arms interlocked.

00:04:48.320 | Let's click on this post.

00:04:49.320 | Oh, I got to log in.

00:04:50.320 | Oh, this is good.

00:04:51.680 | This means Jesse, you don't use Instagram.

00:04:53.120 | All right, so we can't actually click on these without logging in, so let's just look at

00:04:56.960 | them.

00:04:57.960 | That looks nice.

00:04:58.960 | Here's a person with huge muscles in the gym, looking nice.

00:05:03.440 | We have people on vacation.

00:05:05.360 | This is kind of classic Instagram, looking over a nice swimming pool with cabanas, so

00:05:10.440 | they're probably bragging about their vacation.

00:05:12.680 | All right, so here's a football thing.

00:05:16.400 | All right, this is a classic Instagram, people, everyone looks kind of happy.

00:05:21.080 | Everyone looks like they're in good shape.

00:05:22.880 | Everyone is sort of showing off a life that they want you to think is good.

00:05:27.880 | All right, God help us.

00:05:29.200 | Let's jump over to TikTok.

00:05:30.200 | All right, what am I looking at here?

00:05:32.560 | It's a person playing a video game.

00:05:34.120 | All right, I mean, good, I suppose.

00:05:37.720 | Oh, I see.

00:05:39.160 | So look at this.

00:05:40.200 | So this is classic TikTok.

00:05:41.920 | Every time I touch the screen, it just throws up another video as soon as I get bored.

00:05:45.120 | All right, here's a girl saying, "How much do I owe you?"

00:05:47.600 | Someone else says, "It's okay.

00:05:48.720 | It's on the house."

00:05:49.720 | I don't even know what they were showing, probably something inappropriate.

00:05:52.560 | Here's a video game.

00:05:53.560 | Let me swipe again.

00:05:55.520 | I got hired as a security guard at a pizzeria.

00:05:58.560 | They're pouring stuff onto avocados.

00:06:01.320 | They fried an avocado.

00:06:02.880 | All right, fine.

00:06:05.240 | Here is some sort of mashed potato dinosaur volcano.

00:06:08.880 | My God, look at this, Jesse.

00:06:09.880 | You just keep flipping and it's...

00:06:14.360 | Here's something.

00:06:15.360 | Ah, that's weird.

00:06:16.360 | Okay, next.

00:06:17.360 | Ah, that's weird.

00:06:18.360 | Okay, so there we go.

00:06:19.480 | We've checked in on social media in 2024.

00:06:22.360 | All right, so here's my take.

00:06:25.160 | Look, there's nothing intrinsically evil about what I just saw.

00:06:29.040 | There's nothing inherently bad about engaging with anything I just saw.

00:06:32.960 | But I can tell you as an outsider who doesn't use these services, who is looking at these

00:06:37.400 | with fresh eyes, guys, this stuff is really weird.

00:06:42.440 | It's really weird looking at what we just saw there, not in isolation that any one of

00:06:48.360 | those things is crazy, but that the foundation for a huge portion of our culture, the foundation

00:06:55.200 | of their engagement with their leisure time is based on these types of interactions.

00:07:00.640 | That I find to be strange.

00:07:02.880 | We get used to things once we've been in that world, but the outsider perspective here is

00:07:07.080 | these short videos, the people trying to be smug about celebrities and who can outdo each

00:07:13.800 | other, this pictures of various people's vacations.

00:07:17.160 | For this to be the foundation of your engagement with leisure, if a time traveler came forward

00:07:22.880 | from 2005 and looked at what I just looked at, it's not that they would be horrified

00:07:26.840 | by the individual things.

00:07:28.200 | I really do think however, they would be somewhat perplexed by the idea that this is the foundation

00:07:34.080 | of our culture's engagement with leisure.

00:07:38.160 | This stuff is okay, but it really does not seem like this should be the core of how we

00:07:43.080 | engage with the world outside of our work.

00:07:48.200 | So if you agree with this, what should we do about it?

00:07:50.440 | If you're like, you know what?

00:07:51.960 | I don't want to, oh my God, the video now, Jesse, because the TikTok's on my screen here

00:07:56.440 | still, they're pouring gravy down the mashed potato mountain.

00:08:00.360 | You see that?

00:08:02.840 | Just imagine you're the time traveler from 2005.

00:08:04.840 | Like, okay, so I'm watching, and the music playing is the Jurassic world theme song while

00:08:11.240 | gravy pours down a chute carved into a mashed potato mountain covered with chicken nugget

00:08:18.280 | dinosaurs.

00:08:21.560 | The Algonquin round table, this is not.

00:08:24.600 | All right.

00:08:25.600 | So we could do better.

00:08:27.280 | We could do better than making this the main thing we're looking at.

00:08:30.080 | All right.

00:08:31.080 | So how do we make this better?

00:08:32.080 | So let me start with the biggest mistake people make when they finally get fed up with how

00:08:36.520 | much time they're looking at their phone.

00:08:38.500 | The biggest mistake people make is they go straight to white knuckle abstention.

00:08:43.680 | You know what?

00:08:44.680 | I am fed up with people's comments on Taylor Swift and dinosaur mountains.

00:08:49.720 | So no more, no more phone.

00:08:51.960 | And I'm going to actually feel righteous by the fact I don't use my phone.

00:08:55.140 | You know these people because they will tell you immediately that they don't use social

00:08:58.320 | media or their phone.

00:08:59.640 | They will work it into every conversation.

00:09:02.760 | You can be in a building that's on fire and you can say this way, this way, this is the

00:09:05.880 | only staircase that's not engulfed in flames quickly.

00:09:09.220 | And they'd be like, great.

00:09:11.520 | Don't worry about this going on Instagram.

00:09:13.320 | I don't check Instagram anymore.

00:09:14.720 | I have an account, but I barely, and then they catch on fire.

00:09:17.520 | So, you know, when people are doing white knuckle abstention, because they talk all

00:09:21.000 | the time about it.

00:09:23.400 | That alone doesn't work very well.

00:09:26.080 | My philosophy of digital minimalism, my approach for dealing with these issues argues that

00:09:31.120 | these tools push out other things in your life and therefore then feel a void that those

00:09:36.280 | things used to fill.

00:09:38.440 | When you just do white knuckle abstention, you are faced with the yawning void of boredom

00:09:45.680 | and your own thoughts and anxiety.

00:09:47.560 | It's very uncomfortable.

00:09:48.560 | You just sit there like, what am I supposed to do?

00:09:51.220 | You need something to have that smoothing distraction.

00:09:53.880 | Hey there.

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00:10:51.360 | Everything you need, you can find there.

00:10:53.080 | Alright, thanks, let's get back to it.

00:10:55.120 | So the first step is not to abstain from your phone.

00:10:58.160 | The first step is forget your phone, do what you want to do on your phone, watch your Dino

00:11:00.900 | Mountain Gravy videos, but start adding at the same time really quality alternatives.

00:11:09.060 | Start adding into your life things that can eventually take the place of just looking

00:11:14.560 | at your phone, that can eat away at that sensation of boredom and anxiety of being alone with

00:11:21.640 | your own thoughts that drives us back to the suker of low-quality distractions.

00:11:26.260 | So what would these things look like?

00:11:27.400 | I'm going to give you six different things, we'll call this our high-quality leisure toolkit.

00:11:32.140 | Six different things that you should probably engage with, all of them, to some degree in

00:11:36.880 | your life in preparation to changing your relationship with your phone.

00:11:40.560 | One is going to be reading.

00:11:42.840 | You should read a lot more.

00:11:44.160 | This could be a mix of things that are just really fun, magazine articles or books that

00:11:49.560 | are really fun to read, as well as things that are smarter.

00:11:54.240 | A recent episode of the show, Jesse, I don't know if that was 286 maybe, I got into how

00:11:59.800 | to engage with this higher quality leisure, how to learn to engage with harder books.

00:12:05.400 | So you might want to check out that episode.

00:12:07.440 | All right, second, higher quality video media, prestige TV, movies, documentaries.

00:12:14.880 | This is another piece of this toolkit.

00:12:17.240 | This is content, which I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that slightly more

00:12:24.480 | money and time was invested than in the video of gravy being poured down the mashed potato

00:12:29.280 | dinosaur mountain.

00:12:30.280 | So stuff in which real creative energy and focused effort was placed.

00:12:35.840 | Number three, skill-based hobby.

00:12:38.600 | Something you're into that requires a skill you can get better at, your results get better

00:12:41.560 | as that skill improves.

