Ep. 173 | Digital Clutter (with Cal Newport)

and minimalists hello everybody welcome to the minimalist podcast where we discuss what it means to live a meaningful life with less my name is Joshua Fields Milburn and my name is Ryan Nicodemus and together we are the minimalists welcome to episode 173 today we're going to talk about digital clutter we're gonna talk about technological exhaustion we're gonna talk about quitting social media we're gonna talk about overall online health and we're also gonna answer your questions about digital minimalism with today's guest our friend Cal Newport is here he's the author of the new book digital minimalism thanks for joining us Kathy thanks so much man of course of course happy to be here may you wrote I mean we're gonna get into the book when we answer these questions let me just say you wrote an amazing book and I'm really grateful for that because now I we get all these questions of where people ask us about technology and now I can just pawn them all you have a question about digital clutter here read this book right yeah I totally agree so the last time Cal was with us mm-hmm we were in Washington DC well you were well I was in Washington DC and no I was there too but I was in a hotel room I think a with a needle in my arm yeah yeah so Cal was there to fill in your spot during our show yeah and I got to tell you man he he makes a pretty good judgment over his hair off a little bit he stammered a lot just like me and it's it's perfect well let's go ahead dive into our first question here is from Justin from patreon shout out to all our patrons over on patreon I have recently gone through Facebook and Instagram and I'm followed people that don't bring any benefit to me it was mainly old school friends I haven't spoken to in years and that I never see and I felt quite guilty about it did you ever feel guilty about going through your own social media and removing people well I can tell you right now Cal hasn't felt ever felt guilty for unfollowing I was always thinking cows advice would be just delete your social media advice if you don't sign up for it in the first place so Cal you you were in this this interesting space where you are you're a young professor you're of the generation where everyone around you has at least dabbled in social media but I think you you you never signed up at all never signed up yeah it's weird because I just wrote this essay recently called techno tech coach amber which is like the the sort of technological echo chambers that we we get stuck in and I I actually signed up for social media 2010 my after my marriage ended my my mom died I was just sort of looking to connect with some new people that weren't co-workers and like former high school mates or something and so I I signed up for Twitter Facebook and MySpace all on the same day what a hipster I'm still not in his top eight you try and Ryan but anyway I signed up in and I actually found a Minzy use especially from Twitter yeah I don't know if it has to do with my love of the written word but in 2010-2011 I connected with a bunch of people that probably ultimately led me to your work and then us connecting and becoming friends and and I realized that in connecting with people on social media it was a really useful tool but it was useful because I was using it in a useful way so when I unfollow someone or unsubscribe to answer Justin's question here it's because I'm no longer getting value from that thing but in a way we feel obligated and used a lot of research on this with different case studies so what have you found when you talk to people who were had this this sort of social anxiety around social media well I think there's two things happening here so one there's this idea that we need to have this constant lightweight contact with weak ties in our social network right so that's probably the main thing you're losing when you start unfollowing people or unfriending people they're probably weak ties in your social network the idea that it's important to keep contact with these sort of weak ties social connections is something that was mainly invented by the arrival of social media it's something that has never really played a large role in human sociality and what about what about text messaging though because that came along it became popularized around the time of social media yeah but but I find that I do the same thing the weak ties with text messages in a way now it is more intimate because you have to share phone numbers or write it's probably stronger with text messaging you know the main thing I hear on the road especially from guys is that it's their high school friends everyone has the the group text message that they use when they're watching like the sports game or something like that it's kind of like an email chain or something kind of like an email chain yeah but that's often a stronger connection I mean what was social media really brought in was like the old friend its roommate or the person you knew you knew in high school and in that instance there's really no good evidence that having those type of weak Chi connections is really important the feeling is socially engaged but the research and the research has been evolving on this I mean I spent the flight over here reading a collection of new papers that all came out in the last year where