(upbeat music) - All right, so thanks for that question, Kobe. All right, Jesse, what do we have on the docket next? - Our next question is from Pablo. He's got a two-part question. His first is he wants your thoughts on how to persuade his girlfriend to minimize social media.

- Oh, man. - And he should read your news article about the Twitter in January. And then part two is he actually has a question about his bodybuilding, and if that counts as high-quality leisure. - Jesse, how many girlfriends do you think are out there in the world right now who curse my name because their nerd boyfriend is pushing some Cal Newport idea, and they finally just say, "Enough, enough.

"I don't wanna hear about Cal Newport." I think I have been cursed in apartment buildings and living rooms. - More now that your Today Show appearance. So all those. - That's right. - There's a big audience there. - That's right. Well, yeah, now that I'm world famous from being on the Today Show, it's only gonna make this problem worse.

Now that I wear suit jackets to work, I'm gonna start wearing a suit jacket on air for this podcast. I think you should too. I think it's just about showing people that we're pros a suit jacket and tie. - I never use my ties in my closet, so maybe it'd be a good excuse to put them on.

- Yeah, we could do the Lexford Mint thing, wear the same suit every time. - All right, here's Pablo. - Hi, Cal. First and foremost, thank you for drastically improving my quality of life. I wanted to ask two questions. To start, I want to know your thoughts on how I can harmoniously persuade my girlfriend into minimizing her social media use.

- All right, Pablo. So for the first question, minimizing social media use, how to encourage someone else in your life to do that, it's dangerous waters. Dangerous waters when you're trying to tell someone else about an improvement you think they should make, regardless of what the topic is. I think anyone who's been in a relationship knows this experience.

It's usually not gonna go well, so you have to be very careful there. I usually recommend that what people do is be the change they want to see in the world where you can replace world with spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend or kids or what have you. Be the change you want to see.

So first of all, live your life in the way that you think is valuable. Use the phone-foyer method. Don't have your phone with you. Don't have social media accounts or the accounts you do use, you use on a schedule on a desktop for very specific purposes. Let the other person in your life see what that brings you.

The concentration, the peace, the lack of anxiety. Let them see that. Then be clear when the topic comes up why and how you're doing that. Oh, well, I'm a digital minimalist and this is what digital minimalism is and I've built my life around using this in this way and not that and I'm getting a lot of benefits about it.

So they know what's going on. They know why you're doing it and how you're doing it. At that point, then you have to let the seed germinate on its own. And you have to let the other person see what you're doing, know that it's an option, know the philosophy behind it and make that step of, you know, "Kobe, I think I wanna do this.

Do you wanna do it with me? Do you wanna help me?" But you can't push it that hard. Now, if you wanna be, you know, nudging, you can try to do a new year thing. So I talked about in a recent episode that this January, when this episode is coming out, January, 2022, I've announced on my newsletter an analog January challenge, which was built just around not using Twitter for the month.

So you might do something like that, built around new year's resolutions and say, "Hey, do you wanna do this with me? I think it'd be fun." So you could try that, but for the most part, be the change you wanna see in others and let the others come to you.

The most extreme alternative to that I've heard is on one of my events I was doing on the digital minimalism tour, I met a parent who was worried about their teenage kids' social media use. So they took their devices on a long car trip. So they had no, nothing to look at or listen to, and then put digital minimalism audio book on in the car and basically forced them to listen to digital minimalism.

So that would be the opposite extreme. And those kids went on to invent TikTok. So that backfired. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)