00:12:42.800 | This creates a feedback loop that our mind really likes that can be more compelling to

00:12:46.460 | our mind than low quality distraction.

00:12:50.000 | Hey, I'm working on this new project that is more advanced than I've done before.

00:12:55.320 | I think I might pull it off.

00:12:57.240 | This is compelling to me.

00:12:59.320 | Compelling enough that these other lower quality distractions aren't so strong in their appeal.

00:13:04.320 | Four, have some sort of exercise-based hobby, some sort of physical fitness where you're

00:13:09.320 | trying to build a streak, hit some marks in terms of where you want to get in your health,

00:13:14.840 | some sort of serious engagement with the physical.

00:13:18.540 | Among other things, this frees up, it frees up your body, it releases these chemicals

00:13:25.500 | into your mind that makes you less, gets you out of this torporific state of I'm low energy,

00:13:33.680 | I want to minimize energy, what's the lowest energy thing I can do to engage, it puts you

00:13:37.860 | more into a state of we're active, our muscles are growing, our lungs are being used.

00:13:42.020 | It changes your outlook at the world.

00:13:44.660 | Number five, get involved with communities that meet regularly, even if this is just

00:13:48.380 | friends that you have a standing, we go and see a movie every other week, we go to dinner

00:13:53.740 | once a month or a bigger, more organized activity, a league or a group that you go to.

00:14:01.180 | Have something that meets regularly that involves other people.

00:14:03.920 | And six, seek out adventures.

00:14:07.120 | I want to go travel to see the sports team play at the away stadium.

00:14:12.980 | I want to go to this museum, there's a special exhibit that's coming, I want to go read by

00:14:18.500 | a waterfall that I heard about that takes a two mile hike to get to.

00:14:23.460 | Things that are above and beyond what's easy and are really cool could create a really

00:14:26.880 | interesting experience.

00:14:29.020 | If you have these six things in your life, reading, high quality TV movies, skilled based

00:14:33.540 | hobby, exercise based hobby, regular meeting communities and adventures, take some time

00:14:40.060 | to add all these into your life.

00:14:42.660 | Now you're going to be in a position where the monopoly that your phone has on your time

00:14:46.980 | and attention has dissipated.

00:14:49.340 | It is now competing against higher quality versions of things that can satisfy the same

00:14:56.680 | needs that were driving you to your phone.

00:14:59.400 | Those needs are going to drive you one way or the other, but the phone gives you a low

00:15:03.860 | fidelity solution to what you crave.

00:15:07.860 | These high quality leisure activities give you a higher fidelity solution and therefore

00:15:14.020 | they're going to be more easily victorious.

00:15:19.260 | That's step one, you put alternatives to your phone in your life before you even worry about

00:15:22.580 | your phone habits.

00:15:25.140 | Step two, we declutter.

00:15:26.140 | Now this is the core idea for my book, Digital Minimalism.

00:15:30.860 | I don't believe in detoxing in the sense of take a break and then go back to what you're

00:15:34.140 | doing before, I believe in decluttering.

00:15:37.900 | So you step away, you take a break as step one of making permanent change.

00:15:43.220 | So the way this works is that you take 30 days where you are now ready to stop using

00:15:47.300 | these optional digital technologies in your life.

00:15:50.340 | The TikTok, the Instagram, the Twitter, the video games, YouTube.

00:15:57.220 | You step away from these optional technologies, but now you're prepared to do so because you

00:16:02.060 | have these six areas of high quality leisure already in your life, already rock and rolling.

00:16:06.820 | Just lean heavily into those.

00:16:08.620 | You're not staring into the void.

00:16:10.460 | You're not sitting there like a detoxing drug addict, shaking, like what am I going to do

00:16:15.660 | next?

00:16:16.660 | You're doing other things.

00:16:17.660 | So you're getting a taste of life without these tools.

00:16:21.540 | In doing so, you can see what you miss.

00:16:23.900 | You can also figure out what you really care about.

00:16:26.740 | At the end of the 30 days, then you can decide what, if anything, you want to add back into

00:16:30.820 | your digital life, to add back a tool, it must be really valuable, like, hey, this actually

00:16:35.940 | satisfies something that's important to me.

00:16:38.900 | And two, when you add it back, you should have clear rules for how and when you're going

00:16:42.260 | to use it.

00:16:44.660 | So maybe Twitter comes back into your life because you realized you really do need to

00:16:50.940 | keep up with baseball trade rumors that are going on.

00:16:55.160 | This is really important to you that during the hot stove season, you do really like baseball

00:17:00.060 | and it helps you engage to hear the baseball reporters sharing rumors on player trades.

00:17:05.980 | Let's say this is the situation.

00:17:06.980 | Well, now that you know this is why you're bringing Twitter back into your life, you

00:17:09.900 | can have clear rules on it.

00:17:11.100 | All right.

00:17:12.100 | I check in on these rumors during lunch break.

00:17:16.300 | It takes about 20 minutes.

00:17:18.280 | I don't follow anyone on Twitter.

00:17:20.140 | I just bookmarked the four baseball reporters who I follow, two from my team and maybe like

00:17:27.220 | Ken Rosenthal and Jay Papasan, national reporters have good sources.

00:17:32.700 | And I look at it on my desktop computer when I'm at work.

00:17:35.920 | So now I get that value.

00:17:36.920 | Every day I go on and see what's going on.

00:17:38.540 | But I also don't have Twitter with me on my phone.

00:17:40.900 | And these are part of a much larger timeline that I can check at any time.

00:17:44.020 | It has endless information.

00:17:46.300 | I put this tool back into my life for a specific reason with specific rules.

00:17:50.620 | This is how you reconfigure a digital life that operates on your terms, supports what

00:17:55.220 | you value, and yet minimizes the unnecessary negative side effects.

00:18:03.260 | So none of this is about this technology is good or that technology is bad.

00:18:06.660 | None of this is about you need to live exactly this way versus that way.

00:18:12.180 | It's about intention, but you can't have intention about your digital life until you build a

00:18:16.940 | life that's better than what we just saw when we took this quick tour through the state

00:18:21.980 | of social media in 2024.

00:18:24.020 | Again, what we just encountered here is fine, but also sort of weird and eccentric and idiosyncratic.

00:18:29.460 | To look at that now and again, who cares?

00:18:31.380 | It's like reading the tabloid in the supermarket checkout line.

00:18:35.660 | But if I found you reading the National Enquirer three to four hours a day, seven days a week,

00:18:40.340 | I would say, "Okay, buddy, I think we need a better hobby."

00:18:43.060 | And that is implicitly what we've all ended up doing.

00:18:46.940 | So to fix this relationship with social media and our phones more generally, put in place

00:18:52.460 | the alternatives that are much better.

00:18:54.820 | Get yourself to the place where your mind is increasingly embarrassed by choosing TikTok

00:18:59.620 | over all of these other much richer options, and then do your organized declutter.

00:19:04.700 | If you want to find out more about this, my book, Digital Minimalism, of course, dives

00:19:09.780 | into all these details, but hopefully I've given you enough there to get you started.

00:19:14.220 | Did you see, Jesse, in the Super Bowl, there was an ad for Snapchat?

00:19:19.300 | I did.

00:19:21.300 | It seemed to me like Snapchat was trying to argue, "We don't have some of the same problems

00:19:27.740 | as other social media platforms."

00:19:30.300 | Even though Snapchat, as any social media research will tell you, has been at the core,

00:19:35.260 | for example, of the teenage mental health crisis and its intersection with social media.

00:19:38.540 | It's very big among teenagers and Snapchat conversations, it leads to all sorts of issues.

00:19:43.980 | I was joking with the person I was with when we were watching the Super Bowl.

00:19:46.820 | I was like, "This is sort of like having an anti-Fentanyl ad sponsored by Crack."

00:19:53.780 | Remember Crack?

00:19:56.060 | This was better in some sense than it was now with Fentanyl.

00:19:58.540 | That was sort of the sense I got with that ad.

00:20:01.280 | It was hard to get Crack, so you wouldn't do as much of it.

00:20:04.980 | Fentanyl, it's an interesting argument.

00:20:08.020 | Hey, we're better than the other stuff that's causing damage.

00:20:11.020 | Oh well.

00:20:12.020 | All right.

00:20:13.020 | Well, there we go.

00:20:14.020 | So, I'm not joining social media yet, Jesse, but it was good to see it.

