A Summary and Review of Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport

My Takeaways and Opinion on Digital Minimalism

Photo by Kari Shea on Unsplash

I just finished Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport and am excited to share a summary and review. Cal Newport is one of my favorite authors. I like the fact that he is a computer science professor. That said, he’s also an incredible writer with an ability to distill information in an engaging way.

The book is all about how we use technology in our lives and how society has been transformed as a result of the latest technological development. Reading this book was somewhat of a wake-up call for me. Even though I was fairly conscious about my social media use and tried to go on only once a day, I realized that I, like many social media users, had simply accepted these technologies and brought them into my own life without questioning what benefits they brought and if these benefits outweighed the costs. I just got on these platforms because all my friends and family were doing so.

Cal Newport breaks the book down into two parts: foundations and practices.

Foundations is made up of three chapters:

• A Lopsided Arms Race
• Digital Minimalism
• The Digital Declutter