Digital Declutter Experiment Report
Jonny was reading this book called Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport and he decided to do this crazy digital declutter experiment for the month of July. Always having crazy ideas and always trying to live a minimalist life, Jonny has suggested many different ways that I could change to live a happier life. First Marie Kondo, now this digital minimalism. To say that I was skeptical was an understatement. In my mind, I was definitely defending my digital life—
You are the one who’s always watching stuff. Of course it would be easy for you since you don’t run a small business. I didn’t spend that much time on social media and my phone, it was all scraps of time. If I don’t chat with people on social media then I won’t have any adult conversation especially now during the pandemic. Don’t try to solve my problem, I’m an adult. My phone is my way of escape from toddler tantrums—you can walk away to your office but I can’t!
I mean I liked the fact that Jonny is now much more present in our life. Would that be enough for me to change myself? Not yet at least. But at least, I agreed to check out the book myself and see what it’s about.
Fast forward to the end of July. I finished the book and thought that YES! I have definitely become a slave to my phone and the whole digital world. What is worse is that my mental health has been hugely affected by the way I use digital devices and resources. Especially at the end of July, with COVID still raging here in Arizona and nobody seemed to care and everyone started to question the legitimacy of this virus while my family has pretty much gone back to normal life in Wuhan, I was just straight angry. I was angry at everyone—myself, the kids, Jonny and of course everyone on Facebook. Since I knew that I wouldn’t want to be glued to my phone during the day, the only time I thought I’d check my Facebook was the first thing in the morning and I could put away the phone for the rest of the day. So smart! Of course, 100% sure that I’d come across a comment on someone’s thread that would totally fire me up. Then guaranteed, I walked into the day being angry and I had this negative thing in my head that I would have to constantly try to make sense of. Honestly, I was just so done with the way I was.
So I told Jonny, I would do the experiment starting on August 1st. As much as I hated the way I was acting, I was still not willing to just give up my phone right away. Ouch. By July 31st, I clearly remembered me telling Jonny after I wasted an hour on a meaningless argument on Facebook—
I am so done with social media and I am SO READY to start the digital decluttering.
Here are the things I decided to do as my digital decluttering guidelines:
No Social Media!!
Wechat—Check Family Group Once at 5pm
Check Email Twice A Day—9:15am and 8:00pm
Check Text Message Twice A Day—with email
Work Time—9-10pm on photos, assignments(I was doing an intense photography workshop)
Call People to Say Hi.
It might be surprising but the whole point of the digital minimalism is not anti-social or anti-technology. It’s actually trying to help us to build stronger real connections. It sounds heartless but it is so true that a “like” on social media is literally just one byte of information and it doesn’t mean much at all. Actually, I am definitely guilty of just liking someone’s post in fear that I would offend the person if I don’t “like“ as all the others do even though I honestly couldn’t care less about this person’s personal business.
Anyways, I outlined my rules and off social media I went, without announcing my departure. This is not a short break, or at least I hope, that it could lead to some more permanent changes. Also I was just curious to know who really cared enough to notice that I was gone.
During August, I decided that I needed to make sure that I actually call and chat with people. Being stuck with three kids at home is not the best way to fulfill my forever urge to have a good deep mind burning conversation. So instead of scrolling through FB feed or instagram, I scrolled through my phone contacts. I called people—at least someone every few days. Some days, I called multiple people. I have to say, it was SO nice to be able to hear people’s voices. I chatted with people about many different things, parenting, church, schooling, relationships, and even racism and politics. I learned a lot from others and I feel like heard too. Literally.
Of course, by doing this, I subjected myself to the cruel fact that I would find out who truly are my friends and how many friends I have. Sadly, there was one day, I made like 20 calls and left each of them a voicemail and no one answered and no one cared enough to give me a call back. I mean, I didn’t try too hard to try and call again and I know that people are busy. And these days people just feel that you are selling MLM if all a sudden you are calling people so they avoid random calls. But still, it says something doesn’t it?
So thank you so much for the people who actually picked up my phone call and chatted with me or took the initiative to call me. It means so much to me. You probably have no idea how much I appreciated that phone call.