00:20:17.020 | Yep.

00:20:18.020 | By the way, I was proud that Instagram was not signed in on your iPad.

00:20:22.260 | That means you must not be a heavy Instagram user.

00:20:24.420 | I tried to open it on the app on my iPad and then I was asking for my password and I haven't

00:20:30.420 | used it in a while.

00:20:31.420 | Then I tried to find my password and I entered it, but then it wouldn't let you reset it.

00:20:35.340 | No, I like that, though.

00:20:36.340 | That means you haven't used it in a while and you've been okay.

00:20:38.980 | I've been okay.

00:20:39.980 | Think about all those beach vacations, though, you could have been learning about.

00:20:42.540 | Yep.

00:20:43.540 | You know, every once in a while, like a coach, like my golf coach or someone will send me

00:20:46.300 | a video.

00:20:47.300 | So, I go in and check that out.

00:20:48.380 | Yeah.

00:20:49.380 | People have done that, too.

00:20:50.380 | And you can, they'll let you see like one thing and then they'll say you have to log

00:20:54.220 | in.

00:20:55.220 | Mm-hmm.

00:20:56.220 | Yeah.

00:20:57.220 | So, there you go.

00:20:58.220 | All right.

00:20:59.220 | So, we got a bunch of questions from you, the listeners, that are all focused on this

00:21:02.580 | topic.

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00:25:00.100 | All right, Jesse, let's do some questions.

00:25:03.180 | Who do we got first?

00:25:05.960 | - First question's from Henry.

00:25:06.960 | "What do you think of Neil Postman's 'Amusing Ourselves to Death?'

00:25:10.740 | I feel like that book fits well as a root for your digital minimalist philosophy.

00:25:14.700 | Do you think that the medium of screens fundamentally opposes the deep life?"

00:25:20.380 | - That's a good book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman.

00:25:24.420 | The late Neil Postman is often cited by people who do techno-criticism.

00:25:28.940 | So Henry, I'm going to point you towards a recent article I wrote for The New Yorker.

00:25:34.340 | This would have come out in December.

00:25:36.860 | I don't remember the exact title of the article, but I can tell you it is about Neil Postman,

00:25:44.420 | not "Amusing Ourselves to Death," but instead his subsequent book, "Technopoly."

00:25:51.060 | So I argue in this article that "Technopoly" is probably the best full summary of Neil

00:25:56.220 | Postman's philosophy regarding technology.

00:25:59.820 | And in that article, I get into the impact of Postman's "Technopoly" theory on my own

00:26:06.540 | thinking about technology and techno-criticism, and it did have a big impact.

00:26:10.300 | So you're correct to note that Postman is related to my work.

00:26:14.240 | I draw probably more heavily from "Technopoly" than "Amusing Ourselves to Death."

00:26:17.860 | So check out that New Yorker piece to get a better sense of that.

00:26:22.940 | I like "Amusing Ourselves to Death."

00:26:25.480 | It definitely is a standalone book worth reading.

00:26:29.500 | What people often get wrong about it is they think it's just a book about TV being bad.

00:26:34.060 | And yes, that's the main theme.

00:26:37.660 | It was written in the 1980s, the "Amusing Ourselves to Death."

00:26:41.320 | It's talking about doing so with TV and the way that TV has evolved.

00:26:45.820 | But there is a deeper techno-critical argument that's proven very influential in that book.

00:26:50.600 | What Postman argues is technologies in general, and media technologies more specifically,

00:26:57.260 | can affect the way cultures actually think.

00:27:00.140 | TV was just the latest example of this.

00:27:03.220 | So he talks in the book famously about how during the time of Abraham Lincoln, the media

00:27:08.860 | culture was built on newspapers.

00:27:11.660 | And newspapers would have really long articles in them, right?

00:27:16.500 | You have thousands of words, articles, and speech transcriptions.

00:27:20.220 | The America at that time was actually highly literate.

00:27:23.940 | You didn't have a lot of other diversions.

00:27:25.540 | So you're plenty happy to spend lots of time reading all these details in the newspaper.

00:27:30.940 | He called it a lexicographic media culture.

00:27:33.220 | He said in a lexicographic media culture, we were very comfortable with consuming information

00:27:38.740 | in sort of long, discursive discussions.

00:27:42.340 | This is why, for example, when Abraham Lincoln was debating Stephen Douglas in the famed

00:27:46.860 | Lincoln-Douglas debates, these were huge spectacles that have huge crowds.

00:27:51.660 | They would each talk for three hours at a time.

00:27:54.580 | Lincoln would talk for three hours, and then they would all get lunch or dinner.

00:27:58.580 | And then Stephen Douglas would talk for another three hours, and then Lincoln would have a

00:28:02.020 | one-hour rebuttal.

00:28:04.220 | And Postman said, "We were completely comfortable with that in the mid-19th century, because

00:28:09.860 | this was the media culture was one of long discursion."

00:28:12.380 | And so he argues in the culture of the '80s, which was based on soundbite television, the

00:28:16.860 | way that we process information and think about things is much different.

00:28:20.020 | The media affects how we think.

00:28:22.900 | The bigger example, I mean, he goes into how Gutenberg and the printing press, that gave

00:28:29.020 | us a way of thinking and introduced a way of thinking that was more precise and structured.

00:28:37.480 | And he said that the printing press changed the way we thought in such a way that the

00:28:40.340 | Enlightenment and the scientific revolution became possible.

00:28:43.580 | And until the printing press, the media changed and changed the way our minds worked, we weren't

00:28:47.900 | actually capable of having the scientific revolution.

00:28:52.220 | This came before it.

00:28:53.980 | Books changed how we thought.

00:28:54.980 | How we changed how we thought, we could do things like invent science.

00:28:58.060 | Newspapers changed how we thought, so we were comfortable with very long discursive discussions

00:29:02.300 | and so on.

00:29:03.300 | So, of course, the interesting question is, how did social media and phones change the

00:29:08.100 | way we thought?

00:29:09.100 | How does it change the way we engage with the world?

00:29:11.340 | That's a question a lot of people post-Postman have been tackling more recently, and it's

00:29:16.700 | a smart one to think about.

00:29:18.680 | If the media itself, the form of the media changes how we just cogitate, what does that

00:29:26.700 | mean about how our brains operate in a world of social media?

00:29:29.900 | That is something worth thinking about because I think those impacts have been profound.

00:29:33.940 | So check out that book.

00:29:34.940 | It's a cool one.

00:29:35.940 | Check out my New Yorker piece about Technopoly as well, because that's also a very deep book.

00:29:41.500 | All right, who do we got next?

00:29:44.700 | Next question is from Roshan.

00:29:46.540 | I was wondering if you could square the theoretical four-hour daily limit on deep work mentioned

00:29:50.760 | in Deep Work and the pursuit of high-quality leisure mentioned in Digital Minimalism.

00:29:55.800 | Is it possible to pursue a high-quality leisure activity on a day you completed deep work

00:30:01.000 | professionally?

00:30:02.000 | Yeah.

00:30:03.000 | For the most part, it's not a problem.

00:30:06.000 | That four-hour daily limit, what that comes out of actually is people who are in states

00:30:10.280 | of more intense deliberate practice.

00:30:13.320 | That number was first identified in a study of professional violin players.

00:30:18.560 | Four hours broken into two two-hour chunks was about on average the maximum a professional

00:30:23.520 | player could practice because when professional players practice, it's incredibly intense.

00:30:31.000 | They don't just play stuff they know how to play.

00:30:34.040 | They're instead systematically and deliberately trying to push their skills to the next level.

00:30:39.120 | Professionals can do that for four hours but not much longer.

00:30:43.480 | We see that in other places as well.

00:30:45.400 | There's a type of software development called extreme programming in which you sit two people

00:30:51.680 | at the same monitor.

00:30:54.020 | It is very intense programming where the one person's looking over your shoulder and you're

00:30:58.360 | trying to build the best code with someone watching you do it.

00:31:01.980 | This is very intense because you have to have like a violin player practicing complete unbroken

00:31:06.520 | concentration.

00:31:07.520 | I write about this a little bit in my book, "A World Without Email."

00:31:11.880 | What they found with extreme programming is that it's super productive.

00:31:15.700 | You would think, "Hey, we're doing two people per screen.

00:31:17.400 | We're going to get half as much done," but the code is so good.

00:31:21.200 | You get quality code so fast.

00:31:22.800 | It's incredibly productive.

