Minimalism pdf download

But it shouldn't consume us. There is a big difference between utilizing digital technology and being completely dependent on it. It has been scientifically proven that we easily become addicted to technological gadgets, and the negative impacts of that dependency, such as stress and anxiety. I used to be completely consumed with living a largely digital life without realizing the impact it was having on my life. Once I realized that I was addicted, it took all my energy to shift my mentality from being so digital-dependent.

In this book, I provide you with a clear and practical guide to removing the overuse of digital technologies, such as TV, smartphones, and the internet. Inside Digital Minimalism, discover: The common signs of digital addiction How we become addicted to technology Major side effects of digital addiction Practical steps to overcome digital addiction The Joys of the offline world And so much more!

This book is the first stage into taking back your life and tackling your addiction with digital technologies head-on. Don't wait another day! Grab a copy of this book and become a happier, healthier, and more productive version of yourself today!

An encouraging guide to helping parents find more happiness in their day-to-day family life, from the former lead editor of the New York Times' Motherlode blog. In all the writing and reporting KJ Dell'Antonia has done on families over the years, one topic keeps coming up again and again: parents crave a greater sense of happiness in their daily lives.

In this optimistic, solution-packed book, KJ asks: How can we change our family life so that it is full of the joy we'd always hoped for? Drawing from the latest research and interviews with families, KJ discovers that it's possible to do more by doing less, and make our family life a refuge and pleasure, rather than another stress point in a hectic day.

She focuses on nine common problem spots that cause parents the most grief, explores why they are hard, and offers small, doable, sometimes surprising steps you can take to make them better. Whether it's getting everyone out the door on time in the morning or making sure chores and homework get done without another battle, How to Be a Happier Parent shows that having a family isn't just about raising great kids and churning them out at destination: success. It's about experiencing joy--real joy, the kind you look back on, look forward to, and live for--along the way.

If you want to know why you can't help but keep checking your phone and what harm it can cause your productivity and happiness, then keep reading Do you know how many times you check your phone per day? Have you recently checked your screen time? Just imagine how many tasks you can get done and how much quality time you can spend with your loved ones with 4.

Today, technology has become an important part of our life, and social media are just like paradoxes that can make you feel both connected and lonely. However, do you know that it can also bring mental clutter to your mind? Adam Alter, an assistant professor of marketing and psychology at NYU, says that technology is designed to be addictive and that the gratification it provides is similar to that of other addictive behaviors, such as drug abuse or gambling.

His research also found that the more a person checks the mobile phone, the less happy he or she becomes. If you want a simple and clutter-free life, then you need to do a digital detox and start living a digital minimalist lifestyle!

It gives you freedom, and frees you up from needless possessions, tasks or extra societal expectations. Don't worry! Even if you are the kind of person who cannot live without your phone for one day, after reading this book, you can also start living a Digital Minimalist life!

So, are you ready to take back control of your life, have laser-like focus and freedom to really enjoy your life? If you are, then scroll up, click the 'Buy now with 1-Click!

New York Times bestseller! From New York Times bestselling author Cal Newport comes a bold vision for liberating workers from the tyranny of the inbox--and unleashing a new era of productivity. Modern knowledge workers communicate constantly. Their days are defined by a relentless barrage of incoming messages and back-and-forth digital conversations--a state of constant, anxious chatter in which nobody can disconnect, and so nobody has the cognitive bandwidth to perform substantive work.

There was a time when tools like email felt cutting edge, but a thorough review of current evidence reveals that the "hyperactive hive mind" workflow they helped create has become a productivity disaster, reducing profitability and perhaps even slowing overall economic growth. Equally worrisome, it makes us miserable. Humans are simply not wired for constant digital communication. We have become so used to an inbox-driven workday that it's hard to imagine alternatives.

But they do exist. Drawing on years of investigative reporting, author and computer science professor Cal Newport makes the case that our current approach to work is broken, then lays out a series of principles and concrete instructions for fixing it. In A World without Email, he argues for a workplace in which clear processes--not haphazard messaging--define how tasks are identified, assigned and reviewed. Fields by M. Hot Men of Steel by M.

Hot Jase by M. Hot Cyrus by M. Perhaps, at first, the process you deploy is just keeping an eye on the links that pop up in your social media feeds. With this in mind, assume you invest some energy to identify a more carefully curated set of online news sites to follow, and to find an app, like Instapaper, that allows you to clip articles from these sites and read them all together in a nice interface that culls distracting ads.

This improved personal technology process for keeping informed is now producing even more value in your personal life. At this point, your optimization efforts have massively increased the value you receive from this personal technology process for staying informed.

You can now stay up to date in a pleasing manner that has a limited impact on your time and attention during the week. The reason the second principle of minimalism is so important is that most people invest very little energy into these types of optimizations. The example I gave above was hypothetical, but you find similar instances of optimization producing big returns when you study the stories of real-world digital minimalists. Gabriella, for example, signed up for Netflix as a better and cheaper source of entertainment than cable.

