It’s interesting how early formative habits become so ingrained. I have a friend who grew up using instant messengers on AOL, Yahoo, etc. and had the habit of just hitting send instead of using punctuation. Which is fine for IM… but on texting it’s drives me bonkers! I’ll be in the middle of trying to respond to her and my iPhone will practically vibrate out of my hands as she sends a deluge of texts that barely add up to one complete sentence.
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Absolutely agree. That said I’m torn. On one hand I like when I get quick responses on things I need answers to. On the other hand personally I would want to carve out periods of deep focus where the expectation is for me to not respond to texts, Slack etc.
That’s really interesting! I learned recently that apparently using punctuation in text messages can convey anger. I’ve had to relearn that when starting a new sentence to start a new text instead of a big long paragraph. I guess the idea is it’s easier to read. I sympathize as I wish there was a feature that would say “I’m still typing don’t respond yet!”
I’m curious how the younger generation or those under 30 will change the communication within companies away from email to messengers or chat platforms.
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Indeed, I’m interested in this too. I also had someone tell me that long paragraphs conveyed temper or anger, so when responding I make sure to break up longer paragraphs into shorter sentences, with a couple returns in between to space them out.
So I’ve been toying with the idea of having a flip phone for emergencies and leaving my shiny new iPhone XR at home for a certain number of days per week, to reduce my dependence on having my XR on my person at all times. Then I remembered… I’ve got an Apple Watch with cellular, lol. So I’ve stripped down the number of apps I keep on the watch to include only the things I need (phone, messages, mail, Due) for work and have been leaving my XR in my bag or on the charger at my desk for the majority of the last couple days.
I’m shocked - and a bit dismayed - to admit how many times I reflexively tap my pocket whenever I get bored, reaching for my iPhone while walking to and from appointments, waiting for the elevator, etc., observing how truly intrusive the “just check things real quick” response has become.
This reminds me of being deeply into meditation years ago: one day I had a sort of overwhelming epiphany that I could observe when I wasn’t truly living in the present moment and when my mind was racing away with thought. While I don’t meditate with as much regularity as I used to, this ability to observe intrusive thoughts somehow stayed with me. I feel like I’m reliving that “epiphany” experience, seeing once again how utterly intrusive my digital habits have become in all the little spaces in my life.
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When I wrote about Cal Newport’s book Deep Work I said, “Sometimes the right book comes along at the right time.” For me, at least, Digital Minimalism is not that book.
For one thing, it’s pretty heavily focused on social media, which is not something that attracts a lot of my attention (I frequent two online forums on a regular basis and that’s about it). Some of it’s advice is more broadly applicable to other digital distractions that I definitely do suffer from. However, in many cases, I found either the advice wasn’t for me, or I was already moving in a similar direction and the book didn’t really advance the process. The one exception is that I do think it has inspired me to explicitly include a goal related to what Newport calls “high quality leisure” at my next quarterly personal retreat.
I don’t mean to run down the book too much. I think the message of being more intentional with how we use this technology is a good one. I just didn’t find it did a good job of addressing my particular issues in a way that worked for me. Someone who uses social media more might get a lot out of it.
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Did you attend his talk? If so how was it?
I’m currently reading the book and I think he goes too far. Technology is a tool, it can help you or it can harm you. If you find it harmful, stop using it or change the way you use it. I’m not convinced that social media is some new kind of thing that sucks in everyone who touches it. When I was a kid, that’s what people said about TV. It’s rotting your brain! Seems like the same recycled argument for Twitter.
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I’d say it can help you and it can harm you, both and at the same time.
I haven’t read Cal’s newest book, but I do study this topic as a PhD student, and the “when I was a kid” logic fails to acknowledge that we haven’t made it through the industrial or information ages unscathed. Advertising/attention-based media are not free from cumulative harms.
Television (and print and radio) were not as manipulative as digital/social media. The “millionaire maker” BJ Fogg’s model of persuasive technology underpins each of these sites and he personally taught many of their founders and designers how to use it at Stanford and in his bootcamps. His model alters our neurochemistry and uses fear, hope, pleasure, pain, social acceptance, and rejection as levers to manipulate our behavior. In Fogg’s own words:
Persuasive technology will touch our lives anywhere we access digital products or services — the car, in our living room, the web, our mobile phones. Persuasive technology will be all around us, and unlike other media types where you have a 30 second commercial or a magazine ad where you have genres you can understand, when it comes to computer-based persuasion, it’s so flexible that it won’t have genre boundaries. It will come to us in the ordinary course of our lives — working on a website, editing a document, as we’re driving a car — and there won’t be clear markers about when you’re being persuaded and when you’re not.
