Yep, it's that time of the year again. Ash Wednesday is tomorrow, which signifies the start of Lent. And that means it's time for me to go through another Digital Declutter exercise.
And honestly, I really need one. I've recently fallen into the trap of reading comments on social media and it has not been good for my mental health. Yes, I know I should be using social media as a tool. But sometimes I cannot resist viewing a specific post and it goes downhill from there. So, yes I need a reset.
The main reason for this post though, apart from telling you that I'll be offline for a bit and not writing blog posts, is to invite anyone who reads this to give the Digital Declutter exercise a try. Take a break from living life online and start your own Digital Declutter.
You can follow this link for an explanation of what a Digital Declutter is, as well as what rules I'll be following for my own Digital Declutter.
Last year, I kinda went through a Digital Declutter without a specific focus in mind. For this year, I'm going to focus on reading more books.
Anyway, I hope you guys decide to give it a try. If you have any questions regarding this, you can find ways to contact me on this page, but sending an email is the best option.
Peace be with you and see y'all online on Easter Sunday.
An idea: instead of just keeping old blog posts lying around, why not print them and turn them into a self published book? Then you can store them in a bookshelf at home.
This idea was somewhat inspired by this post by Kin Lane.
I read a post from Cal Newport titled “Pliny the Younger on Happy and Honorable Seclusion”. After reading this, I thought to myself, here is another example of people battling with distractions. This one was from 2,000 years ago.
So, I'm starting to realize that the smartphone in and of itself is not the cause of distraction. Rather, it is just another form of distraction. Distraction has always been with us. It just takes on different forms as human civilization advances.
The problem was/is distraction itself. The solution was/still seems to be the same — to set up an environment that is, as much as possible, devoid of distractions, so that you can do your best work.
It's that time of the year again. Ash Wednesday is tomorrow, which signifies the start of Lent. And that means it's time for me to go through another Digital Declutter exercise. I would like to invite anyone who reads this to take a break from living life online and start their own Digital Declutter.
Follow this link for an explanation of what a Digital Declutter is, as well as what rules I'll be following for my own Digital Declutter.
I hope you guys decide to give it a try. If you have any questions regarding this, you can find ways to contact me on this page, but sending an email is the best option.
Peace be with you and see y'all online on Easter Sunday.
This is a list of rules that will guide me during my Digital Declutter phase.
Changelog:
The only change I've made for Version 3.01, is removing restrictions for Crunchy Roll when viewing something with my family, especially my kids who've shown an interest in anime.
The notable rule additions/changes I've made for Version 3.0 are removing restrictions when doing an activity with other people. For instance, playing video games and streaming videos are no longer restricted if I'm doing the activity with my family.
What is a Digital Declutter?
A Digital Declutter is an exercise I read about in Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism book. It's almost like a Digital Detox or a Digital Sabbath. The main differences are that you do it for at least 30 days, and that you are replacing addictive digital activities with analog activities. For instance, instead of browsing social media at night, you read books, or learn a new craft like cooking, or you learn how to play a musical instrument like the guitar, etc...
The easiest way to understand it is to look at the rules listed below. But of course you don't have to follow the same rules I made for myself. You can create your own set of rules and do it at your own time. My main motivation for sharing these rules online, was to invite people to give the Digital Declutter exercise a try. If you have any questions regarding this, you can find ways to contact me on this page, but sending an email is the best option.
Tuned in to learn more about the Wisephone, but stayed for the parenting advice and philosophical/theological discussions. Excellent podcast. Well worth the 2 hours run time.
If you are a parent of young kids and you are concerned about how distracted you are around them, then you will find a lot to relate to in this podcast.
Today I decided to prune the items on my to-read list. It was getting unwieldy. I hoped to reduce the number of items in there every week. Instead, it kept on growing and growing and growing.
Prior to the purge that happened today, I had over 140 items in that list. I was like, “Enough is enough.” There's no way I could have read through all those links, plus read my books, while I kept adding more items every week or so. I needed a better way to manage the items going into my to-read list. I also needed a better way to determine if an item deserved to stay in my to-read list.
So today, I decided to come up with some criteria to determine when to add items to my to-read list, as well as when to remove items off my to-read list. The criteria are based off this excellent read from Nat Eliason — most of which I've already extracted and listed in here. These then are the questions I came up with, that would serve as filters for my to-read list going forward:
Does this fall into a category I'm interested in?
Does this answer a question that's already been answered?
Does this answer a question I have right now?
Is this going to help with something I'm working on now or in the near future?
Does this help grow my philosophical knowledge or does it entertain me?
It's that time of the year again. Ash Wednesday is tomorrow, which signifies the start of Lent. And that means it's time to go through another Digital Declutter phase. I would like to invite anyone who reads this to start their own Digital Declutter.
If you don't know what a Digital Declutter is, it is an exercise I read about in Cal Newport's Digital Minimalism book. It's almost like a Digital Detox or a Digital Sabbath. The main differences are that you do it for at least 30 days, and that you are replacing addictive digital activities with analog activities. For instance, instead of browsing social media at night, you read books, or learn a new craft like cooking, or learning to play a musical instrument like the guitar, etc...
I suppose the easiest way to understand it is to look at the Digital Declutter rules I'll be using to guide me this year. I'm using the same rules from last year. The main highlights are that in addition to not using social media at all, there will be no blogging done as well.
Of course you don't have to follow the same rules I made for myself. You can create your own set of rules and do it at your own time. My main motivation for this post was to invite people to give Digital Declutter a try. If you have any questions regarding this, you can find ways to contact me on this page, but sending an email is the best option.
Have fun going offline, I know I will. Peace be with you and see y'all online on Easter Sunday.
Focus on consuming information that you know you need right now
Trying to consume everything to learn something, is not the best use of time. It is better to consume information that you know you need right now. Consuming information that you might need in the future, in other words reading just in case you will need it, is a waste of time.
We can't go on a walk, or a run, or a bike ride without sharing photos that we did so. We can't read a book without sharing a photo of the book we are reading. We can't drink a latte without first sharing a photo of it. We can't eat without sharing a photo of the food we are eating. We I can't listen to music without sharing what song we're I'm listening to. We can't live our lives without documenting a part of it — if not all of it — online.
Why? Why are we doing all this? Why do we feel the need to do all this? Does anybody else think that's not normal? I've been asking myself those questions for months now.
There's lots of advice on what to do to take control of your data online. For instance, you should have all your blog posts and photos under your domain name, so you keep control of them. And if you're not concerned about that, there's lots of advice on what platform is the best for photo-blogging, long-form blogging, micro-blogging, etc... There's all sorts of advice regarding the best ways to manage your data online. But no one seems to be asking the question, why?