it's sort of a consensus forming in the psychology literature on social media and well-being and they're really now trying to figure out the nuanced models of when social media makes you feel better and when it doesn't and one of the few places where it does make you feel better is when it allows for you to develop intimacy with a group that is not physically co-located so like what you were doing in 2010 is essentially the use case for where social media makes you feel better that you feel like I don't whatever I don't fit in here there's a particular you know whatever I'm looking for people that I can't find locally but I can find them on social media and through self disclosure let's say form some type of intimacy where you wouldn't otherwise be able to talk to these people right I think that that's the the most useful case for social media for me well there's two one is the connection side the other is the broadcasting side sure it and I think we've got some bleed we haven't have some business questions here but broadcasting also in a way and see people use face the people who use Facebook effectively whatever that means they do use it as sort of a broadcast method look at yeah instead of me having to go around show everyone the picture of my kid here now it's on on Facebook now we can question what kind of value you actually get from that that's why fun really interesting that you talked about in your book is how these social interactions the more we have there's actually studies that show the the our mental health is the the lonelier we are yeah well so this is what's going on so if you look at these these more recent papers which actually came out after the book went the press so this is really sort of cutting edge is the to social media behaviors that seem to clearly make people less happy is a when you do what they call social snacking which is using the easier lower friction communication interaction online to replace sort of in person or deeper interaction it's just not a good replacement so if you're broadcasting the baby pictures instead of actually having a phone call with your cousin yeah and like hey here's what it's like with the new kid you end up worse off and then social comparison this is the other thing we know is a major driver of negative well-being and if you are doing a lot of looking at people sort of carefully curated photos I mean if you're a parent you see everyone has these photos of everyone's dressed in white and it's their kids on the beach and then the sun is shining or whatever this makes people unhappy as well but this is what most people are doing yeah it makes people unhappy when they see that you're saying because they're Harrison makes makes negative well-being because it looks a lot better what you see what you see online people's portrayals are called wait a second we don't all wear white we're never taking that picture you've never been to the beach why are they on the bar they look entirely on the beach so much right I mean yes I think in a way what maybe what we're doing there and I'm certainly guilty of this in the past and I've been a lot more cognizant of it recently especially after reading your book but but over the last several years doing different experiments for me I think I use social media at a point when it when it sort of got out of control and it it's you're rapaciousness sort of took over my life I was be jealous of me right now look how happy I am that was the implicit message and I didn't even know that I didn't know that on the surface I it was like maybe this deep down thing where all of a sudden it was like hey look at how amazing my life is look how you can even be a picture of a you know toast piece of toast look at this avocado toast you see look how amazing my breakfast is or whatever and and what does that make other people want to do get that and then it breeds that comparison thing yeah we had we had Rachael Cruz on and her book is is love your life not theirs it's a whole book about the the problem with with comparison we've been we've been given this template and now we feel like we're compelled to fulfill it and I think that's where Justin is right now and his question he says hey I've set myself up I have all of these relationships but ever weak ties most of them are we talk but I would feel guilty to just unfollow them is there practical advice to do that well okay so a couple things one what we know is the foundation for a very happy social life is actually making sacrifices and time and effort for family close friends and community right so you want to be doing that if you're doing that you are going to feel a sense of social connection fulfillment which is going to take away a lot of the stakes of now I'm unfollowing you know so and so that I've known from a long time ago that kind of ties in with like in your book you talk about leisure and like how leisure is important yeah and so doing these things on a leisurely level are gonna be way more meaningful than yes all these relationships on social media fill in the void that the tools are feeling for you right now right so if you build a a meaningful social life that's built off a commitment and sacrifice to other people I'm gonna come over to your house it's a pain I'm giving up a couple hours of my afternoon or what have to spend time with you or help