00:31:24.120 | But they also learned you can only do it for a certain number of hours a day.

00:31:28.280 | People completely burn out.

00:31:30.440 | You get like four o'clock in the afternoon.

00:31:32.960 | It's like everyone has to go home and take a nap.

00:31:34.880 | There is no notion of working late in an extreme programming environment because it's too exhausting.

00:31:40.920 | High quality leisure typically doesn't trigger this unless your high quality leisure is intensely

00:31:44.880 | practicing your instrument.

00:31:46.760 | High quality leisure is not going to exhaust you in the same way as fully focused deep

00:31:51.120 | work, so you should be okay.

00:31:54.420 | If you feel like what you're doing is pretty exhausting, like maybe you're working on a

00:31:58.080 | novel on the side as a leisure project, and that really can, like extreme programming,

00:32:05.800 | like practicing an instrument, that really can actually make a lot of demands.

00:32:10.040 | Do less of it and balance it out with other leisure activities that pull from different

00:32:14.080 | parts of your brain are less exhausting.

00:32:15.720 | There's a cool book on this from the early 20th century, Arnold Bennett's "How to Live

00:32:20.920 | on 24 Hours a Day."

00:32:23.280 | One of his arguments is even if you're exhausted from your work, if you switch over to unrelated

00:32:30.000 | high quality leisure, your energy raise is not false.

00:32:35.720 | So he's arguing our brain, yes, our brain needs rest, but it gets that rest and sleep.

00:32:41.340 | So yes, we do have to sleep every day, but when our brain is active, like we are awake,

00:32:46.420 | it does not actually demand in the way that we imagine complete downtime, where it just

00:32:51.400 | needs to sit there and do nothing or consume very low quality media.

00:32:57.920 | In the world of Arnold Bennett, sort of snobby, striving middle-class that's middle-class

00:33:04.840 | England in the early 20th century, he described as sort of low quality media that you're drinking

00:33:10.920 | and like playing cards and sort of just sitting around and listening to popular music.

00:33:14.320 | And he says, you don't need that.

00:33:16.400 | This idea that you need that's not true.

00:33:19.240 | Under poetry or whatever his definition of high quality leisure is, he says it'll re-energize

00:33:23.560 | you.

00:33:24.560 | The brain wants to do interesting stuff.

00:33:26.280 | So yeah, you might have to adjust a little bit, but you should be able to find on almost

00:33:31.200 | any day, unless you're actually sick, a groove of high quality leisure that is going to feel

00:33:36.020 | better and be more energizing than just falling back to let me do nothing hard at all.

00:33:41.200 | I actually have a listener sent me a first edition of "How to Live on 24 Hours a Day."

00:33:47.280 | I have it displayed in my library.

00:33:48.280 | Yeah, I think you've mentioned that before.

00:33:49.800 | Yeah.

00:33:50.800 | It's really cool.

00:33:51.800 | I'm really happy to have that.

00:33:52.800 | All right.

00:33:53.800 | Who do we got next?

00:33:54.800 | Next question is from Sam.

00:33:55.800 | Hi, Cal.

00:33:56.800 | I'm working on digital minimalism and one of the high value activities I want to include

00:34:00.560 | in my life is watching sports on TV.

00:34:03.600 | But there are so many commercials throughout sports that I feel like I could use the commercial

00:34:06.640 | time better.

00:34:07.640 | Do you have any ideas on how to deal with activities that have inherent frequent breaks

00:34:11.640 | such as sports?

00:34:13.960 | What do you do, Jesse, when you're watching TV sports?

00:34:22.640 | That's a good question.

00:34:23.640 | Yeah, I just...

00:34:24.640 | Like, for instance, during the Super Bowl, I had it on, and I was just...

00:34:28.680 | It's just on.

00:34:29.680 | But a lot of times during NFL games, like on Sundays, I'll be at work, so the sun's

00:34:34.840 | on anyway.

00:34:35.840 | Yeah.

00:34:36.840 | So you're kind of just checking in.

00:34:38.060 | But then on like a Saturday, or sorry, like a Monday night game, I will, yeah, just have

00:34:43.920 | it on.

00:34:44.920 | One of the things I used to like, well, I still do, I wrote about this in my newsletter,

00:34:49.520 | is reading a book while listening to baseball on the radio.

00:34:53.120 | That's a favorite of mine, maybe even outside on a summer day.

00:34:56.200 | You read a book and then you sort of put the game on when it comes back.

00:34:59.800 | And with baseball, you can kind of tune in and out a little bit, right?

00:35:02.600 | So you're like, okay, if something interesting is happening, I'll really listen.

00:35:06.040 | But now it's going to commercial break, I'll go back to my book.

00:35:08.260 | During a pennant race, I could get more reading done, because as we got towards later innings,

00:35:14.880 | I would turn the radio down when we were pitching, because it was too much stress.

00:35:19.600 | So then you could get a whole half inning of reading, because when it's your team up

00:35:23.480 | the bat, it's all possibility.

00:35:24.880 | You're like, hey, anything good could happen here, nothing that terrible could happen other

00:35:28.840 | than we just get outs.

00:35:31.400 | So I don't know, if you're watching sports on TV, I would say it's fine to have some

00:35:35.640 | sort of leisure activity that you're going back and forth through.

00:35:39.600 | I would not make it work-related, because if you context ship like into your email and

00:35:44.880 | then back to the football game, your mind is now stuck between these two worlds, and

00:35:50.160 | you're not going to get the sense of relief of doing something unwork-related.

00:35:54.640 | Don't make it work-related.

00:35:55.640 | Also, don't make it engineered to be addictive.

00:35:58.500 | So you mentioned in the longer version of your question that you're watching YouTube

00:36:03.480 | videos.

00:36:04.480 | I don't like necessarily that tension between, hey, look at me, look at me, like addictive

00:36:10.320 | if the content has these recommendations that are grabbing your attention.

00:36:13.640 | And now you're competing that against the high-quality activity.

00:36:16.960 | I would rather your secondary leisure activity be a little more boring, be on that same level

00:36:23.480 | of slowness as the game on TV itself.

00:36:26.500 | So I think a book is a good example.

00:36:28.720 | Some other sort of analog thing that you're working on, something that you're trying to

00:36:32.120 | fix, you're cleaning something while the game is on, and you kind of clean during the commercials.

00:36:37.360 | Maybe have a secondary activity that is on an equal level of slowness.

00:36:42.300 | It's not competing for your attention, because then you really get the experience then of

00:36:46.520 | your brain downshifting to this medium, which itself I think is just clearing and useful.

00:36:53.740 | So I think it's okay to have something to do during the commercials.

00:36:56.960 | Just don't make it work-related.

00:36:58.840 | Don't make it too addictive.

00:37:00.120 | All right, what do we got next?

00:37:04.240 | Next question's from Chris.

00:37:06.160 | How do you envision digital minimalists interacting with augmented reality once the technology

00:37:10.580 | has advanced sufficiently to replace all the screens in our lives as you have predicted?

00:37:15.760 | Well, first of all, I still think my prediction is not being discovered enough.

00:37:23.360 | Not necessarily from me, but I don't see enough other people talking about that prediction,

00:37:28.000 | in particular in their coverage of the new Apple Vision Pro.

00:37:32.240 | I don't know that everyone yet is still on the same page that I'm on, which says the

00:37:36.240 | whole reason why Apple is investing in the Apple Vision Pro, the whole reason why they're

00:37:41.540 | doing this is because you don't need to, once this technology is sufficiently advanced,

00:37:46.120 | you don't need to own separate screens.

00:37:48.840 | Once you can fit an Apple Vision Pro into a pair of Ray-Ban glasses, I don't need a

00:37:54.200 | phone and an iPad and a laptop and a TV and an office computer.

00:37:58.640 | I just need these glasses, which can put similar-sized screens wherever I happen to be, so why buy

00:38:05.160 | all those things?

00:38:06.160 | That's a huge industry.

00:38:07.520 | The consumer electronics industry is huge.

00:38:10.880 | Apple's profit comes almost entirely from building physical screens in nice brushed

00:38:17.960 | metal boxes.

00:38:19.120 | If those all go away, Apple's in trouble, so they want to own the virtual screen future,

00:38:22.720 | and I'm still convinced that's where we're going to end up.

00:38:25.520 | If I want to make a phone call, I put a screen in front of me projected by my glasses.

00:38:30.080 | If I want to watch TV, there's a screen put on the wall projected by my glasses.

