Note: This article is the second in a multiple part series that covers Cal Newport’s new book Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. The first article can be found here and covers in greater detail the four key areas of focus to achieve Digital Minimalism, as outlined by Newport. The four key areas are: 1) Spend Time Alone, 2) Don’t Click Like, 3) Reclaim Leisure and 4) Join the Attention Resistance. Today I’ll be focusing on the concept of reclaiming leisure.

Newport’s thesis on digital minimalism:

Our current relationship with the technologies of our hyper-connected world is unsustainable and is leading us closer to the quiet desperation that Thoreau observed so many years ago. But as Thoreau reminds us, ‘the sun rose clear’ and we still have the ability to change this state of affairs. To do so, however, we cannot passively allow the wild tangle of tools, entertainments, and distractions provided by the internet age to dictate how we spend our time or how we feel. We must indeed take steps to extract the good from these technologies while sidestepping what’s bad. We require a philosophy that puts our aspirations and values once again in charge of our daily experience, all the while dethroning primal whims and the business models of Silicon Valley from their current dominance of this role; a philosophy that accepts new technologies, but not if the price is the dehumanization Andrew Sullivan warned us about; a philosophy that prioritizes long-term meaning over short-term satisfaction. A philosophy, in other words, like digital minimalism.

A critical component of achieving digital minimalism, according to Newport, is the concept of “reclaiming leisure”. Newport feels that we’ve become so connected to our devices that our leisure time is now spent in the same way our professional lives are often spent— constantly checking our apps while tethered to our phones. Rather than disconnecting and rebooting and connecting to the physical world, our leisure time is increasingly spent in the digital world.

According to Newport:

“The state I’m helping you escape is one in which passive interaction with your screens is your primary leisure. I want you to replace this with a state where your leisure time is now filled with better pursuits, many of which will exist primarily in the physical world. In this new state, digital technology is still present, but now subordinated to a support role: helping you to set up or maintain your leisure activities, but not acting as the primary source of leisure themselves. Spending an hour browsing funny YouTube clips might sap your vitality, while—and I’m speaking from recent experience here—using YouTube to teach yourself how to replace a motor in a bathroom ventilation fan can provide the foundation for a satisfying afternoon of tinkering. A foundational theme in digital minimalism is that new technology, when used with care and intention, creates a better life than either Luddism or mindless adoption.”

The bigger point is to focus on eliminating the passive times we spend on our devices, aimlessly scrolling through social media and instead interacting with people in the digital world. An example would be to use your smartphone to coordinate an evening out with friends. Use your device to organize the evening, both through communication via text/phone, but also through applications like Yelp or OpenTable to make a dinner reservation, or StubHub to buy concert tickets. If it’s a venue you’ve never been to, use your device to navigate you to the venue or restaurant. They key though, when you arrive, is to disconnect from your device and fully interact with your good friends and the real world around you. Take some pictures, but post them later on. It’s the passive and mindless interaction that Newport feels we need to reclaim. When I’m out for dinner with my wife I cringe when I look over to a nearby table and see multiple people, at dinner together, staring at their smartphones when they could be actively interacting with each other.

Unless you’re actively using your smartphone to facilitate the leisure activity, as in Newport’s example of using YouTube to learn how to fix something, it’s critical to not just put the phone away, but to actually put it out of your sight. According to Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness in Peak Performance: Elevate Your Game, Avoid Burnout, and Thrive with the New Science of Success, having the phone in sight has an impact on concentration and focus:

“Let’s say that you could somehow resist the temptation to check your phone when it is near you. This in and of itself would take a lot of effort. Rather than devoting all your cognitive energy to what you are truly trying to accomplish, a good portion of it instead goes toward thinking about checking your phone, imagining what might be awaiting you on it, and restraining yourself from actually checking. For a study published in The Journal of Social Psychology, researchers asked a group of college students to complete a series of difficult motor tasks when their cell phones were visible. Sure enough, their performance was significantly worse than a control group where participants’ cell phones were not visible. Things got even more interesting when all the participants’ cell phones were removed but the study leader’s cell phone remained present. Incredibly, even when the phone visible wasn’t their own, study participants’ performance suffered. Smartphones distract us where they are on, off, in our pockets, or on a table, and they command our attention even when they are not our own.”

It’s not just the distraction of the phone, it’s the temptation to check your phone as well. If you’re with your spouse or out with friends, having phones on the table and visible impacts concentration and makes everyone less engaged in the conversation.

It’s important to remember that smartphones are engineered to be addictive. We are battling teams of engineers designing applications made to continually gain and keep our attention. If you struggle with the urge to continually check your phone, you’re not alone. It’s a constant struggle for me as well. Now that I understand the data better I’m making a concerted effort to change my relationship with my phone. This starts with putting it on the counter when I get home and resisting the urge to check it unless absolutely required (text alert, etc). As a family we are making efforts to reclaim leisure. One example is positive family leisure activities like card games, with the family sitting around the table interacting and having fun without our phones present. These are the kind of traditional leisure activities that were a regular occurrence in homes prior to the smartphones invading our leisure time.

Digital Minimalism isn’t about getting rid of your devices entirely, it’s about changing the relationship with them. Use your magical smartphone for the benefits it provides in the areas of optimization and communication. When your activity starts to stray into the mindless and non-productive, focus on building habits that give you the willpower to put them away.

Reclaim your leisure. Reclaim your independence from your devices. Most importantly, if you have teenage kids, reclaim family time.

Find Me on Twitter