Digital Minimalism

participants in the mass declutter experiment claimed
they needed to keep using instant message tools like
WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger because it was the
easiest way to keep up with friends overseas. This might
be true, but in many cases, these relationships can
withstand one month of less frequent contact.
More importantly, the inconvenience might prove
useful. Losing lightweight contact with your
international friends might help clarify which of these
friendships were real in the first place, and strengthen
your relationships with those who remain. This is exactly
what happened with Anya, a participant in my
experiment who is from Belarus but is currently studying
at an American university. As she told the New York
Times in an article about my experiment, taking a break
from online socializing with her international friends
helped her “feel more invested in the time I spend with
people. . . . Because we [interacted] less frequently, we
[had] this idea that we want to make the most of the
experience.” A college sophomore named Kushboo put it
even simpler when he told me: “In a nutshell, I only lost
touch with people I didn’t need (or, in some cases, didn’t
even want) to be constantly in touch with.”
My final suggestion is to use operating procedures
when confronting a technology that’s largely optional,
with the exception of a few critical use cases. These

---

procedures specify exactly how and when you use a
particular technology, allowing you to maintain some
critical uses without having to default to unrestricted
access. I saw many examples of these operating
procedures deployed by the participants in my mass
declutter experiment.
A freelance writer named Mary, for example, wanted
to take a break from constantly tending to text messages
on her phone. (“I’m from a very large and very ‘text-y’
family,” she told me.) The problem was that when her
husband traveled, which he did frequently, he sometimes
sent Mary messages that needed fast responses. Her
solution was to reconfigure her phone to send a special
alert for texts from her husband, but suppress
notifications for all other messages. Similarly, an
environmental consultant named Mike needed to keep
up with personal emails but wanted to avoid compulsive
checking, so he made the rule that he could only sign into
his account from his desktop PC and not his phone.
A computer scientist named Caleb decided he could
still listen to podcasts, but only on his two-hour-long
daily commute. (“The thought of only listening to
whatever the radio sent my way was too daunting for
me,” he explained.) Brooke, a self-described writer,
educator, and full-time mother, decided she wanted to
swear off access to the internet altogether but, to make
this sustainable, added two exceptions for when she
could still launch a web browser: email and buying
household items on Amazon.
I also noticed a lot of creativity surrounding how
people throttled back streaming media in contexts where
they didn’t want to eliminate it altogether. A college
freshman named Ramel abstained from streaming media
except when doing so with other people, explaining: “I
did not want to isolate myself in social situations where
entertainment was playing.” A professor named
Nathaniel, on the other hand, didn’t mind high-quality

---

entertainment in his life but worried about binge-
watching, so he adopted a clever restriction: “no more
than two episodes of any series per week.”
I would estimate around 30 percent of the rules
described by participants were caveated with operating
procedures, while the remaining 70 percent were blanket
bans on using a particular technology. Generally, too
many operating procedures might make the declutter
experiment unwieldy, but most people required at least a
few of these more nuanced constraints.
■
■
■
To summarize the main points about this step:
The digital declutter focuses primarily on new
technologies, which describes apps, sites, and tools
delivered through a computer or mobile phone
screen. You should probably also include video
games and streaming video in this category.
Take a thirty-day break from any of these
technologies that you deem “optional”—meaning
that you can step away from them without creating
harm or major problems in either your professional
or personal life. In some cases, you’ll abstain from
using the optional technology altogether, while in
other cases you might specify a set of operating
procedures that dictate exactly when and how you
use the technology during the process.
In the end, you’re left with a list of banned
technologies along with relevant operating
procedures. Write this down and put it somewhere
where you’ll see it every day. Clarity in what you’re
allowed and not allowed to do during the declutter
will prove key to its success.

---

STEP #2: TAKE A THIRTY-DAY BREAK
Now that you have defined your technology rules, the
next step of the digital declutter is to follow these rules
for thirty days.
*
You’ll likely find life without optional
technologies challenging at first. Your mind has
developed certain expectations about distractions and
entertainment, and these expectations will be disrupted
when you remove optional technologies from your daily
experience. This disruption can feel unpleasant.
Many of the participants in my mass declutter
experiment, however, reported that these feelings of
discomfort faded after a week or two. Brooke described
this experience as follows:
The first few days were surprisingly hard. My
addictive habits were revealed in striking
clarity. Moments of waiting in line, moments
between activities, moments of boredom,
moments I ached to check in on my favorite
people, moments I wanted an escape, moments
I just wanted to “look something up,” moments
I just needed some diversion: I’d reach for my
phone and then remember that everything was
gone.
But then things got better. “As time wore on, the detox
symptoms wore off and I began to forget about my
phone,” she explained.
A young management consultant named Daria
admitted that during the first days of the experiment she
would compulsively pull out her phone before realizing
she had removed all of the social media and news apps.
The only thing left on her phone that she could check for
new information was the weather. “In that first week,”
she told me, “I knew the hourly weather conditions in
three to four different cities”—the compulsion to browse