All right, speaking of digital minimum, I think this next question is relevant, right? What do we got here? - All right, next question is from Nandan. What are the benefits of shutting down the phone usage before going to bed and after waking up? What techniques can I implement to become more disciplined in doing so?

- Well, Nandan, I mean, the benefits are massive because what are we really talking about here? If you're using your phone up to the moment you go to bed, if you're using your phone the moment that you wake up, that means that you are constantly in this four-dimensional world where you have the real and the digital and it's all sort of mixed together.

That's not a humane way to live. It's an impoverished approach to reality. It is an anxiety generation machine. It is also a, think of it as like a potential magnet, just pulling all this potential for you constructing a life well-lived and just sucking it away and converting it into returns on the stock owners of these giant, people who own stock, these giant attention economy platforms.

It is no way to live. That's the benefit. So how do you get away from it? Well, Nandan, you have to be way more aggressive than what you're talking about here. What you're talking about here, I see all the time. You want to nibble at the edges with tips.

I use my phone too much. Do you have a good tip? Like maybe I should stop not bringing the bedroom or I should have a time I start turning on my phone. This is not how we solve this problem. When your life is entirely enmeshed with the digital, we do not solve this problem by nibbling at the edges with tips.

We don't solve this problem by writing books where we put in all these caveats about like, well, I'm not saying that you shouldn't use your phone and please don't yell at me, but like, you know, maybe if you're able, you should consider like putting down your phone while you're having dinner, you know, but unless like you really need your phone during dinner, that's not what's going to solve this problem.

We need to fundamentally repair our relationship with these tools. We need a philosophy, well thought through about how technology is integrated into our lives. And the philosophy I preach is digital minimalism from my book, eponymously titled "Digital Minimalism." And it's a pretty simple approach. It says, what you need to do is figure out what you care about in your life, the positive, what you want to spend time doing.

You then work backwards and say, for each of these things I care about, what's a really useful way or effective way to use technology to support it? Your answer to those questions describes the technologies you use. Everything else you don't use. For something to lay claim to your time and attention, it has to go through the test of, I care about this, this technology is the best way to support this.

And here are the specific rules I use for using this technology to support this thing I care about. Everything else by default, you do not use in your life. It allows you to leverage the power of technology without being a slave to their worst excesses. That's where you need to get into.

You need to establish your own philosophy of digital minimalism. You don't just need tips to nibble at the edges of excessive phone use. But I know tips help people. So let me give you a few warmup rules that will prepare you for going through a bigger digital minimalism type transition.

These are rules that real digital minimalists have come up with as they've gone through this exercise of reshaping their relationship to technology. Number one, the phone foyer method. I see this a lot. I see this a lot among minimalists who really think through how do I wanna use tech?

When you are at home, the phone goes on a shelf in the kitchen or in your foyer, it's plugged into charge. That's where it is. If you're expecting a call, put the ringer on. If it rings, you can go in there and answer the call. If there's text messages you might need to check in on, you can walk to the foyer or the kitchen, that phone stays plugged in, and you can answer those text messages right there.

It is not with you elsewhere in your house. So it's not with you when you're watching TV. If you wanna go see if someone texted you, you gotta walk over there and stand there at the foyer, typing until you're done with that. If you wanna look something up, you have to walk over to the foyer, look it up, type it in, and then go back to what you're doing.

It's not with you at the dinner table. It's for sure not with you in the bedroom. So that's an example of a rule around use that might emerge as you do a digital minimalism overhaul to your life. Another rule that I think is interesting that's emerged often among digital minimalists is purposefully engineered disconnected time every single day.

Every single day I'm going for a walk or running an errand without a phone. And if I'm bored, I'm bored. And if emergency happens, an emergency happens. But you know what? Until like a minute ago, we did not have phones with us everywhere we went, and the vast majority of us did not die in tragic emergencies 'cause we were unable to quickly text someone.

So you might wanna try those as a warm-up, Nanded. Phone for your method, significant expedition or time every day without your phone just to get used to what it's like not to be with it. That's a good warmup, but you need to do the full transformation. My book "Digital Minimalism" is a good place to start.

That book is available in lots of different countries. I think we've sold rights on that to a lot of different places. So wherever you're from, you can probably find a copy of that book. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)