time spent offline

Category: Productivity

The Apple Watch: Underestimated Tech for Digital Minimalists?

This is a guest post by Matt Jennings from matjen.com.

Over the last few months, I have been testing the Apple Watch as a tool for decreasing my reliance on my iPhone, and so far, it’s been a great success.

You see, as someone who tries to be mindful of my technology use, I’m always tinkering with ways to reduce my usage, without forgoing it entirely.

The problem is not the technology itself, but our use of it.

Our phones are designed in a way that is so addictive that we get sucked into the rabbit hole of social media, shiny apps, and endless web surfing.

By replacing my iPhone primarily with an Apple Watch (or, if not in the Apple eco system- one of these equally useful smartwatches.), I get the most essential functionalities of a smartphone, without the distraction.
(more…)

2022-05-02
I deleted my LinkedIn account

~~Note: I wrote this back in 2018 when I deleted my LinkedIn account. I wasn’t on any social media then, but I’ve been back on Instagram since September 2020.~~ Update: I deleted Instagram again in 2021 and I haven’t been on social media since.

What do you do when an online platform intended for professional networking and growing your career turns into a nuisance to your everyday life? You need to cut it.

As my disdain for social media continues to grow more and more each day, I am very, albeit a bit alarmingly, obsessed with the idea of living a social media free life. It is a personal revolution to actively choose to opt-out from the noise of digital platforms and cultivate a living on one’s own terms. After deleting my Facebook account back in 2011, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tumblr in 2013, and my Twitter account in 2017, LinkedIn was my last standing social media account until very recently. LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional networking site with more than 562 million users worldwide (it has grown to 722+ million members in 2021), wasn’t a nuance when I first joined it; mainly because I was too busy curating 140-character tweets to pay much attention to networking and career advancement opportunities. However, towards the end of my graduate studies, I started to get serious about my career path and turned my attention to LinkedIn: It promised to connect me with the world’s professionals for career success.
(more…)

2021-04-06
A digital minimalist’s approach to social media management

This is a guest post by Matt Jennings from matjen.com.

As a digital minimalist, is it possible to ‘do social media’ without the constant connectivity that apps like Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and others enable? In this post, Matt is going to put forward the case that you can.
(more…)

2021-03-15
Radical digital declutter

Taking my own advice, I paid attention to what part of my digital life was causing me the most stress and discovered email to be the number one offender. On a recent vacation, I experimented with a week without email and the experience was simply amazing, glorious, freeing, delightful, exceptional… *Sigh.* Since I can’t completely opt-out of emails, I wanted to figure out a way to make email less stressful. The solution? A radical declutter of my inbox to minimize digital overwhelm.

Without further ado…
(more…)

2020-12-15
Is digital declutter for you?

Digital declutter is a personal journey. For some, it’s their email that is cluttered and stressful. For others, it’s their desktop overflowing with files and documents. Here are three ideas to determine if digital declutter is for you.

1. Pay Attention

Ask: What, if any, area of your digital space is overflowing and stressful? Is it the unread emails? Is it the to-read, to-watch, to-listen bookmarked pages? Is it your social media feed? What about your cluttered desktop?

Make a list.
(more…)

2020-12-08
5 tips for reducing inbox clutter

Raise your hand if you have ever been personally victimized by an overflowing, cluttered, anxiety-inducing inbox! It’s not you. And, it’s not me. It’s the attention economy.

Email, an abbreviation of “electronic mail,” was invented in the early 1970s by Ray Tomlinson as a personal side project. Since the first email sent by Tomlinson in 1971, email has ushered in an incredible new era of communication we now enjoy; with billions of people all over the world sending and receiving emails every day. What Tomlinson surely did not anticipate back then was how ubiquitous, addictive and compulsive email would eventually become for its users. Tomlinson later said he had no notion whatsoever of what the ultimate impact email would have. How did an invention meant to serve as a speedy way for programmers and researchers to keep in touch, particularly for those who can’t be relied on to answer their phones, become a nuance to our daily lives?
(more…)

2020-10-28