My former business partner used to have a routine where they would wake up and spend the next 30 minutes to an hour going through hundreds of emails, notifications, and messages, most of which were spam. This essentially wasted hours, days, months, and years of their life—time that could have been better invested in our business, other activities, and their personal life. I told them as much, but they insisted on having a “full picture” of everything happening around them. To my dismay, they continue to do this to this day.
As such, for every one interesting email most people receive 99 spam emails, and I personally learned to create sufficient filters that separate the important content from the rest, essentially ensuring that I see only that one important email and nothing else.
And while it is true that occasionally I might miss something important, more often than not, I don’t. Even if I do miss something, I’m sure it will make itself known sooner or later in some other form and the time I save daily more than makes up for any time lost dealing with something I missed.
In this way, this blog post is written for my former business partner and millions of others dealing with the modern problem of digital attention hijacking, where everything and everyone online is fighting for our valuable attention. It is through what has become known as digital minimalism that I propose we regain control of our lives, get the most out of progressively better digital tools, and minimize distractions.
Digital vs. Regular Minimalism
To this day, I practice minimalism, which requires me to be aware of all my possessions and reviewing them on a regular basis. After all, more often than not, people tend to buy things that they ultimately don’t use, storing them in progressively larger houses that resemble storage facilities.
They say they intend to use these products, but as time goes by, this doesn’t happen. They spend their time with other, even better products, so despite their best intentions, some of these products create a mess that takes time, energy, and money to manage.
The solution is, of course, to get rid of the useless stuff by reviewing what we have regularly and asking, “If I didn’t use this today, when will I use it?” And so if we never get around to using these items, we should throw them away (donation is also an option). This is how one practices “regular” minimalism.
Digital minimalism is similar but oriented toward digital tools like social media, emails, notifications, etc., which tend to occupy more and more of our time.
To read more about “regular” minimalism, click here. For digital minimalism, read on!
Hire a VA
Another interesting tool I found for managing time better is hiring a VA, or Virtual Assistant. Today, you can hire one for as little as $5 USD per hour to handle repetitive tasks that don’t require much higher thinking, essentially guaranteeing more time and freedom.
You don’t even need a full-time VA. They can be available on an as-needed basis, such as working one hour per day, which is approximately $200 USD per month—a great deal if you ask me.
I describe the process of hiring a VA in another blog post, which you can find here.
Interestingly, my former business partner did hire a VA to sort through all their spam and tell them what was important from all the rest. However, this VA was also wasting valuable time and money, meaning this alone isn’t a solution for the digital minimalism we are trying to create.
Change Your Phone Number, Email, and Credit Card
The first step I recommend for regaining personal digital freedom is a total digital reset: get a new smartphone, phone number, email, and even credit card. Do this reset regularly (every few years or so), as despite our best efforts and intentions, we progressively accumulate more and more spam. A full digital reset automatically cuts out much unneeded digital clutter, which can be done in the digital space but unfortunately cannot be done in physical life.
This full reset would be called moving houses in “regular” minimalism, as the more you do it, the more you realize how much unused stuff we keep dragging with us. Eventually, you sit down and actually look at what you have, what you are using, and what you aren’t.
Additionally, remember that after several years, our contacts are bound to end up in all sorts of hands, such as companies get hacked, our personal information ends up on the dark web, our contact information gets resold, or companies find increasingly aggressive ways to market to us—all in an effort to fight for and hijack our attention.
Financial Minimalism
I try to keep an eye on my expenses by reviewing my bank accounts every so often to see where money is going. This is important because our progressive desire to live a better life results in spending progressively more money here and there, and often I end up with subscriptions I don’t use and expenses I could have avoided.
I will review this point in more detail in an upcoming blog post.
Manage Notifications + Spam + Unsubscribe
After getting a new email, phone number, credit card, smartphone, etc. (not social media accounts, as in my experience, recreating them can take too much time), it is important to start protecting yourself from the get-go. The best way to do it is with settings built into all different apps, such as simply managing notifications, clicking the “unsubscribe” button inside an email, and marking bad emails as spam.
