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Notes

Part 1 - Foundations

Attention economy - an economy where services/products do no make their money from actual sales of their service or product but rather from advertising. - The services/products are a vehicle for attention that is then sold to advertisers. - The users are the product. - The penny newspaper was the first product to sell attention. It was the first of it's kind to shift away from quality towards "fast food". It was cheap, many people could now afford it, not just the rich. It did not make it's money from sales, but from advertising. - Google, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc. are all 'free' services that make their money on advertising, not on actual sales for their services.

Engineered for addiction - companies spend BILLIONS on optimizing apps so that we interact with them as much as possible. They encourage addictive behaviour. - As an individual, we have no chance to compete with this. - Intermittent positive reinforcement - Rewards delivered unpredictably are far more enticing than those delivered with a known pattern. - Gambling for likes. - Think of some posts "winning" while others get nothing. Or mindlessly scrolling and most posts are duds but you "win" every now and then with a gem post. - Drive for social approval - We’re social being who can’t ever completely ignore what other people think of us. - To not respond immediately in person is rude. To break a "friendship streak" on SnapChat is negative. To not comment on a post of a friend shows disdain. - These are all used to keep us on the app, not actually generate quality interaction.

Digital Minimalism - A philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else. - Technology is a tool. If you have 1000 tools, you will use none of them well and won't know how most of them work. If you have a few tools that you have chosen intentionally, they will be useful for what you find important. - First - spend a lot of energy to determine your values. - Second - if technology can enhance your values, find tools that help rather than hinder your values. - Third - optimize those tools. Create rules/practices that bend the tool into your favour rather than allowing it take over. - Fourth - regularly question/declutter your tooling to come back to your values. - Fifth - ruthlessly and joyfully ignore everything else. Don't accumulate technological baggage.

Part 2 - Practices

1. Solitude

We cannot operate a meaningful life if we do not have equal parts solitude as we do productivity.

Solitude deprivation - the attention economy constantly pulls us away from all small moments of solitude. - The smart phone is the "trojan horse" that brings billboards into our pocket. - We spend little time thinking, reflecting. Even time spend waiting in a queue is filled with consuming others thoughts.

Solitude - it is where all great ideas are born. - It allows us to clarify hard problems, to process difficult events and difficult emotions. - Leave your phone at home - Try to spend some time away from your phone most days. - Take long regular walks without your phone. - Write letters to yourself when faced with demanding circumstances. - Sit and think with a cup of tea in the garden

2. Low-quality communication

Communication is multi-layered. - We are complex social beings with almost magic levels of communication. There is body language, voice intonations, word choice, pauses, posture. Communication is a rich tapestry of multi-modal information - audio, visual, touch and smell. - Social media "likes", comments, status updates - these are all poor one dimensional substitutes. They can NEVER contribute to the cultivation of solid relationships. - ALWAYS favour in person meetings with close friendships. Second to that, video calls, then phone calls. Anything less is a waste of time. - Only use texting/social media to facilitate quality interaction with others. - Be willing to lose fringe friends by not participating in low-quality communication.

3. Reclaim Leisure

  • Bennett Principle = Expending more energy in your leisure can leave you with more energy than before.
    • Prioritize demanding activity over passive consumption.
  • Use skills to produce valuable things in the physical world.
    • Fix or build something every week.
  • Join social groups with other interesting people. Few things can replicate the benefits of connecting with your fellow citizens.

4. Join the attention resistance

  • It’s important to know that the “attention economy” describes the business sector that makes money gathering consumers’ attention and then repackaging and selling it to advertisers.
  • Extracting eye-ball minutes, the key resource for companies like Google and Facebook, has become significantly more lucrative than extracting oil.

  • The smartphone helped companies like Google and Facebook storm these remaining redoubts of unmolested focus and start ransacking—generating massive new fortunes in the process.

  • Delete social media from your phone - use the web version on a desktop and don't "stay signed in".

  • Embrace slow media - choose high quality authors and sources. Think about how/when you want to consume media. Don't just consume because you are bored.