How to achieve Digital Minimalism in 2020
If you’re anything like me, you probably have countless ideas and goals and aspirations that you just can’t ever really find the time for. There are so many different things I want to create, but there’s this massive invisible force that is always trying to squash those aspirations. Without even trying, we have the potential to be endlessly entertained for every second of every day. I don’t know how it could be possible for anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection to ever be bored. If you look at just YouTube specifically, there’s 300 hours worth of videos being uploaded to YouTube every minute. That’s 432,000 hours of videos every day! So you can literally decide, you’re only gonna watch the videos posted today on YouTube, and it would take you the next 49 years to finish them all. Actually, a lot of those probably really suck, I’m guessing not all those are entertaining. Doesn’t matter, you get the point. There’s a lot of stuff to entertain you. So this is where my first mantra for success comes in for digital minimalism.
Consume less. Create more.
So, for me, this absolutely has meaning in reducing my physical consumption. I care a lot about reducing needless physical consumption like plastic bags, to-go cups, and plastic silverware, but for this article, I’m pretty specifically focusing on digital consumption. Since we have this ability for endless entertainment, I’m a believer that you literally have to create sanctuaries to protect yourself from this endless stream of content and achieve digital minimalism. Sometimes you’re not gonna have the mental energy to just resist scrolling Instagram or watching Netflix or YouTube, so you have to create rules for yourself ahead of time so that when you don’t have a lot of mental energy, you’re still able to keep up with your goals. So I’ve got five quick things that I’ve implemented into my life for digital minimalism that I’ve seen massive benefit from already.
1. Disabling autoplay
The first one is disabling autoplay. This is something I’m weirdly passionate about because that feature drives me nuts where you’ll finish an episode on Netflix and of course it’s Netflix so it’s a cliff hanger of an ending and it automatically starts playing the next episode and next thing you know you’ve binge-watched every a single episode of the entire series. Now, if you want to binge-watch every a single episode of Stranger Things in one sitting, go for it! You should do that, but I just think I want to be the one that’s choosing the next episode every time and saying “yes, I want to watch another episode “I don’t want Netflix just showing it to me and sucking me in to watch another one.
2. Downtime Hours
The second tip is “downtime hours.” I don’t really know, I’m sure Android has something equivalent or at least an app or something. I just am only familiar with the iOS feature, but the idea is for me I use “downtime” so that an hour before I go to bed and two hours after I wake up, my phone isn’t able to get any notifications, I’m not able to open any apps nothing. So essentially my phone is useless in those hours. That’s really important to me because I don’t want to be waking up to notifications and having my phone dictate the first thing I think about in the morning. I want my imagination to be able to just go wild in the morning. I want to be able to just think clearly, have creative thoughts, and get the day started without all of the distractions and the noise. And then the same thing for that hour before I go to bed, I usually just kind of write down some thoughts or read a book, I don’t want to be scrolling social media or watching a TV show as I’m falling asleep.
3. Screen Time Feature
The third is the “screen time” feature. Again another iOS feature but I’m sure there are equivalents. This is similar to the last one but you set up time limits for each of your apps so you can decide, I only want to spend a half an hour a day on Instagram, you set that up so that your phone detects. Once you’ve used 30 minutes of Instagram it shuts it down and you’re not allowed to open it anymore. This is a sweet feature because it’s like you realize that you’re literally spending time on these apps. You only have an allocated amount of time, say 30 minutes for Instagram, that you’re able to spend. So when you open Instagram you’re thinking “do I actually want to be spending my 30 minutes on this right now?” So it forces you to just be more intentional about how and when you’re using those apps.
4. Disabling all notification
The next tip you’ve probably heard before, maybe you’ve already done it, but it’s just disabling all notifications. Every time you get a new app, it’s gonna default to giving you all these pointless notifications that you don’t need, and for me personally, I don’t want any notifications on my phone for anything other than people calling me, texting me, and calendar notifications.
So that’s all I have set up on my phone. Other than that I don’t want my phone disturbing me if I have a like or comment on Instagram or a YouTube comment, nothing like that. And so then again, you’re choosing the window that you want to spend time on Instagram instead of your phone notifying you and sucking you into the app.
And then the last one is just choosing one day a week that’s completely free of social media. It’s crazy how much lighter you feel and more creative you feel doing this, and depending on how addicted you are to some of these apps, it feels a little weird at first. But it’s been so good for me to implement that one day a week, and you just kind of feel lighter and freer and you’re not as influenced by all of these things you’re seeing and you kind of just have more natural creative thoughts when you do that.
So I know I’m focusing a lot on the “consume less” part of this mantra, but that’s because that’s the hard part! I think that we’re all naturally creative and we’re driven by wanting to make things and build things and be productive. I think that’s our natural state, but we have to give our brain the space to be creative and to be productive.
For complete article visit Fofae.co