For example, if I ever see something new in my notification folder, I review it for its value to my life. If it isn’t important, I find the best way to get rid of it to guarantee that I don’t have to look at it again. Unfortunately, this work never ends, as something always finds a way to slip through the cracks, but the more we do it, the easier our lives become.
A pro tip: I go as far as blocking contacts and phone calls that I suspect are spam, so they can never reach me again. So, if someone called you recently and you asked them, “Who are you and why are you calling me?”, this contact could be classified as one that you can block in your contact list.
Silence, but Don’t Unfollow
Social media channels like Instagram offer an interesting option to stop displaying images and stories from certain accounts by navigating inside that account directly and “silencing” it.
This step is great as I often want to stay connected to different people, but I may not be interested in receiving updates from them. For example, they never post anything interesting to me, such as their baby pictures.
So, I stay connected to them and keep using social media channels because I may want to message them in the future. However, I review my feed on a regular basis for uninteresting posts, messages, and stories so that I see only those that I truly find the most important.
I See Messages Only in Certain Hours of the Day
Another life hack that works really well for me is to answer my messages only at certain hours of the day, such as 1-2 hours after waking up, in the afternoon, and 1-2 hours before sleep.
I do this to avoid getting distracted by every notification, as most aren’t important or urgent. By managing my notifications this way, I can start and end my day in a manner that maximizes my daily energy, as many people struggle with this issue, wasting their mornings on social media and finding it difficult to fall asleep due to mental overstimulation.
Turn Off Your TV and Watch/Read No News
Another valuable insight I learned the hard way is that I was getting progressively more depressed by the state of the world, as every new piece of news would hit my emotional well-being in an unexpected way.
Watching the news would make me depressed, as I thought that I had to know what’s happening in the world. But as I found out, I really didn’t need to. So, I turned off the TV and stopped reading the news, and you know what? Nothing bad happened to me from not knowing what’s happening in the world.
And while things like COVID rarely happen, you will hear about them eventually if they are really important. Moreover, some jobs require us to be aware of the news, such as stock exchange investment. Still, for most other people, the news is superficial, and waiting for big news just affects our emotional well-being more negatively than positively. So, it’s best not to do it.
Read more about this point here.
Making a To-Do List
Another tool that has transformed my life in many previously unimaginable ways is maintaining a daily to-do list. This list provides me with a laser focus on what I want or need to accomplish. It stems from a broader written organization of my goals, allowing me to prioritize the most important tasks I aim to achieve.
From that bigger list, I make 5-10 daily to-do points that I want to achieve, and I work on them respectively. This increases my productivity, removes distractions, and as a result, progressively improves my life.
I see it as a form of necessary digital minimalism too, as I organize it digitally, as physically, it can take a lot of time to create, organize, and maintain an extensive to-do list.
Respectively, I find that there are always a ton of things that I want to do, but they don’t really improve my life in any meaningful way. Instead, they take valuable time, energy, and other valuable resources (e.g., money and attention) from things that truly matter. After all, we have a limited time in the world, and so we need to be smart about how we organize ourselves to make the most of this existence, creating the best and happiest life in the process.
Read more about this point here.
Last Words on Digital Minimalism
Certainly, I realize that everything I mentioned above will take you some time to set up if you aren’t doing it already. However, since you are already wasting so much time, money, and energy dealing with spam every day, you might as well invest this time to tactfully organize your life to make the most out of it.
This will require you to review your relationship with different tools like your computer, smartphone, other digital devices, social media, apps, websites, email, phone number, and credit card. But again, this investment will be worth it, as your attention will now only go to the things that matter most in your life.
Here, I don’t call for a complete deletion and total disconnect from our digital lives, as I personally see the value of these tools in my personal and professional life. But I call for a smart use of these tools so we control them, and they don’t control us.
Overall, I write about other ways we can maximize our well-being on this blog dedicated to making our lives the happiest they can be. If you read until here, I invite you to get familiar with my other writing, books, and product offers.
Stay happy!
