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June 2020: digital minimalism

Hey there, how are you? Before we begin this newsletter, I have to warn you: this is gonna be long, but it's also gonna be worth reading (or so I think). This month's topic is one I've been exploring alone for a while now: our relationship with our mobile phones. At first this may seem like it has little to do with inspiration and creativity, which are this newsletter's pillars, but if we look closely we'll realise it's veeeeeery related to this topics: being addicted to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, WhatsApp, constantly looking for new, exciting stimulus that release instant dopamine, the search for external approval in the form of likes and comments... All of those things diminish our creativity, they make us less original, they take away from us the wonderful pleasure of creating just for the thrill of it and they turn us into people with no self control that resign their own well being while they fill up the pockets of two or three Silicon Valley CEOs. And I'm sick of it.
At first I believed my phone addiction was a lack of character, until one day I started sharing my experience with others and realised how mistaken I was. If you look around at any street, bus or coffee shop you'll see hundreds of people with their faces buried in their phones while mindlessly scrolling, avoiding the silence and boredom which in the last years seems to have become something unbearable that one must avoid at all costs. 
Not so long ago I also justified my heavy social media usage with the fact that my work happens there (this newsletter's subscribers, my workshop students and my clients come mainly from Instagram) but now I can see I was fooling myself just to stay the way I was and not do anything about it. I'm currently trying to change that, and I'd like to invite anyone who may resonate with this paragraphs to read this newsletter, choose the tools that they think will help them the most and to join me in trying to stop this madness. I will share with you three things that inspired me in this sense and three tools that are helping me change this situation, so we can first understand the mechanism behind this addictions and then finally do something about them. Shall we begin?

Three pieces of content I found very interesting to start understanding the mechanism behind smartphone addiction:

Nothing: an app that does nothing
Joshua Fields Millburn and Ryan Nicodemus (a.k.a. The Minimalists) "launched" an app called Nothing that does literally nothing. The goal behind this is just to make us realise we don't need so many apps to enjoy real life. You can watch the trailer at Getnothing.co

A monolog from Real Time with Bill Maher
"Social media tycoons need to stop pretending they are friendly nerd gods building a better world and admit they are just tobacco farmers in T-shirts selling an addictive product to children. Let's face it: checking your likes is the new smoking" says Bill Mayer in this powerful monologue on his HBO show. The first step to recover from this collective addiction is to acknowledge it, and then to understand there is an intentional mechanism behind it. "Philip Morris just wanted your lungs, the App Store wants your soul".  Watch the video.
 
A director that left social media for 30 days

Matt D'avella is a documentary director and a well known minimalist. He stopped using social media platforms for a month and compiled his experience in this video. I really liked what he got out of this experiment, mostly because he lives from his online content: it's not about stopping using social media, it's just about using the parts that bring value to our lives and cutting out the harmful excess and noise.



Three tools I'm finding very useful in my pursue of a more phone-free life and that I'd love to share with you in case you're walking that same path:

A book: Digital Minimalism, by Cal Newport
I'm in love with this book. In it, Cal Newport unmasks the previously mentioned "tobacco farmers in T-shirts" in such a lucid, sensible way that's astonishing.  He also proposes a 30 day detox, in which you're supposed to uninstall all apps and social media platforms from your phone except those whose lack would really be an inconvenient for you or your work (for example, I need Instagram to promote my workshops and work, but not to indefinitely scroll through everyone else's stories, so for 30 days I have to stop doing that). The proposal is: spend 30 days without this apps and when the period ends start incorporating one by one just those that really add value to your life. So I realised, for example, that my "I use Instagram for work" excuse did not at all justify the FOUR DAILY HOURS I spent on my phone: publishing my work, answering some DMs and checking out my loved one's posts shouldn't take me more than half an hour a day. 

A documentary: Minimalism
This documentary isn't specifically about digital minimalism, it embraces the broader sense of the concept: less is better. I think it's a good perspective if you're trying to stop the excesses in your life to lead a simpler, more focused and connected existence. You can find this documentary on Netflix and the full name is "Minimalism: A documentary about the important things".

A daily practice: Bullet journal
In my attempt of using my phone less every day I realised I have a lot of apps to track things: one to measure my intermittent fasting periods, a second one to know how much and how good or bad I slept and another one for my menstrual period, just to name three examples. Although updating each one doesn't take me more than a few minutes, if I sum them up the time they take from me is considerable. I started looking for ways to keep tracking my processes and personal progresses  but without using my phone to do it, and I stumbled upon a technique that's called Bullet Journal which consists in a journal that you create for yourself, 100% tailor made. You can write down tasks and events, but also keep track of your nutrition habits, the amount of exercise you do, how you sleep and basically whatever you need to know about yourself. All you need is a notebook, a pen and a few minutes to sit down and design your journal in a way that's useful for you. For my bullet journal I'm using this video as guidance, which I loved because it really helped me understand the technique. And I also deleted a looot of apps from my phone! You can just google 'bullet journal' and find examples that suit you if this particular one doesn't seem to do the trick for you: the possibilities are endless. 
I did a poll via Instagram last week, in which several thousands of people took part, and some results really got my attention. I asked them if they feel powerless over their own phone usage, and 95% answered that yes, indeed they felt they couldn't control how much time they spent there.  Then I asked those who said yes if they felt bad about that fact, and only 75% answered they did. This means 25% of this people not only couldn't control how much they used they phones, they also didn't see a problem in that. It seems as if we're not the ones using our tools, it's the tools that use us, and we're so deep into this toxic dynamic that sometimes it doesn't even seem to bother us. I think I'm not exaggerating when I say that this is terrible and also a giant call of attention: we need a change and we need it now. We need to understand that losing control with this technologies is not a lack of character: they are designed exactly to be addictive and all their profit systems rely on us using them compulsively. They arrived suddenly to our lives promising to be one more distraction among many, and suddenly ended invading every event, class, lunch, and silent moment at home. The question is: do you think this is ok? If your answer is no... Shall we begin to heal it together? I'm not trying to eliminate phones or social media from our lives, I just want them to be what they are: tools. Nothing more and nothing less.
I hope you enjoyed this issue and you find the proposed tools useful. I believe it's in our hands to lead a happier life, one that's more in touch with our core values.

This month we hit 3.000 subscribers and my heart is filled with joy by knowing that I can share this path with so many people that are also looking to live a more creative, happy and connected life. If you enjoy this newsletter, feel free to share it with whoever you think will find it useful as well. 

Sending you lots of socially distant hugs and kisses from Berlin, and read you next month.
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