00:38:35.600 | If I want to write, a screen comes in front of me at the coffee shop projected by my glasses.

00:38:41.560 | I don't need to own other bits of electronic.

00:38:43.400 | I just need whatever drives those glasses.

00:38:47.560 | So when people do hear about this future, their concern is, like Chris's concern is

00:38:51.360 | here in this question, are we going to be super distracted in a way that we don't even

00:38:55.200 | know now?

00:38:57.140 | Because there is no hard line between reality and the digital.

00:39:00.680 | Could our whole world be full of these distractions?

00:39:03.520 | Here's my current guess, no.

00:39:06.800 | I think even in a world of virtual engagement, so augmented reality engagement, we are still

00:39:14.840 | going to prefer the screen metaphor as the mediation with the digital.

00:39:22.520 | So even when these screens are not physical, they're being projected in the space by a

00:39:27.320 | pair of Apple glasses, we still are going to want our digital to be within some sort

00:39:32.520 | of screen, a clear demarcation between the digital and the real.

00:39:37.480 | It would be possible, of course, for the digital world to be fully integrated in a more obfuscated

00:39:43.200 | way with what's going on around us.

00:39:44.640 | I don't think we're going to want that.

00:39:46.360 | I don't think that's what the market's going to demand.

00:39:48.080 | I think the market is going to be very happy with, I don't have to buy screens anymore.

00:39:52.240 | My TV is awesome because I can just make a giant screen without having to buy one.

00:39:57.360 | I don't need a separate laptop and iPad or what have you, because I can just have four

00:40:01.300 | monitors whenever I need it.

00:40:03.580 | This is great.

00:40:04.580 | I don't need keyboards and mice, it's just going to look at my hands.

00:40:07.720 | I think that is going to be a compelling pitch to the market, but the screen metaphor will

00:40:11.520 | persist.

00:40:12.520 | I mean, think about this.

00:40:14.480 | This has been the dominant metaphor of media consumption for over 500 years.

00:40:20.800 | Basically when we switched from the scroll to the codex, the bound codex, as our way

00:40:25.060 | of conveying written technology, the idea of a constrained rectangle containing information

00:40:33.680 | has been what we've done.

00:40:36.440 | Movie screens, constrained rectangles, televisions, constrained rectangles, computer screens,

00:40:40.280 | constrained rectangles, phones, iPads, video games, constrained rectangles, which information

00:40:45.680 | is found.

00:40:46.680 | So I think that that metaphor is going to continue, not because it's necessarily the

00:40:50.440 | best way.

00:40:51.440 | I mean, maybe it is better to have the things we're interacting with just sort of be in

00:40:58.240 | the world and we can't tell the difference between them and other things.

00:41:01.440 | Maybe it is better, but psychologically and philosophically, I think we prefer to have

00:41:06.440 | a clear demarcation between real and fake.

00:41:09.120 | So yes, I think AR is going to completely up in the consumer electronics industry.

00:41:14.800 | Most of us will be engaging with a world augmented with digital elements just all day long, but

00:41:21.080 | it might not look as paradoxical as this might seem that different than our current world

00:41:26.440 | today.

00:41:27.440 | We might not be able to reach out and grab the screen we're looking at, but I think it's

00:41:30.440 | still going to be a screen.

00:41:31.960 | There might be some exceptions, some games, et cetera, but some pop out stuff, but I don't

00:41:39.240 | even think so.

00:41:40.240 | Like, so Jesse, I see a lot of these demos of checking email and AR.

00:41:46.240 | The demo videos, they like to have it sort of your messages fly out or like they're kind

00:41:53.080 | of in space and you're scrolling in space and then over here you're writing.

00:41:57.960 | And you know, maybe, but I also think people will be happy with, no, I could just have

00:42:01.400 | a giant screen in front of me so it's, you know, I can see my, I have two messages side

00:42:06.680 | by side.

00:42:07.680 | I don't need the messages to float in like little envelopes.

00:42:11.080 | I'm fine with what Gmail looks like.

00:42:13.040 | I just want to be able to access Gmail wherever I am and have like a really big screen where

00:42:16.640 | I can look at two messages side by side and drag things back and forth.

00:42:19.880 | So I think something like the screen metaphor, that's my new prediction, um, is going to

00:42:24.040 | dominate.

00:42:25.040 | Also, it's just technically easier.

00:42:27.040 | It's going to be the, that's going to be easier than trying to more complexly integrate digital

00:42:32.640 | elements of the real world.

00:42:33.640 | The easiest thing to do with AR is just try to anchor a screen in space as you move around.

00:42:38.800 | So we'll see, but that's my current, that's my current guess.

00:42:43.600 | I still haven't found an excuse to get an Apple vision pro.

00:42:46.080 | I'm trying to find like an article idea that's going to, that would require me to get one

00:42:50.540 | of those to mess around with.

00:42:51.800 | How much are they?

00:42:52.800 | 3000 bells.

00:42:53.800 | Oh really?

00:42:54.800 | Yeah.

00:42:55.800 | I think they're expensive.

00:42:56.800 | I don't know.

00:42:57.800 | I don't know.

00:42:58.800 | I don't know.

00:42:59.800 | I just, I was on there.

00:43:00.800 | I just wrote a good New Yorker piece on, on this.

00:43:01.800 | So I'll have to check it out.

00:43:02.800 | That might've burned the, my opportunity to convince the New Yorker that I really need

00:43:03.800 | an Apple vision pro or you just bar his.

00:43:06.800 | Yeah.

00:43:07.800 | Uh, well, yeah, maybe I can.

00:43:09.800 | Jared, come on.

00:43:10.800 | No, he helped invent virtual reality.

00:43:13.000 | So I think he was well suited to write about this.

00:43:14.640 | He probably has to, I, yeah, I should, he probably does.

00:43:19.680 | He probably does.

00:43:20.680 | All right.

00:43:21.680 | What do we got next?

00:43:22.680 | All right.

00:43:23.680 | Laura.

00:43:24.680 | Next question.

00:43:25.680 | How do I have a digital minimalist life?

00:43:27.520 | When I have a online business based on social media, I'm a full-time YouTuber who struggles

00:43:32.200 | with keeping up with my subscribers in their actions.

00:43:35.520 | I have a channel with 30,000 subscribers that keeps growing at a very good pace.

00:43:39.480 | I've been trying to reply to all the comments on my channel, but lately it's been getting

00:43:42.920 | harder.

00:43:43.920 | Well, Laura, I think that's a good question because it emphasizes a common confusion about

00:43:49.320 | digital minimalism.

00:43:51.640 | You don't have a digital minimalism problem.

00:43:54.400 | You have an entrepreneur workflow problem, and I want to distinguish between these two

00:43:59.080 | because I think it's important.

00:44:01.520 | When people hear digital minimalism and they know that it has to do with having a more

00:44:07.440 | healthy relationship with your tools, they often change the second word in their head.

00:44:12.520 | And so, yes, what we're talking about here is digital minimization.

00:44:18.680 | The goal of this philosophy is to use as little technology as possible, to remove technology

00:44:24.960 | from your life.

00:44:26.400 | More removal is better than less.

00:44:28.520 | And from the perspective of digital minimization, you say, "I'm spending all this time on YouTube.

00:44:33.080 | That goes against minimization because I'm spending time on YouTube, and so maybe this

00:44:37.360 | philosophy doesn't hold."

00:44:39.480 | Minimalism though is different.

00:44:42.520 | Minimalism says you figure out what's important to you in your life.

00:44:45.600 | You figure out what tools, if anything, support these things that are important.

00:44:49.680 | Because you know why you're using the tools, you can put rules around their use that dictates

00:44:53.440 | how and when you use them.

00:44:56.080 | So in this case, you're a YouTuber.

00:44:59.120 | Your business is based on YouTube.

00:45:00.840 | Clearly, when you go through this exercise, you would say, "Yes, engaging with YouTube

00:45:07.320 | does support things I value, such as making money and keeping my job.

00:45:10.800 | My job requires me to use YouTube."

00:45:12.080 | There's no problem there.

00:45:13.080 | There's no minimalism to say there's a reason why you're using YouTube.

00:45:17.120 | It would also say, of course, have rules about how and when you use it to make sure that

00:45:20.080 | you do the stuff that's important, but not paying unnecessary side effects.

00:45:24.120 | And this is where I think this becomes a business workflow problem.

00:45:27.500 | Your issue is your channel has grown, and it takes a lot of time to interact with subscribers.