you clean out your garage or something I am sacrificing for you that is the the foundation of strong social connections it doesn't take much sacrifice to say hey Facebook told me it's your birthday right and I clicked happy birthday right that doesn't actually build what we crave and so yeah a lot of in the book with a lot of these different tools that people are worried about you right the first thing you're doing is filling in the void that the tools are doing in a lightweight way then it's much easier yeah it's it's interesting man after reading your book I no longer I won't even tap back haha or like oh you don't have an iPhone the iPhone has his feature we're like you do have one now so you can you hold down and then like you can tap back haha or a thumbs up or whatever yes when it shows up as like a thought bubble yeah exactly exactly so like I don't even do that I don't like stuff on Twitter anymore I don't like stuff on Instagram and it's not because it's not because uh I'm trying to like prove anything or show anything but after looking at why I actually do that it is it's kind of a thoughtless interaction it's it's you you give I'm gonna do a bad job of paraphrasing this we give the example of how you know we we have to have these certain interactions with people but to think that we can supplement these meaningful interactions going to a friend's house helping them clean out the garage supplementing that with a tap or with a like or with a thumbs up I mean that is it's kind of an insult almost in a way well my wife is great about this right so the baby picture example is a common one right I can broadcast my baby pictures then everyone can say you know Congrats three exclamation points in the Instagram comments but my wife's instinct is always okay someone had a baby I'm going over there and bringing them a box that has XY and Z that I know that they need right and that's worth 100x more yes like what yeah the congrats three I mean I think it's kind of implied right that people are excited that and so that that type of thing goes a lot farther right so you take away the friction and this is why people end up lonelier when they use social media more in a lot of instances is because you take away the friction you're convincing yourself you're being very social she's like I've been talking to people all day long right I've been tapping the haha' and the likes or whatever it is all day long but for most of your brain which evolved in a context where these glowing screens and it exists it just thinks you're lonely the even bigger problem there is the Apes the form of communication and connectivity when it doesn't provide that the fundamental connection that we need if it's however if it's the first step toward that fundamental connection then great but if we just pretend that well I can just outsource all of my connection to social media I think that's when we get into a problem do you know you hit the nail on the head when you talked about how we fear boredom like we are so scared to be bored and it's so easy to get on social media and to fill that void just a little bit yeah but what we're doing when we do that is we are programming ourselves to fill the void with the wrong thing and we just need more and more and more yeah boredom is the reason why we don't like boredom is that it is it's a sensation that's supposed to drive us into productive fulfilling activities right and and so when you replace the productive filling activities with this which is just optimized to give you sort of a quick fix to get past the boredom you're actually missing the activity that boredom evolved in the first place try to drive us to do like it drove us to say get off the rock and get out of the cave and go do some things right build the spear pull your tribe together whatever it was and so if you avoid the actual things that boredom is supposed to drive us to do like our grandfathers you know you they would be out at the Rotary Club or whatever carving the canoe in the woods something like that I mean boredom would drive you to do that right yeah but it's meaningful and we should we shouldn't be surprised that when we take a really deep seeded instincts things that have been evolved into us over millennia and then we start messing around with them with tools that some 20 year olds with hooded sweatshirts thought up in an incubator somewhere we shouldn't be surprised it's going to cause some problems yeah it's just like when we began messing around with food processing food to an industrial food you know changing the what we've been eating for thousands of years like of course we had obesity epidemics you're messing around with something that our bodies that had to head home yeah have been home the process so this what's happening is this it's like junk food yeah it's not that it's evil but we've got to be a little bit wary when we start messing around with things like human sociality yeah we've got to be more deliberate with it I mean the whole book you talked about the beginning how you started writing this because you realize like the number one things that's shaping our lives right now are screens so we all the screens that we have in our lives I'm not saying that we need to get rid of all screens but we certainly need to be deliberate with the screens that we have on our lives on what we are we