all right speaking of digital minimum I think this next question is relevant right what do we got here all right next question is from nandin what are the benefits of shutting down the phone usage before going to bed and after waking up what techniques can I Implement to become more disciplined in doing so well Amanda I mean the benefits are massive because what are we really talking about here if you're using your phone up to the moment you go to bed if you're using your phone the moment that you wake up that means that you
are constantly in this four-dimensional world where you have the real and the digital and it's all sort of mixed together that's not a humane way to live it's an impoverished approach to reality it is an anxiety generation machine it is also a think of it as like a potential magnet just pulling all this potential for you constructing a life well lived and just sucking it away and converting it into Returns on the stock owners of these giant people who own stock in the Australian attention economy platforms it is no way to live that's the benefit
so how do you get away from it well Nandan you have to be way more aggressive than what you're talking about here I what you're talking about here I see all the time you want to nibble at the edges with tips I use my phone too much do you have a good tip like maybe I should stop not bringing the bedroom or I should have a time I start turning on my phone this is not how we solve this problem when your life is entirely enmeshed with the digital we do not solve this problem by
nibbling at the edges with tips we don't we don't solve this problem by writing books where we put in all these caveats about like well I'm not saying that you shouldn't use your phone and please don't yell at me but like you know maybe if you're able you should consider like putting down your phone while you're while you're having dinner or you know but unless like you really need your phone during dinner that's not what's going to solve this problem we need to fundamentally repair our relationship with these tools we need a philosophy well thought
through about how technology is integrated into our lives and the philosophy I preach as digital minimalism from my book eponymously titled digital minimalism and it's a pretty simple approach it says what you need to do is figure out what you care about in your life the positive what you want to spend time doing you then work backwards and say for each of these things I care about what's a really useful way or effective way to use technology to support it your answer to those questions describes the Technologies you use everything else you don't use for
something to lay claim to your time and attention it has to go through the test of I care about this this technology is the best way to support this and here are the specific rules I use for using this technology to support this thing I care about everything else by default you do not use in your life it allows you to Leverage The Power of Technology without being a slave to their worst excesses that's where you need to get ended you need to establish your own philosophy of digital minimalism you don't just need tips to
nibble at the edges of excessive phone use but I know tips help people so let me give you a few warm-up rules that will prepare you for going through a bigger digital minimalism type transition these are rules that real digital digital minimalists have come up with as they have as they've gone through this exercise of reshaping their relationship to technology number one the phone foyer method I see this a lot I see this a lot among minimalists you really think through how do I want to use Tech when you are at home the phone goes
on a shelf in the kitchen or in your foyer it's plugged into charge that's where it is if you're expecting a call put the ringer on if it rings you can go in there and answer the call if there's text messages you might need to check in on you can walk through the foyer of the kitchen that phone stays plugged in and you can answer those text messages right there it is not with you elsewhere in your house so it's not with you when you're watching TV if you want to go see if someone texted
you you got to walk over there and stand there at the full you're typing until you're done with that if you want to look something up you have to walk over the foyer look it up type it in and then go back to what you're doing it's not with you at the dinner table it's for sure not with you in the bedroom so that's an example of a a rule around use that might emerge as you do a digital minimalism uh overhaul to your life another rule that I think is interesting that's emerged often among
digital minimalists is purposefully engineered disconnected time every single day every single day I'm going for a walk or running an errand without a phone and if I'm bored I'm bored and if emergency happens an emergency happens but you know what until like a minute ago we did not have phones with us everywhere we went and the vast majority of us did not die in tragic emergencies because we were unable to quickly text someone so you might want to try those as a warm-up nanded phone foyer method significant ex Expedition or time every day without your
phone just to get used to what it's like not to be with it that's a good warm-up but you need to do the full transformation my book digital minimalism is a good place to start that book is available in lots of different countries I think we've we've sold rights on that to a lot of different places so wherever you're from you can probably find a copy of that book foreign