00:45:32.840 | Like that's your problem.

00:45:33.840 | That's a business problem.

00:45:36.720 | Your rules for engaging with YouTube as your channel grew was, "I'm going to try to answer

00:45:40.800 | user comments because that leads to more engagement and will help the rate at which my channel

00:45:46.040 | grows."

00:45:47.040 | I guess this is like a common YouTube strategy idea.

00:45:49.960 | Now your channel is up to a given size that these interactions become more difficult because

00:45:53.400 | of scale.

00:45:55.760 | So what do you have to do?

00:45:56.760 | It's a business workflow problem.

00:45:58.240 | All right.

00:45:59.240 | Either I have to put aside more time for doing this or move on to the next stage of my channel

00:46:03.600 | growth where I no longer try to interact directly with subscribers.

00:46:06.680 | I mean, all YouTube channels will eventually go through that stage.

00:46:10.680 | Once you get to a certain size, you're not interacting with your commenters.

00:46:13.280 | I mean, we just had Ali Abdaal on the show.

00:46:16.200 | He's not sitting there.

00:46:17.200 | He has 5 million subscribers.

00:46:18.400 | He's not sitting there trying to answer every comment.

00:46:20.800 | So there's some point where that no longer makes sense.

00:46:23.680 | And maybe you're at that point, which would mean you stop doing that.

00:46:26.840 | And if you're not at that point, my suggestion would be to lean into the how and when attributes

00:46:33.120 | that digital minimalism says you should place around any technology in your life and be

00:46:36.680 | much more structured about it.

00:46:38.280 | I have one hour here and a half hour here every other day where I go through and reply

00:46:42.840 | very quickly to comments.

00:46:43.840 | I don't look at them otherwise.

00:46:45.480 | So I've put fences around it.

00:46:47.800 | That's where you are.

00:46:49.040 | You either need better fences, wider pastures fenced in for this behavior, or you need to

00:46:54.280 | move on from this behavior.

00:46:55.340 | But this is a business workflow problem more than it is a minimalism problem.

00:47:00.480 | Minimalism is not about stop using technology.

00:47:02.640 | If you have to use technology, give up on it.

00:47:04.640 | It's about being intentional.

00:47:06.620 | So just be very careful about your intentionality here with YouTubers and comments and say,

00:47:11.760 | is this necessary?

00:47:12.760 | Is there another way I could do this?

00:47:14.800 | Let's rethink how I want to engage with these tools.

00:47:17.080 | But that's a business workflow issue.

00:47:19.080 | I mean, I remember going through this with my newsletter and blog.

00:47:23.520 | Very similar, Laura, to what you're talking about here.

00:47:26.440 | Early on, we're talking 2007, 2008, when I started this, I answered every email that

00:47:31.520 | people sent me.

00:47:32.520 | And I was talking mainly to students back then.

00:47:34.580 | And so I would get these emails from students with specific problems that I really liked

00:47:38.800 | trying to give them advice.

00:47:40.240 | A, it felt useful.

00:47:42.160 | And B, it helped me better keep up with what are the specific issues that students right

00:47:46.560 | now are facing.

00:47:47.560 | As I talk about often on the show, however, there was this point where I had to stop doing

00:47:51.800 | that.

00:47:53.320 | There was just too many readers, therefore too many emails.

00:47:56.880 | It was taking up too much of my life.

00:47:58.200 | It was stressful.

00:47:59.400 | I couldn't keep up.

00:48:00.440 | I was spending hours working on it, and eventually I had to evolve to the next stage of my media

00:48:05.960 | career and say, "Okay, I no longer have a sort of open email address where I just answer

00:48:10.720 | questions.

00:48:11.720 | It's just not sustainable."

00:48:13.800 | And it was weird, and then I got over it.

00:48:16.160 | So maybe you're there.

00:48:17.520 | But I like this question because if you use your businesses based on social media, you

00:48:23.120 | could still be a digital minimalist.

00:48:24.680 | You just have to be intentional.

00:48:27.320 | If you're having trouble with your work, it might not be a technology problem, but just

00:48:30.800 | a workflow problem.

00:48:33.600 | We don't talk to our subscribers on YouTube.

00:48:35.360 | Is that something people do, Jesse?

00:48:37.120 | Does that help your channel grow or something?

00:48:40.760 | I think it might, but it seemed like it would be pretty...

00:48:43.880 | I don't think I would know how to do that.

00:48:47.320 | I don't know how comments work on YouTube.

00:48:49.320 | You just go to the YouTube studio and then...

00:48:51.760 | You do it in the back end, and then it would show up as coming from the channel itself.

00:48:56.880 | Audience, I'm unlikely to do that.

00:48:59.040 | So if you're watching this on YouTube, I am unlikely to go in and start responding to

00:49:04.520 | the comments.

00:49:05.520 | But there you go.

00:49:06.520 | YouTube is a weird beast.

00:49:07.520 | All right.

00:49:08.520 | Do we have a call this week?

00:49:09.520 | Yes, we do.

00:49:10.520 | All right.

00:49:11.520 | Let's do that.

00:49:12.520 | All right.

00:49:13.520 | Here we go.

00:49:14.520 | G'day.

00:49:15.520 | It's Logan here.

00:49:16.520 | I'm a Kiwi currently living in the US working as a financial consultant.

00:49:20.400 | I have a question around decentralized social media.

00:49:23.960 | I've spent the last five years developing my artistic drawing skills to a proficient

00:49:27.920 | level and feel that I could now generate some real revenue.

00:49:31.080 | I'm not about to quit my day job.

00:49:32.920 | My question is more about how do I share my content with an audience?

00:49:36.760 | How do I monetize it?

00:49:38.280 | How do I do this and still maintain control over what I create while not handing over

00:49:42.560 | the reins of these things and my audience to a large social media company?

00:49:48.360 | Ideally I would only use social media as a tool to funnel viewership into some other

00:49:52.560 | thing.

00:49:53.560 | Well, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

00:49:54.920 | I've heard you talk theoretically about this idea, but don't really know how you imagine

00:49:59.160 | it to work in practice.

00:50:00.160 | Cheers for all the hard work.

00:50:01.920 | Owl.

00:50:02.920 | Well, I got two ideas here.

00:50:05.520 | One, let's just talk fundamentals.

00:50:09.280 | You want to sell something online.

00:50:11.960 | You're monetizing a rare and valuable skill you have online.

00:50:16.280 | There's a fundamental principle here which says you need a home where, like a home base

00:50:22.560 | for this material, this content, the drawings, music, artwork, whatever it is, you need a

00:50:28.600 | home base that you can control or allows you to control what you're selling.

00:50:34.600 | You also want to have control over how it's sold.

00:50:39.000 | So never let your home base for what you're trying to monetize online be something owned

00:50:44.960 | by someone else, right?

00:50:47.040 | So this is what would happen, for example, if your main place where you hold your contents

00:50:53.280 | on a social media platform, that's their content.

00:50:55.560 | You're working for that platform to help them harness eyeballs.

00:50:59.160 | They decide how they show it to people.

00:51:01.000 | They decide how the selling works.

00:51:03.120 | They can do what they want with that material.

00:51:05.460 | This is very different than having your own website, for example.

00:51:09.040 | It's very different than selling things using the Shopify store.

00:51:12.640 | It's your stuff.

00:51:13.640 | Shopify is just helping you sell it.

00:51:15.480 | It's very different, let's say, you know, a podcast.

00:51:17.960 | Yeah, you'll have a hosting service somewhere, but this is just a server that hosts your

00:51:21.720 | MP3 files, which are your MP3 files.

00:51:24.280 | And all these other players like Spotify or Apple iTunes players are just getting copies

00:51:29.040 | from the server.

00:51:30.040 | You own it.

00:51:31.040 | It's yours.

00:51:32.080 | So you want to own, have a home base for whatever you're trying to monetize online.

00:51:37.400 | The more you can have your own home base that you can control and that you own, the better.

00:51:42.980 | You can then use, as you mentioned, various platforms to try to draw attention to this

00:51:49.160 | home base.

00:51:50.680 | So for writers, for example, their home base might be an email subscription newsletter

00:51:55.200 | and they use other social media tools to try to pull people towards it.

00:51:58.640 | But what matters is their list.

00:52:00.720 | Artists might show some of their artwork on Instagram, but they have a website where their

00:52:04.760 | art lives and where you can actually order limited edition prints to their own Shopify

00:52:08.400 | store.