are using them Justin this is what I'll tell you man you're true friends they don't care if you follow him or not if Josh unfollow me on Facebook wait I'm gonna I even on Facebook if you can follow me on Twitter or Instagram Josh has never liked any of my pictures I mean I don't I don't ever look at Josh to be like you're a bad friend because you don't give me those ephemeral interactions but he accidentally follows like my old Twitter that's awesome so yeah there's a there's an at Joshua Milburn that has just parked and it says don't follow this account like it's all I just don't want anyone to take my name basically and so it says please follow me at jfm on Twitter and Sean is like I just follow this one later Justin here's the thing man is if you are worried about your friends liking you or not your friends having meaningful relationships with your friends then you know instead of worrying about liking their photos or following them on Twitter if your friend has a kid yes go over to their house and bring them something they need create the meaningful interactions with your friends and you're going to have meaningful relationships yeah yeah and I think one experiment he might want to try something I've done I did with podcast recently because podcast has become this new addiction for me too that has supplanted my social media that's because I don't have social media on my phone but I have podcasts on my phone because where else are you gonna keep home right and so I unsubscribe from every podcast that I that I followed that I subscribed to and I as I missed the podcast I went back and Reese absque ribe to it and I've probably unsubscribe from 90% of the podcast and that can it can unravel it we have to continue to be cognitive of about about any of these well these things that we're doing it's not a quick fix it's not quit social media and then all of your your problems are gonna be solved it's not unsubscribe but I think maybe that's a good a good space to start start Ryan you did that you started from zero with Instagram you unfollowed everyone I just started on all the platforms just to really think well I took a month off just because I was I was addicted and I was going you know just scrolling through stuff so I'm like if I don't have anything to scroll through then I'm gonna have to be more deliberate with what I'm looking up so what I realized is I was getting some value and I the reason out of the way I found out who was giving me value is I realized like oh these are the people I'm actually going out and searching on a regular basis to see what they're up to or you know what's what's their quote of the day or whatever it is yeah it's it's a great idea I mean I think the number one thing out of for Justin is he's uncomfortable right now he's uncomfortable because he's calling calling down his social media following or who's who he's following he is experiencing a little bit of discomfort get uncomfortable like if you're uncomfortable it's because you're probably a little bit bored and again like we're all scared of boredom none of us want to be bored so here's the thing though is if you if you spend less time on social media there has to be an answer on what to replace that time with so it's it's when you go back to talking about living a leisurely life we want to do leisurely things but you can do much more meaningful leisurely things like joining a cause or a sports you know a recreational sports league or something get uncomfortable and fill this these bored these bored times fill this discomfort Justin with activities that are meaningful Justin I'm sending a copy of Cal's book it's called digital minimalism choosing a focused life in a noisy world I think you'll find a lot of value in that shun can you also send him a copy of our book essential it's 150 essays and in there there's a technology chapter and I go through some of the sort of stoical experiments that that I walked my ownself through just temporarily depriving myself and Cal you did that in your book as well were you and we'll talk about that in a bit you temper you have people temporarily deprive themselves to see what is actually adding value so I got rid of my phone for two months I got rid of home internet for a month that ended up being five years in doing some of these sort of experiments and technology helps you figure out like oh wow I'm not actually getting the value I thought I was getting in and that's that's our in our book essential so if you like our podcast you'll like the audio book version of that or if you want the book book or the e-book we can do that as well alright it looks like we have several more surprise questions this week about productivity about to-do lists about calendars about using social media for business about curating your photographs digitally and I want to chat with Cal about digital minimalism for parents as well as the 16-person actually wasn't 16 people was 900 people yeah 1,600 person case study that he did for his new book and if you want to hear all that you can listen to this week's maximal episode available exclusively on patreon that's right you're currently listening to our weekly minimal episode but each week Ryan and I and low-cal this week we record an entirely different long-form maximal episode on the minimalists private podcast which gives us the private