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Wasn’t Marshall McLuhan making similar arguments 50 years ago?
Instead of tending towards a vast [Alexandrian library] (the world has become a [computer], an electronic brain, exactly as an infantile piece of [science fiction]. And as our senses have gone outside us, [Big Brother] goes inside. So, unless aware of this dynamic, we shall at once move into a phase of panic terrors, exactly befitting a small world of tribal drums, total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence. […] Terror is the normal state of any oral society, for in it everything affects everything all the time. […] In our long striving to recover for the [Western world] a unity of sensibility and of thought and feeling we have no more been prepared to accept the tribal consequences of such unity than we were ready for the fragmentation of the human psyche by print culture.
Fogg leaves me conflicted; I’ve read his book Tiny Habits and found it to be insightful and positive. There’s real brilliance in his approach to starting small and building habits over long periods of time. I’m a big fan of this side of his work.
But he’s also demonstrated the same appliance of this principle in the social engineering headspace, with equally effective results there… but with perhaps less positive outcomes. I’m sure that wasn’t the outcome he was hoping his data would effect on this world, but here we are.
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I’m close to being done with the book. I’ve been procrastinating honestly. I’m still going to finish the book. That said I think that Cal comes from a perspective of being so against social media. I think it would be much harder for someone to quit it cold turkey. I do agree though in pairing down and examining one’s social media and it’s usefulness.
I finished the book. It was shorter than expected. Here’s my casual review from GoodReads:
Decent and packed with good ideas… but by now we know most of them. Ironically, I learned most of these strategies from Newport’s blog, which makes me wonder why this wasn’t a long blog post instead of a book. Still, the book is good, the intentions behind it are good, and everything is backed up with science and/or stories. If you’re in the productivity space, this book is redundant, but if you’re struggling to stay focused, give this a read.
Agree with @Jonathan_Davis that Newport’s attitude towards social media/internet is too strong for most, but I chalk that up to him being a tenured professor who makes his own schedule. A lot of his advice isn’t easily replicable to us workers stuck in an open office all day.
I completely agree with this, I think he’s in a fortunate position where he can make his own schedule. For example in contrary I’m in education and often never have dictation of my own schedule (middle school students) except for during my planning periods.
I did however enjoy the last two chapters of the book. I also couldn’t help but laugh that he said something along the lines of how tech writers can’t sound cool when they brag about their 39 day tech sabbatical!
I don’t agree. I think his advice on how to talk with your boss about changing how/when/where you work is very good and I’ve read several success stories. What Cal does enjoy is being his own boss in the academic style, but seriously — have that 30 minute conversation where you explain deep work and then ask your boss how much of it they’d like you to be doing.
Being an academic and researcher myself, I agree on the point that our schedules are our own (which is a blessing AND a curse) but would say that anyone can discuss with a supervisor how specific things can be implemented. It can often be impossible to tell a boss that you’re unavailable at certain times (especially true for those in non-hourly or contracted positions) but certain guidelines can and should be discussed with them in order to foster productivity.
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I think that goes back to his book Deep Work of resetting certain expectations when possibly. Such as not checking your phone regularly and not having an expectation to respond to email immediately.
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I could forsee some bosses being ok with this and others not caring less
I can get “deep work” in the sense that I am uninterrupted, but I’m still in a crowded open office with people talking and running around. I close Slack but I’m definitely “rebelling” by doing that. Anyone in my company will not be OK if I told them I’d be off Slack for a few hours during my work time.
Note that I am still able to get work done, so not complaining too much. I just meant Newport would definitely not like my work environment but there’s not much I can do about it. Most offices seem to prefer seeing butts in seat vs letting people work from home and get more done.
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His advice isn’t to just tell your coworkers you’ll be less available. It’s to ask your manager how much deep/focused work they would like you to be doing. Then they help you develop a set of changes that accomplish what the manager wants you to do. So if your manager thought 40% focused work would be a good target, then maybe they would support you having Slack closed from 8-11am, or whatever.
It’s possible your boss would say your job is 100% being reactive and available but I personally don’t think that would be the most likely response.
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