I've got a question here from Jacob. Jacob asks, How do I realistically accomplish a digital detox? When all of my leisure is currently spent on technology, I am currently an online student and I spend all of my vast amounts of leisure time on my phone. I really want to do a digital detox, but I believe it might be too drastic and unsustainable.

So Jacob read my book, Digital Minimalism, where I really walk through how to do this. Two points here. One, I do not use the terminology digital detox. That term has been appropriated by people in the digital space in what I believe to be an inappropriate way. They took this term that's most heavily used in substance abuse, and they completely changed it to be the opposite of its original use, its original intention, so I don't like it.

So if you look in the substance abuse community, what is a detox? Well, you're literally trying to eliminate the chemical dependence on the substance and doing it under a controlled circumstance. So you're at a detox center, so there is no alcohol there. And there's people there who can watch to make sure that from a health perspective that you're okay.

So that's part of it. But the second part of it, and it's the part that makes the whole thing make sense, is that you also then re-engineer your life during this process so that when you come out of it, you no longer have that relationship with the substance that caused the problem in the first place.

You would not run a very successful, let's say, alcohol detox center if you say, "Here's our plan. You come here, you spend the month, it's really hard, you get the DTs, trying to get off your alcohol dependency, you white knuckle it, we get you off of it. And then on day 31, we all go to the bar to celebrate you doing it." You don't know, you build a whole life without alcohol.

And yet in the digital community, they have taken this term, and they apply it to mean exactly that. Like, "Yeah, let's take a break from these technologies that we feel like are ruining our lives before going back to using them as before." That is the opposite of the intention of a detox.

So I do not like that term. So I introduced a new term in my book, declutter, digital declutter. And you spend 30 days away from all these optional technologies with the goal of completely rebuilding your digital life from scratch when you're done so that it's something that is sustainable and a source of good, not bad.

So no detox, declutter. Read the book and I walk through how to actually do it. The key thing you're going to see is that if this is going to work, you have to aggressively fill the newly free time with experimentation and reflection. You have to actually go do lots of other activities, learn new things, try new things.

You have to join things and go places. You have to spend a lot of time alone with your own thoughts and reading. Active, active, active. That is the key, Jacob, is you replace what you're doing before with things that are better. You get much more insight about what matters to you, what you find important, what real pleasure feels like versus superficial dopamine hacking that these devices are doing.

And then when you're done with those 30 days, you rebuild your life from scratch. Read Digital Minimalism, chapter three, I believe, will walk you through exactly how, exactly how to do it. And I got to say, Jacob, you need to do it. You are spending, and I'm quoting you, vast amounts of leisure time on your phone.

That is a simulacrum of a real life. You, my friend, are in the matrix, but if they were running the matrix off a kind of sucky computer, you're in like an Apple IIe matrix where it's not only like a simulation of life, but a pretty bad simulation, pretty impoverished simulation of life.

You don't even know the feelings of deeper satisfaction you could be experiencing. You don't even know the sense of competency and awe and gratitude that you could be feeling. You don't even know what's possible professionally with building skills and crafts and seeing your intentions in your brain be made manifest concretely in the world, the quiet satisfactions that provide, the non-trivial sacrificing of time and attention on behalf of people that you really care about.

There is a depth and a resilience that is possible in life. It makes life not only worth living, but allows you to go through the ups and the downs with your head held high and still doing good in the world. All of that is possible once you stop spending your vast amount of leisure time just looking at your phone.

You are clocking in right now into a factory, my friend, a factory that is being run by a small number of social media companies. And you're doing long shifts, producing stuff for them that's valuable for them. And you're doing it for free and you're doing it at the sacrifice of the stuff that really matters in your life.

Quit that virtual job in the Instagram factory and let's build a deeper life. And this podcast will help you do it. Look at my episodes about the deep life. Keep listening, but I want you to get better.