space we need to discuss topics we don't usually discuss in public plus patreon is the best way for us to fund this podcast and keep it 100% advertisement free when you subscribe to the minimalist private podcast on patreon you'll receive a personal link so that our Maxim episodes play in your favorite podcast app you also get access to our entire back catalog of more than 100 private podcast episodes find all the details and all the good stuff including an additional long-form podcast episode every week over at the minimalists comm slash support i'll ryan what time is it it is time for our lightning round where we answer questions from social media ironically we answer questions right like a giant blanket of irony and Raft Calum yes exactly welcome to our life by the way so for the last eight years everything with everything I mean I'm walking down the street and someone I'm not very many wearing a long-sleeve t-shirt yeah it's like okay yeah first time I heard that buddy right I was at the grocery store Mizzell and had like you know half a dozen lemons or something it's like very minimal and I do minimalist [Laughter] you talked about this in your book where people look at minimalism they look at minimalists like it is an extreme lifestyle basically I get this a lot yeah do you think this is in part because of the art movement I think so because well because if she's dark white rooms and the two chairs I get that a lot believe when I think of the stark white room in the two chairs I'm thinking I mean I'm an art history minor I'm thinking this is like minimalist art movement right but part of it is there's some sort of appeal to anything that is radical or extreme right it brings up for me when minimalism goes extreme you can actually see the the beauty within the bones of the thing you go to the art museum it's really well curated it's a beautiful space but the reason it's beautiful is because it is so well curated and and we think well can we apply that to our own lives as well is it practical no no one lives in an art museum but we can have the sort of functional equivalent in our own lives whether it's with technology or with material possession I love how you make the counterpoint of leg no no no minimalism especially you know digital minimalism it's not extreme what is extreme is how we're currently using technology how we're currently using these platforms yeah well I mean digital minimalist always notice this right they do this transformation they're much more intentional about how they use tax do they use a lot less of it and they look around and everyone all the time is looking at the thing and they're wondering well who's the unusual one here like I mean if you if you come from a time machine from 10 years ago like what's going to catch your attention yeah what's gonna yeah that's what's going to catch your attention that's what's unusual you're right yes from the digital space the minimalists are basically back to standard types of behavior right I mean it's they're kind of the normal ones yeah yeah in it's weird like you and I were Ryan and I helped propagate this problem because we were in telecom for a long time right and and we were we left in 2011 but by then we had to sell that data man you had they had to make sure that every phone we sold walked out of the door with some kind of internet usage on it right right and so we helped propagate the problem but now we're trying to you know we've we've taken the red pill so to speak yeah anyway our first lightning round question around you wanna dive into that yes a first letting round question is from LC WC can you remain relevant as a company or brand without a constant media presence Cal you do it a great example this because you have a great brand you have a great following you have a lot of readers I when I was reading your book it was I broke my back up back in January January 11th and I had so much time to sit around and do nothing read and watch Netflix so I was tweeting out like oh I'm gonna read Cal Newports digital minimalism that that's next on the list and I'm like I can't find a month quitter I think that's the one I tweeted yeah well like that they're like following no one right and like it yeah okay so so asking about relevance here we try to give like pithy answers for this like we call the minimal Maxim's and Shawn puts them in the show notes but we can monitor on a bit as well my pithy answer we can unpack here is relevance is irrelevant if we're not first contributing something of value there's been this new phenomenon of internet famous people like who what are they go to influencers yes oh my god yeah that's another pithy answer I've never been influenced by an influencer jaison's ook say something like if you call yourself an influencer you're probably you probably don't influence as many people as you think it's interesting because I feel like I mean I think Cal was influential yes but that's that's the adjective not the not the noun right and it's figuring out like what the difference is like for me ultimately he's influential because he adds value through the work the creativity the creations that you produce so so I think about relevance with respect to a business or a company and that's one thing that comes up all the time with people especially with small businesses and I'm just thinking how much is