I know there would be hard days when I would want to just escape the whining and I would be attempted to reach for my phone. Or if I get bored then I would want to reach for my phone for a pacifier. I decided to read more books and also start this drawing lesson. I read way more books in this one month than the total amount of books I read in the entire 2019, or even plus 2018. I also followed this book called You Can Draw In 30 Days given to me as a gift earlier this year. I did one lesson a day for 30 days. I obviously have not become this expert drawer/painter but I absolutely enjoyed sitting there and sketching and shading and see all the lines and shapes come into something real. Oh, I did it during my boys’ nap time. It was my quiet time and I enjoyed it a lot.
I also tried to just go out to areas where I don’t have much signal at all. I took the kids to the Salt River a couple of times and we saw wild horses. Of course, the kids loved the sand and sticks more than the horses but it was good enough for me to get some peaceful time out with no one around.
Of course, one major thing I did…was to use an app to block my applications and websites on my computer and on my phone. I know how my will power is. I needed something stronger to help me to start with and hopefully I can get into a good habit. I deleted the social media apps on my phone and turned off all notifications. The fact that it is an extreme hassle for me to get on any of these distractive stuff has helped me to not wanting to get on my phone or my computer much anyways. There’s nothing wrong with some tough love for myself right?
Now, I found this month a lot easier than I expected. I think one major advantage I had was that I was taking this amazing photography workshop(Visual Rhetoric by Courtney Larson). This is probably one of the best things I’ve ever done. It was kinda like the Self-reliance class I did a few years ago too. You get to interact with the teacher, and the workshop attendees. You work toward the same goal together and there are assignments to hold you accountable. The best thing, we get to do live chat each week. Especially under our crazy circumstance of this pandemic, being able to see the same awesome people every week and chat about the things we love is just a pure blessing. I don’t know how exactly I can make this sustainable in the future—obviously I can’t be taking workshop after workshop every month. Or can I? Well, I might have been doing this for the following months of this year, ooops. But no regret. So eventually I think I will need to find out a good way to just keep in touch with the new friends I made during these workshops and we will have our own private zoom parties maybe. Or really, hopefully we can get out of this pandemic soon so I can actually go hangout with people in person.
Obviously, life with three kids will be crazy. Period. But honestly I felt peaceful. I felt content. I felt inspired. I felt good. I definitely wonder now, how much I need to know about the world around me. It’s a hard balance to find between focusing on my own stuff and not to be ignorantly full of myself in my head. It will still take me major efforts to be a good friend and find good friends but I think it will be worth the effort to find true friendships. And the most important thing is that now I know I can gain back the control over my life—digital, social and any life. That is the most freeing and comforting gain from this experiment.
Especially now that we are still dealing with all the political stuff around us and this COVID crisis and everyone is just yelling at each other, I feel more in need of peace and control in my life than ever. While I might not know the latest data on covid anymore, I feel safe because I know enough.
So if you need to find me, just call me. And if you get a call from me all a sudden, I promise that I am not trying to lure you into any MLM schemes. I just haven’t been on social media and I want to say hi and catch up.
October updates:
So in September, I got back on FB and Instagram. Honestly, I didn’t miss much. None of the things I missed would have changed my course of life, not even for that day. With me still running a business and trying to find my community, I felt like I had to share more content to be seen. I definitely fell short on the calling and chatting with people. And like I expected, I felt a lot more anxious than in August. I would go and check if people had interacted with my content or if people had replied my messages. I did not like it.
So now, I’m dialing back again. Gotta enforce it while it was still hot and fresh. I haven’t found myself caring too much about Facebook. So I actually will just unfollow everyone on Facebook except our church facebook group and our neighborhood group and my Fit4Mom group. I probably will just check my facebook once a week if not once a month now. I will move here to the website totally for my updates and I will continue to make an effort to reach out to the important people in my life through other ways—email, phone calls and maybe even letters(give me any excuse to use my fountain pen, haha.)
Instagram, I still don’t know. I don’t even know why I care but I do. So I’ll have to figure this one out. My justification is that photography is a visual art and it’s just easy to see people’s work at one place these days. But maybe there is a better way that I am not aware of. Not totally true because I could just go and be on the ClickPro Daily Project Page. Maybe I’ll just move over there? I don’t know. So stay tuned for my decision about instagram. If you care at all.