She became prone, however, to binge-watching, which hurt her professional productivity and left her feeling unfulfilled. Another optimization that was common among the digital minimalists I studied was to remove social media apps from their phones. By removing the apps from their phones, however, they eliminated their ability to browse their accounts as a knee-jerk response to boredom. The result is that these minimalists dramatically reduced the amount of time they spend engaging with these services each week, while barely diminishing the value they provide to their lives—a much better personal technology process than thoughtlessly tapping and swiping these apps throughout the day as the whim strikes.

There are two major reasons why so few people have bothered to adopt the bias toward optimization exhibited by Gabriella or the minimalists who streamlined their social media experience. The first is that most of these technologies are still relatively new. This freshness, of course, is starting to fade as the smartphone and social media era advances beyond its heady early years, which will lead people to become increasingly impatient with the shortcomings of their unpolished processes.

These corporations make more money the more time you spend engaged with their products. They want you, therefore, to think of their offerings as a sort of fun ecosystem where you mess around and interesting things happen. This mind-set of general use makes it easier for them to exploit your psychological vulnerabilities. This is why social media companies are purposely vague in describing their products.

They hint that you just need to plug into their ecosystem and start sharing and connecting, and eventually good things will happen. Finding useful new technologies is just the first step to improving your life. The real benefits come once you start experimenting with how best to use them. From this perspective, these communities are mainly interesting as a living museum of an older age, a quaint curiosity.

But then you start talking to scholars and writers who study the Amish seriously, and you begin to hear confusing statements that muddy these waters.

Rather, they are demonstrations of a different form of modernity. In fact, on my several visits with them, I have found them to be ingenious hackers and tinkers, the ultimate makers and do-it- yourselvers.

They are often, surprisingly, pro-technology. Disposable diapers are popular, as are chemical fertilizers. Donald Kraybill, a professor at Elizabethtown College who co-authored a book on the Amish, emphasizes the changes that have occurred as more members of these communities embrace entrepreneurship over farming. Is it going to bolster our life together, as a community, or is it going to somehow tear it down?

Usually the bishop will agree. If this impact is deemed more negative than helpful, the technology is prohibited. The reason most Amish are prohibited from owning cars, for example, but are allowed to drive in motor vehicles driven by other people, has to do with the impact of owning an automobile on the social fabric of the community.

This type of thinking also explains why an Amish farmer can own a solar panel or run power tools on a generator but cannot connect to the power grid. Their gamble is that intention trumps convenience—and this is a bet that seems to be paying off.

The Amish have remained a relatively stable presence in America for over two hundred years of rapid modernity and cultural upheavals. Unlike some religious sects that attempt to entrap members through threats and denial of connection to the outside world, the Amish still practice Rumspringa.

During this ritual period, which begins at the age of sixteen, Amish youth are allowed to leave home and experience the outside world beyond the restrictions of their community.

It is then their decision, after having seen what they will be giving up, whether or not they accept baptism into the Amish church. We should be careful, however, not to push the Amish example too far as a case study for meaningful living. The restrictions that guide each community, called the Ordnung, are typically decided and enforced by a group of four men—a bishop, two ministers, and a deacon—who serve for life.

From this perspective, the Amish underscore the principle that acting intentionally with respect to technology can be a standalone source of value, but their example leaves open the question of whether this value persists even when we eliminate the more authoritarian impulses of these communities.

Fortunately, we have good reasons to believe it does. A useful thought experiment along these lines is to consider the closely related Mennonite Church. Like the Amish, Mennonites embrace the biblical principle to be in the world, but not of it, which leads to a similar embrace of simplicity and a suspicion of cultural trends that threaten core values of maintaining strong communities and virtuous living. This creates an opportunity to see Amish-style values toward technology applied in the absence of an authoritarian Ordnung.

Curious to encounter this philosophy in action, I set up a conversation with a liberal Mennonite named Laura, a schoolteacher who lives with her husband and daughter in Albuquerque, New Mexico. But decisions about her lifestyle are hers alone. This reality is best emphasized by what is arguably her most radical decision: she has never owned a smartphone and has no intention of buying one. In our conversation, she emphasized the importance of being present with her daughter, even when bored, and the value she gets out of spending time with friends free from distraction.

Part of what makes this philosophy so effective is that the very act of being selective about your tools will bring you satisfaction, typically much more than what is lost from the tools you decide to avoid. I tackled this principle last because its lesson is arguably the most important. The sugar high of convenience is fleeting and the sting of missing out dulls rapidly, but the meaningful glow that comes from taking charge of what claims your time and attention is something that persists.

As mentioned in the introduction, this concept dates back to antiquity and has been repeatedly espoused since. That being said, the past couple of decades are also defined by a resurgent narrative of techno-maximalism that contends more is better when it comes to technology—more connections, more information, more options.