00:52:09.400 | They can control it.

00:52:11.160 | Creators like me, we put video versions of these podcasts on YouTube.

00:52:15.940 | There's a whole new audience there, a younger audience that can learn and find these on

00:52:20.140 | YouTube and some people just like to watch it.

00:52:23.060 | But the show itself lives, we own it.

00:52:24.820 | It lives on our own third-party podcast server.

00:52:29.780 | That's what matters to us is the show itself is something we own.

00:52:33.020 | You can shut down YouTube tomorrow and it doesn't matter because we have this show with

00:52:37.260 | an audience we've built and we owned and so on.

00:52:39.940 | So I think that's a good principle to go into this idea of using existing algorithmically

00:52:46.820 | recommendation driven platforms like social media to promote your work.

00:52:50.440 | Go into that with your eyes open and care.

00:52:52.920 | What I often tell people who are wondering, okay, I have this old fashioned skill.

00:52:57.260 | How do I promote it in the new media world?

00:52:59.080 | I say, start by seeing what you would have done 12 years ago, 2012.

00:53:04.640 | We think of that roughly speaking as the point where social media tipped into becoming something

00:53:09.420 | that was generally assumed to be used.

00:53:12.040 | That's when it really grew to cultural ubiquity.

00:53:13.920 | All right.

00:53:14.920 | So what would you have done in 2011?

00:53:17.720 | How did people who drew get attention to their work and sell their work?

00:53:22.740 | How did people who wrote books used to get attention to their work?

00:53:27.200 | How did artists get attention for their work?

00:53:28.840 | How did musicians find and grow in audiences in 2011?

00:53:34.160 | Ask yourself that question and start there because what often turns out is those are

00:53:39.340 | still the main ways you should do it.

00:53:42.540 | That social media, sure, you can go on there.

00:53:45.180 | Maybe there'll be some break, but more likely it'll just be you are dedicating your time

00:53:51.480 | to help generate attention for these companies so they can monetize it more.

00:53:56.500 | I think the reason why we get so, it's so appealing to think, I want to promote this

00:54:02.140 | work on social media is because there's this lottery ticket feel to it.

00:54:08.060 | Hey, you never know.

00:54:10.080 | These TikToks might go viral and I'll be the next Justin Bieber.

00:54:13.980 | That could happen, but it probably won't.

00:54:17.180 | The platform will string you along, give you a little burst of views every once in a while

00:54:21.300 | so you think that you're just around the corner.

00:54:23.380 | But for 99.9% of the people, that's not how it worked.

00:54:25.820 | The old fashioned way is what really matters.

00:54:28.020 | I'm a musician.

00:54:29.020 | I get better at playing.

00:54:30.020 | I start performing.

00:54:31.020 | I build up my own audience and mailing list.

00:54:33.580 | My skills get to a place where this begins to attract the attention of A&R executives

00:54:37.580 | who are desperate to find actually really good musicians.

00:54:40.660 | Now that I'm connected with A&R representatives, I go on tour, I'm opening for bigger bands.

00:54:44.620 | They've set me up to do.

00:54:45.960 | That puts me in front of a bigger audience.

00:54:47.720 | This gets me ready.

00:54:48.720 | It probably takes about 10 years, but now we're ready to actually have an awesome album.

00:54:52.180 | We have the whole mechanisms of this record label behind the album.

00:54:55.220 | That's complicated and boring.

00:54:56.780 | What's better is I'm on YouTube and next week, Kim Kardashian or Mr. Beast is going to mention

00:55:03.900 | one of my songs.

00:55:04.900 | The 10 million people are going to view it and then I'm just going to have a lot of money.

00:55:07.820 | There's a lottery ticket feel that I think new media, social media gives to us.

00:55:12.580 | There's also a scariness with the existing traditional methods of getting an audience

00:55:19.560 | in many creative fields.

00:55:21.020 | There's a scariness because it is rife with rejection.

00:55:24.700 | Well, an agent might say, I don't want your book.

00:55:29.460 | You perform and they don't call you back because your music's not that good.

00:55:33.540 | You try to move your drawings in a gallery or sell prints at the market and people don't

00:55:40.620 | like them.

00:55:42.340 | Social media kind of hides you from that type of rejection.

00:55:44.720 | It's like, no, like it's out there and it engineers like a background hum of attention.

00:55:51.540 | So if you're on social media, you'll make sure that like you're going to get some people

00:55:54.780 | are going to see you.

00:55:55.780 | You'll have some followers.

00:55:56.780 | So it gives you that simulacrum of people care and then you have this lottery ticket

00:56:01.340 | mentality in the background.

00:56:02.340 | Hey, this could take off anytime.

00:56:03.700 | It's just psychologically easier.

00:56:06.460 | So I think we get seduced by these new channels because it gets around everything that made

00:56:11.380 | succeeding as a creative hard just 12 years ago.

00:56:16.820 | We get seduced by these new channels.

00:56:18.580 | That being said, you might find when you do this exercise that no, no, no.

00:56:22.180 | There is a particular now market for this stuff that didn't exist before and there's

00:56:26.020 | a way to get there through a particular social media channel.

00:56:28.460 | So sure, go with that with your eyes open, execute that plan carefully, but be careful

00:56:33.380 | about just this general seduction that somehow everything that has always been hard about

00:56:38.840 | trying to make a living in a sort of interesting, creative, autonomous field that you can bypass

00:56:43.580 | all that through social media.

00:56:45.820 | The person who's winning in that equation is Mark Zuckerberg, right?

00:56:50.140 | The person winning that equation are the people that can monetize all that time you spend

00:56:55.500 | doing this sort of like easy, low return activities online, monetizing your attention.

00:57:02.620 | Be very careful about how you use that world and why you're using that world.

00:57:07.780 | All right.

00:57:08.780 | So I want to do a case study before we get to our final segment.

00:57:12.700 | We found a case study that has to do with digital minimalism.

00:57:15.820 | I don't think I got a name on this one actually, so we'll just call this person anonymous.

00:57:21.900 | All right, here's what he wrote.

00:57:25.740 | In May of 2022, I read a post on lesswrong.com called do a cost-benefit analysis of your

00:57:32.540 | technology usage.

00:57:34.020 | I immediately read digital minimalism, completing it in June of 2022 and beginning my digital

00:57:41.020 | declutter, then gradually removing more and more apps from my phone.

00:57:45.460 | I also eventually picked up deep work and spent time on improving my time blocking and

00:57:50.620 | multi-scale planning game.

00:57:53.700 | It's been 1.5 years since I read digital minimalism and started applying its lessons.

00:57:59.060 | Since then, I have one, drastically increased how much I read, two, drastically increased

00:58:06.820 | how much I exercise, three, incrementally increased how much I sleep and four, significantly

00:58:14.620 | increased the amount of movies and video games I have actively and consciously consumed in

00:58:21.180 | contrast to passive or regretful consumption.

00:58:25.660 | After one and a half years of saying to my wife, let me tell you what Cal Newport says

00:58:29.640 | you should be doing.

00:58:31.500 | She has gone from rolling her eyes and making fun of my hints and razor to forcing me to

00:58:36.180 | listen to her read out loud passages from So Good They Can't Ignore You.

00:58:42.340 | Well, there's a good and a bad in there.

00:58:45.580 | The negative lesson there is don't bother your wife about Cal Newport stuff.

00:58:48.780 | Trust me, there's thousands of wives and girlfriends around the world who are tired of hearing

00:58:52.380 | about Cal Newport.

00:58:53.940 | My empathy goes out to your wife.

00:58:55.640 | But the good in here is that digital declutters and digital minimalism works, right?

00:59:03.140 | He got intentional about his technology usage.

00:59:06.220 | He added things into his life that was more meaningful to him.

00:59:09.840 | And look at these changes.

00:59:11.500 | He's reading, he's exercising, he's sleeping more.

00:59:13.860 | He's much more conscious about how he engages with media.

00:59:16.500 | This is someone who I can tell you is probably a lot less anxious, a lot more engaged than

00:59:20.700 | he was before, probably a lot more productive in work as well.

00:59:25.440 | It's like the heavy drinker doesn't realize the impact this is having on their lives,

00:59:30.620 | the hangovers, the lack of energy, the lack of other pursuits until they move on.

00:59:34.420 | And then they realize, oh my God, life is in technicolor before it was in a sort of

00:59:38.460 | fuzzy black and white.

