□ Placeholder: 04 — Innsbruck and Digital Minimalism

Hallo from Innsbruck, Austria!

(Actually, this is not true. Well, a part of it is since I started this letter while I was there and now I am finishing it up in Amsterdam.)

This is Placeholder — Issue 4, and in theory this is a letter where I write about books I have been reading and places I have been traveling. Speaking of which, I travelled from Amsterdam to Munich and to Innsbruck. I arrived early morning from Munich after a short picturesque train ride, with absolutely no plan in mind. It was a complete impromptu trip. All I knew that it was a city in Alps and that was good enough reason to see it. I will save you the trouble of reading and imagining yourself how beautiful this city and its surroundings were and show you some pictures instead:

Pretty, pretty, pretty good. Isn’t it?

I recently read Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport. Cal is one of my absolute favourites when it comes to writing about attention and deep work. If you haven’t checked out his previous works, “Deep Work” and “So Good They Can’t Ignore You,” I urge you to do so. The premise of his books revolves around simple philosophy — to do great work, we need quality attention and it takes effort to preserve that attention. His latest book is a guide towards being a digital minimalist. But why be a digital minimalist in the first place? Well, because every company in the world is after our attention and it has become harder than ever to preserve our own attention that’s must to create meaningful things.

For the first time in the history, attention economy is more valuable than oil. With Google being worth $800 billion compared to ExxonMobils $370 billion, extracting attention has become significantly more lucrative than extracting oil. The more they get our attention they bigger they become.

Digital minimalism is an antidote. It is based on three principles – clutter is costly, optimisation is important and intentionality is satisfying.

Clutter is costly: When you buy a car to drive instead of walking, the price you pay for the car isn’t its only cost. It’s also the time and stress and effort it takes to earn that money. And then after you have bought it to keep the car secure and in working order. In the end, the cost may far exceed the healthy act of walking into town or opting for public transportation. The same level of scrutiny needs to go when picking up a social media platform. Instagram helps me discover places, but at what cost? Can we perform the same task in a different way?

Optimisation is important: We can’t keep adding stuff mindlessly and expect continued improvements (also known as Law of Diminishing Returns). Following more people on twitter doesn’t mean your feed will be more useful. Using more apps doesn’t make you more efficient/productive. We need to take a step back to optimise.

Intentionality is satisfying: It’s important to question a technology before accepting it (like Amish people do). Amish people don’t accept anything that doesn’t align with their values of family and community. We should apply the same value-based approach to every tool. Does it really benefit and support our values? Or are we better off without it? Accept every tool with the pre-defined intention.

If you care about preserving your attention in any remote way possible, you will find the book helpful.

Maybe I am quite late to the podcast game but recently had a chance to listen a few episodes of the Song Exploder. Man, what crazy good the idea is. And the production quality. Everything is just top notch. My favourite has been “In Cold Blood” with Alt-J. I can no longer listen to the song the same way I used to before. The other podcast that I have on my list is Hardcore History by Dan Carlin. (And why/how are these gems free?!?!) What other stuff I have been missing on? What are you guys listening to these days?

Until next time,