How Do I Digital Detox when my Leisure Involves My Phone?

00:00:00.000 | I've got a question here from Jacob. Jacob asks, How do I realistically accomplish a

00:00:11.120 | digital detox? When all of my leisure is currently spent on technology, I am currently an online

00:00:17.000 | student and I spend all of my vast amounts of leisure time on my phone. I really want

00:00:21.800 | to do a digital detox, but I believe it might be too drastic and unsustainable. So Jacob

00:00:27.000 | read my book, Digital Minimalism, where I really walk through how to do this. Two points

00:00:33.040 | here. One, I do not use the terminology digital detox. That term has been appropriated by

00:00:41.280 | people in the digital space in what I believe to be an inappropriate way. They took this

00:00:46.800 | term that's most heavily used in substance abuse, and they completely changed it to be

00:00:51.480 | the opposite of its original use, its original intention, so I don't like it. So if you look

00:00:56.600 | in the substance abuse community, what is a detox? Well, you're literally trying to

00:01:04.720 | eliminate the chemical dependence on the substance and doing it under a controlled circumstance.

00:01:09.280 | So you're at a detox center, so there is no alcohol there. And there's people there who

00:01:13.080 | can watch to make sure that from a health perspective that you're okay. So that's part

00:01:19.680 | of it. But the second part of it, and it's the part that makes the whole thing make sense,

00:01:25.560 | is that you also then re-engineer your life during this process so that when you come

00:01:29.880 | out of it, you no longer have that relationship with the substance that caused the problem

00:01:34.880 | in the first place. You would not run a very successful, let's say, alcohol detox center

00:01:41.120 | if you say, "Here's our plan. You come here, you spend the month, it's really hard, you

00:01:45.520 | get the DTs, trying to get off your alcohol dependency, you white knuckle it, we get you

00:01:51.240 | off of it. And then on day 31, we all go to the bar to celebrate you doing it." You don't

00:01:57.080 | know, you build a whole life without alcohol. And yet in the digital community, they have

00:02:00.400 | taken this term, and they apply it to mean exactly that. Like, "Yeah, let's take a break

00:02:07.640 | from these technologies that we feel like are ruining our lives before going back to

00:02:10.680 | using them as before." That is the opposite of the intention of a detox. So I do not like

00:02:15.120 | that term. So I introduced a new term in my book, declutter, digital declutter. And you

00:02:22.600 | spend 30 days away from all these optional technologies with the goal of completely rebuilding

00:02:27.960 | your digital life from scratch when you're done so that it's something that is sustainable

00:02:31.320 | and a source of good, not bad. So no detox, declutter. Read the book and I walk through

00:02:38.000 | how to actually do it. The key thing you're going to see is that if this is going to work,

00:02:43.400 | you have to aggressively fill the newly free time with experimentation and reflection.

00:02:48.780 | You have to actually go do lots of other activities, learn new things, try new things. You have

00:02:53.840 | to join things and go places. You have to spend a lot of time alone with your own thoughts

00:02:57.720 | and reading. Active, active, active. That is the key, Jacob, is you replace what you're

00:03:05.120 | doing before with things that are better. You get much more insight about what matters

00:03:08.560 | to you, what you find important, what real pleasure feels like versus superficial dopamine

00:03:13.560 | hacking that these devices are doing. And then when you're done with those 30 days,

00:03:17.120 | you rebuild your life from scratch. Read Digital Minimalism, chapter three, I believe, will

00:03:23.560 | walk you through exactly how, exactly how to do it. And I got to say, Jacob, you need

00:03:28.520 | to do it. You are spending, and I'm quoting you, vast amounts of leisure time on your

00:03:33.480 | phone. That is a simulacrum of a real life. You, my friend, are in the matrix, but if

00:03:41.600 | they were running the matrix off a kind of sucky computer, you're in like an Apple IIe

00:03:46.080 | matrix where it's not only like a simulation of life, but a pretty bad simulation, pretty

00:03:50.120 | impoverished simulation of life. You don't even know the feelings of deeper satisfaction

00:03:55.520 | you could be experiencing. You don't even know the sense of competency and awe and gratitude

00:04:00.240 | that you could be feeling. You don't even know what's possible professionally with building

00:04:03.560 | skills and crafts and seeing your intentions in your brain be made manifest concretely

00:04:07.960 | in the world, the quiet satisfactions that provide, the non-trivial sacrificing of time

00:04:13.080 | and attention on behalf of people that you really care about. There is a depth and a

00:04:16.240 | resilience that is possible in life. It makes life not only worth living, but allows you

00:04:21.960 | to go through the ups and the downs with your head held high and still doing good in the

00:04:26.800 | world. All of that is possible once you stop spending your vast amount of leisure time

00:04:31.360 | just looking at your phone. You are clocking in right now into a factory, my friend, a

00:04:35.960 | factory that is being run by a small number of social media companies. And you're doing

00:04:39.040 | long shifts, producing stuff for them that's valuable for them. And you're doing it for

00:04:42.160 | free and you're doing it at the sacrifice of the stuff that really matters in your life.

00:04:46.560 | Quit that virtual job in the Instagram factory and let's build a deeper life. And this podcast

00:04:54.560 | will help you do it. Look at my episodes about the deep life. Keep listening, but I want

00:04:59.840 | you to get better.

00:05:01.400 | [Music]

How Do I Digital Detox when my Leisure Involves My Phone?

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