00:59:40.220 | So I love hearing those case studies.

00:59:42.820 | You can completely change your relationship with your phone.

00:59:44.980 | It's not as hard as you think.

00:59:46.340 | And the results when people do can be pretty cool.

00:59:48.780 | All right.

00:59:49.780 | So I want to get to a final segment where I react to something that someone sent me

00:59:53.820 | or I encountered in the news.

00:59:55.300 | But first, however, let's hear from another sponsor.

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01:01:39.180 | I also want to briefly talk about our friends at My Body Tutor.

01:01:42.740 | I've known Adam Gilbert, My Body Tutor's founder, for over 15 years now.

01:01:47.460 | He used to be the fitness guru for my blog back in his early days.

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01:02:16.220 | There you get sustainability.

01:02:18.580 | Knowing that you are checking in keeps you on the right track.

01:02:22.380 | Knowing that you can adjust your plan when life intercedes with the help of an expert

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01:03:00.580 | All right.

01:03:03.500 | So now we've made our way to our final segment where I react to something I've seen in the

01:03:08.900 | news.

01:03:09.900 | And we are combining this final segment with another segment, which is our weekly slow

01:03:16.620 | productivity corner.

01:03:27.360 | The slow productivity corner is where we do answer a question or tackle a segment each

01:03:31.660 | week that's related to my upcoming book, Slow Productivity, which you can pre-order now.

01:03:37.300 | Go to calnewport.com/slow to read an excerpt and find out more.

01:03:41.700 | I usually use a question, but I had this final segment, which put me in a slow productivity

01:03:47.700 | mood because it featured someone who is featured in the book.

01:03:53.780 | So the person I want to talk about today is J.R.R.

01:03:57.140 | Tolkien, author of other things, among other things, of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

01:04:03.140 | In particular, there's a quote that was sent to me by a curator of medieval manuscripts

01:04:10.340 | at one of the libraries at Oxford.

01:04:12.260 | So I thought that was just so cool that I was like, "I'm going to take seriously whatever

01:04:16.580 | you send me."

01:04:18.020 | You know when you're getting a message from a curator of medieval manuscripts at Oxford,

01:04:22.700 | they're probably not writing you about kettlebells or bow hunting.

01:04:28.020 | Or TikTok videos.

01:04:29.460 | They're probably not, "Hey, do you see this fire TikTok video?"

01:04:33.380 | At first I thought this guy was sus, but now I know they're Audie 9000.

01:04:40.300 | I'm mixing late '90s lingo with modern lingo.

01:04:43.980 | No, it's very dignified.

01:04:46.740 | So he sent me this quote from Tolkien.

01:04:48.700 | I'm actually going to bring up an article on the screen for those who are watching that

01:04:51.700 | also includes this quote.

01:04:54.340 | Here's an article here from the New Criterion called The Constellations of Fantasy that

01:04:59.140 | is talking about this really cool Tolkien exhibit that was put on by the Morgan Library

01:05:03.860 | Museum a couple of years ago.

01:05:05.300 | What I like about some of this artwork, so you can see for those who are watching on

01:05:10.260 | the screen, an illustration that Tolkien did himself for The Hobbit.

01:05:18.580 | You sort of see this fantastical English landscape.

01:05:21.300 | I assume this might be the Shire done in pastel colors.

01:05:26.020 | Here he is working, a picture of him working.

01:05:27.620 | All right, here's other illustrations he did.

01:05:29.860 | This is from a series of stories he did for his children about Father Christmas.

01:05:33.220 | It's a fantastical picture he did about Father Christmas going to his snow palace.

01:05:42.660 | Here's a collection of graph paper from the exhibit that had been pasted together and

01:05:47.220 | on here, Tolkien has drawn out a map of Middle-earth.

01:05:51.820 | This was his first map of Middle-earth.

01:05:55.020 | This caught my attention because I know a lot about Tolkien.

01:05:58.260 | I read the Raymond James academic biography a couple of years ago.

01:06:02.940 | He's living his life at Oxford where he's being overwhelmed to some extent by the administrative,

01:06:10.580 | by the details of being a lecturer at Oxford in the early 20th century, the stresses of

01:06:16.980 | being in a field, philology, that was transforming into modern linguistics.

01:06:23.740 | He was on the old-fashioned side of that.

01:06:26.460 | He was grading a lot.

01:06:28.300 | He was preparing a lot of courses.

01:06:30.460 | He was really busy and feeling overwhelmed.

01:06:33.300 | He also worried about money.

01:06:35.180 | Meanwhile, look what he's doing.

01:06:37.160 | He's drawing these almost childlike, fantastical images.

01:06:40.700 | His imagination was soaring.

01:06:43.500 | When Lord of the Rings began to do well, he finally saw that he had a chance to spend

01:06:52.180 | less time with all of these grinding activities that he just felt were put upon him and more

01:06:58.300 | time in these fantastical worlds that are revealed through his artwork.

01:07:02.420 | This brings us to the quote that was sent to me by this curator of medieval manuscripts

01:07:05.580 | from Oxford.

01:07:07.260 | It's a quote in a letter sent from Tolkien to Stanley Unwin.

01:07:13.260 | Here's the quote, "Writing stories in prose or verse has been stolen, often guiltily,

01:07:20.180 | from time already mortgaged and has been broken and ineffective.

01:07:23.900 | I may perhaps now do what I much desire to do and not fail a financial duty."

01:07:30.500 | What he's pointing out there is that he had been stealing time from these other professional

01:07:38.940 | grinding activities to which it had already been mortgaged to work on these fantastical

01:07:45.340 | images that really spoke to him.

01:07:48.220 | Once his book started doing a little bit better, he finally had time to actually, without guilt,

01:07:53.580 | focus on this thing that's really important to him.

01:07:57.220 | There's a slow productivity lesson in there.

01:08:00.580 | Tolkien, as an exemplar of fast productivity, of all these things I'm doing and juggling

01:08:05.180 | as a professor and doing all these things, wasn't that happy.

01:08:09.540 | Where did he find real peace, being able to return to these fantastical worlds that he

01:08:13.860 | was creating, working on fewer things, slowing down on the work, obsessing over the quality

01:08:19.300 | of the few number of things he did?

01:08:21.140 | This is hard to get to.

01:08:22.140 | Not all of us are going to get there completely.

01:08:24.820 | Not all of us are going to write Lord of the Rings.

01:08:27.120 | I give a lot of advice in my book about how to move towards this world, but I just thought

01:08:31.140 | it was a great example of the joys of slowness.

01:08:35.260 | This is what Tolkien wanted to do, was engage in this slower, more engaging world, to get

01:08:41.980 | away from the fast productivity of his time.

01:08:44.620 | The issues we face today in our world of slack and email were issues that Tolkien faced in

01:08:50.100 | the early 20th century in his age of academic responsibilities.

01:08:54.060 | I just thought it was cool to see that quote and to see these examples of the fantastical

01:08:57.900 | worlds that really drew his attention.

01:08:59.380 | Here's another one here.

01:09:01.340 | Here's an ink drawing he did called Eeriness.

01:09:03.700 | He had this childlike imagination, but it was sophisticated.

01:09:08.020 | That's what he wanted to do, and eventually he would slow down enough to be able to do

01:09:11.420 | it.

01:09:12.420 | There he found this real contentment.

01:09:15.240 | Perfect example of the promise of slow productivity, and a great excuse, Jesse, to hear once again

01:09:20.460 | our slower productivity theme song.

01:09:30.240 | That's all the time we have for today.

01:09:32.980 | Thank you for listening.

01:09:33.980 | Remember calnewport.com/slow to hear more about my book, thedeeplife.com/listen for

01:09:39.620 | instructions on how to submit your own questions and calls to the program.

01:09:43.580 | We'll be back next week with a new episode, and until then, as always, stay deep.

01:09:48.980 | Hey, so if you enjoyed today's discussion of digital minimalism, I think you'll also

01:09:54.020 | like episode 286 in which I go into the different types of self-help from the simple and advice

01:10:01.640 | focus to the deep and philosophical and tell you how to integrate these sources of wisdom

01:10:07.380 | into your high quality leisure habits.

01:10:10.860 | Check it out.

01:10:11.860 | I think you'll enjoy it.

01:10:14.300 | The general topic is how do you cultivate a deep life in a world that is increasingly

01:10:21.820 | distracted?

Stop Doom Scrolling & End The Social Media Distraction - Declutter Your Life Today | Cal Newport

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