Facebook paying you to post on on their their platform and what is your real return on investment yeah I mean I get this a lot I mean I usually go back to that 2012 book I wrote about career advice where the title is so so good they can't ignore you right I mean it's with Steve Martin's advice to aspiring entertainers they wanted to know like how do I get noticed how do I get an agent he would just say be so good they can't ignore you that works like 90% of the time I mean if you want to be the Kardashians you are incredibly successful then yeah you probably need to be really savvy with your social media brand but 9 out of 10 times when I talk to people who feel like just generically speaking they need to be active on social media they probably don't now if they have a very specific thing if you're advertising on social media okay I get it it's like a miracle box I mean that my publisher was showing me what you can do there's a reason why Facebook is worth 500 billion dollars you can you can advertise the specific people all right I'm not gonna fault you for that but if it's just a Janeiro yeah so there we go that's a that's with respect to our values yeah so but I mean so I get that like why companies use advertising I guess right it's a powerful advertising medium but I would say nine times out of ten not ten out of ten but nine times out of ten producing something really valuable is what's going to matter that's totally true it's a beautiful tweetable answer Ryan do you have a minimal maximum yes it's very it's very much along the same lines as what you guys are saying my pet the answer is a company's relevance increases in direct proportion to the experience it creates so yes you'd be so good that they can't ignore you you're gonna be relevant if you're creating an outstanding customer experience yeah definitely yeah all right our next question is from Donna how can we keep up with work without drowning in information well sounds like an excuse Donna to use another Cal Newport book I incorporated it into my my pisser here deep work does not intersect with breaking news and and for me our breaking news is broken at this point we've we've reached peak breaking news it's always breaking news and it's really become breaking entertainment not breaking news it's a we it purports to be reports to be news but it is I'm most most news isn't newsworthy yes that may be another pithy answer yeah Cal what do you think about about this this information firehose that we're facing so I wrote this article recently for The Chronicle higher education where it opened on this emeritus computer science professor at Stanford who's been writing this sort of multi-volume treatise on computer program he's been working up since the 1960s but he asked this great quote which is for some people I guess their job is to be on top of things for me I think my job is to be on the bottom of things and this is a guy who hasn't used email since 1992 because he wants to focus on what's important yeah what a hipster I by the way that's after having used it for 20 years at that point because he's a hardcore computer scientist but I think that applies to some more things we do than we think and more things we do are probably better served by us being on the bottom of things yeah the news be on the top of things even the the journalists I talk to hate the breaking news even the people whose job it is to follow breaking news tell me when the mics are off they get such an incoherent picture of what's going on when they're on Twitter that they're actually better off waiting to see how it comes together the next day in the newspaper and so I agree the fire hose the fire hose exists because it gives you a reason to look at your phone you look at your phone that helps use companies get these multi billion dollar valuations you know we didn't have this ten years ago and I think we're all fine so yeah absolutely it's it's funny man after after reading digital minimalism yeah there's a spot in there where you talk about the cycle that we get caught in you know you jump new sights a new site to sports site and dude I'm totally guilty of this it's like I will go to one specific new site and then I'll go to like you know one extreme opinion to the next to the other extreme opinion and I think I'm doing something good for myself because I'm like oh well I'm looking at both sides and but - never have I ever went into that you know whatever it takes 15 sometimes a half-hour if I get into you know a couple good articles never if I left my screen and thought oh thank God I went and read that news yeah it's yeah it's a it's hardly ever adding value really when I look at it's more entertaining than anything I love that dude but not breaking news isn't it's breaking entertainment that is it's so true as most of the time yeah I mean occasionally but here's the thing if there's big enough breaking news it's gonna make its way to me somehow without me having to check Mother Jones or the Drudge Report right yeah you're left and right by the way yeah Mother Jones yeah yeah it's like an aggregator anyway it's the Drudge Report for the left my pit the answer is this step one if you were drowning in a bathtub turn off the water [Laughter] turn down the information YouTube is is is my Bermuda Triangle and I have to avoid it because otherwise I will I will fall down just this spiral of of entertainment and it starts out as information then all of a sudden I'm watching Canadian Rap Battles six hours later I'm not ruling on myself Ryan what else you got for us this week as always I want to encourage people to read more and get informed and you can do that by picking up Cal Newports digital minimalism I highly encourage you read it it's a it has totally changed our outlook on social media the way we use it the what we bring into our lives and do during the patreon episode like that was that was that was some really interesting topics man about how we we do are we adding to the noise or are we doing something in tension are we doing something good for our readers but I so we just talked about that with Cal and basically we were asking how should we should we even use social media anymore and he had a fascinating take on it so you can check that out what else you got Ryan I got some voicemail and comments and tips from our listeners check them out I'm from Fresno California I just wanted to leave a comment for listeners but I tried to do minimalism I noticed that as a woman I have so many products and as far as makeup lotion perfume makeup remover and just a lot of bathroom products so I looked into more natural ways to get more function out of product and I went ahead and switched over to using coconut oil which can be used to or basically any products that I had I was able to replace it with coconut oil and I went ahead and just threw away a bunch of the products I had and it really minimized the amount of clutter I had under my sink in my bathroom which was really freeing so just wanted to share that tip thanks hi my name is Nakia and I am from Nebraska and listening to the spouse's episode it really got my mind wandering of some guilt that I had been holding on to my husband when we were dating I got rid of some of his things such as a Packers poster and I got rid of some golfing things and some bowling things and we don't live in a house where there's room for a man cave or a she shed but I really just decided that and with the help of my spouse we talked about it and we decided that we don't need a space in our home that is dedicated to things that we wish we would be doing so we have pledged to each other that instead of deciding that we want to hang Brett Favre on our wall work my husband is more than welcome to go watch a Packers game or maybe someday we'll get to go instead of having Phil Mickelson up on our wall or having a glove with his name on it we can just go ahead and he didn't go golfing or perhaps get to go to one of our one of his things that he does in go so that's just my suggestion just to just to go and do this verses surrounding yourself with the things that you wish you would be doing alright Joe that's it for this episode well almost it thanks again to Cal Newport for joining us today check out his new book digital minimalism in his blog at Cal Newport dot-com is subscribed to his blog I think it's like one of four blogs that I subscribe still to go man yeah it's really good and real quick for right here right now this week here's what's going on in lives of the minimalist we touched on this a little bit during the patreon episode Ryan but if you all get a chance you can check out our screen --less Saturday's video that Jordan recorded we talked a little bit about the experiment we did he recorded an all analog video so good analog video analog audio on a Saturday we went out to a park and it was it was a really good experience you can check that out on youtube.com slash the minimalists if you have a question comment or minimalism tip for our podcast leave us a voicemail for zero six two one nine seven eight three nine or send a voice memo to podcast at the minimalists comm you can comment on this episode at youtube.com slash the minimalist if you want our show notes in your inbox sign up for our email list at the minimalists comm and you'll also receive our simple Sunday emails each week Ryan before we head on over to patreon hear that patreon episode do you have anything that's added value to your life recently man I already talked about a digital minimalism go get a copy right I'm gonna play you out today with my added value this week it is a song called maybe you're the reason by a gal she goes by the name the Japanese house is her stage name and her new album is called good at falling and this it's like this upbeat sort of upbeat singer-songwriter electronic it's it's just the it's the perfect soundtrack to a night time Drive so you all can check that out at the end of this episode alright y'all if you leave here today with just one message we hope it's this love people and use things because the opposite never works thanks for listening y'all we'll see you next time and minimus

Channel: The Minimalists

Views: 44,965

Rating: 4.8982744 out of 5

Keywords: contribution, decluttering, finances, growth, health, minimalism, minimalists, passion, purpose, relationships, simple, simplicity, the minimalists, podcast, Joshua Fields Millburn, Ryan Nicodemus, useful tips, tricks and tips, personal growth, finance, more with less, Cal Newport, Ep. 173 | Digital Clutter (with Cal Newport), Digital Minimalism, book

Id: oxr85CKSZNQ

Length: 35min 20sec (2120 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 24 2019