This philosophy cleverly dovetails with the general objective of the liberal humanism project to offer individuals more freedom, making it seem vaguely illiberal to avoid a popular social media platform or decline to follow the latest online chatter. This connection, of course, is specious. Outsourcing your autonomy to an attention economy conglomerate—as you do when you mindlessly sign up for whatever new hot service emerges from the Silicon Valley venture capitalist class—is the opposite of freedom, and will likely degrade your individuality.

But given the current strength of the maximalism argument, I felt it necessary to provide the full- throated defense of minimalism detailed in this chapter. Even old ideas require new investigation to underscore their continued relevance.

When it comes to new technologies, less almost certainly is more. Hopefully the preceding pages made it clear why this is true. I recommend instead a rapid transformation—something that occurs in a short period of time and is executed with enough conviction that the results are likely to stick.

I call the particular rapid process I have in mind the digital declutter. It works as follows. The Digital Declutter Process 1. Put aside a thirty-day period during which you will take a break from optional technologies in your life.

During this thirty-day break, explore and rediscover activities and behaviors that you find satisfying and meaningful. At the end of the break, reintroduce optional technologies into your life, starting from a blank slate. For each technology you reintroduce, determine what value it serves in your life and how specifically you will use it so as to maximize this value. Much like decluttering your house, this lifestyle experiment provides a reset for your digital life by clearing away distracting tools and compulsive habits that may have accumulated haphazardly over time and replacing them with a much more intentional set of behaviors, optimized, in proper minimalist fashion, to support your values instead of subverting them.

As noted earlier, the second part of this book will provide ideas and strategies for shaping your digital minimalist lifestyle into something sustainable over the long term. My suggestion, however, is to start with this declutter, and then once your transformation has begun, turn to the chapters that follow to optimize your setup. As is often true in life, getting started is the most important step.

Many others have trod this path before. My guess was wrong: over 1, signed up. Our efforts even made national news. In February, I began to gather more-detailed reports from participants. I wanted to find out what rules they put in place regarding their technology use during the declutter and how they fared during the thirty-day period.

I was particularly interested to hear about the decisions they made when reintroducing these technologies back into their lives. After receiving and reviewing hundreds of these in-depth dissections, two conclusions became clear.

First, the digital declutter works. People were surprised to learn the degree to which their digital lives had become cluttered with reflexive behaviors and compulsive tics. A nontrivial number of people ended up aborting this process before the full thirty days were done. Interestingly, most of these early exits had little to do with insufficient willpower—this was an audience who was self-selected based on their drive to improve.

A typical culprit, for example, was technology restriction rules that were either too vague or too strict. Another mistake was not planning what to replace these technologies with during the declutter period—leading to anxiety and boredom. Those who treated this experiment purely as a detox, where the goal was to simply take a break from their digital life before returning to business as usual, also struggled. A temporary detox is a much weaker resolution than trying to permanently change your life, and therefore much easier for your mind to subvert when the going gets tough.

Given the reality of this second conclusion, I will dedicate the remainder of this chapter to providing clarifying explanations and suggestions for the three steps of the declutter process summarized above.

Text messaging, Instagram, and Reddit are examples of the types of technologies you need to evaluate when preparing for your digital declutter; your microwave, radio, or electric toothbrush are not. An interesting special case brought to my attention by many participants during the mass declutter experiment is video games.

Another borderline case is television—which, in an age of streaming, is a vague term that can cover many different visual entertainments. Prior to the mass declutter experiment, I was somewhat ambivalent as to whether streaming Netflix, and its equivalents, was something to consider as a potentially optional technology.

The feedback I received from participants, however, was near unequivocal: You should. My general heuristic is the following: consider the technology optional unless its temporary removal would harm or significantly disrupt the daily operation of your professional or personal life. This standard exempts most professional technologies from being deemed optional. Similarly, if your job requires you to occasionally monitor Facebook Messenger to help recruit students as was the case for a music professor named Brian who participated in my experiment , then, of course, this activity is not optional either.

On the personal side, these exemptions usually apply to technologies that play a key logistical role. Similarly, several participants in the mass declutter experiment claimed they needed to keep using instant message tools like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger because it was the easiest way to keep up with friends overseas. This might be true, but in many cases, these relationships can withstand one month of less frequent contact.

More importantly, the inconvenience might prove useful. Losing lightweight contact with your international friends might help clarify which of these friendships were real in the first place, and strengthen your relationships with those who remain.

This is exactly what happened with Anya, a participant in my experiment who is from Belarus but is currently studying at an American university. Because we [interacted] less frequently, we [had] this idea that we want to make the most of the experience. These procedures specify exactly how and when you use a particular technology, allowing you to maintain some critical uses without having to default to unrestricted access.

I saw many examples of these operating procedures deployed by the participants in my mass declutter experiment. A freelance writer named Mary, for example, wanted to take a break from constantly tending to text messages on her phone. The problem was that when her husband traveled, which he did frequently, he sometimes sent Mary messages that needed fast responses.

Similarly, an environmental consultant named Mike needed to keep up with personal emails but wanted to avoid compulsive checking, so he made the rule that he could only sign into his account from his desktop PC and not his phone. A computer scientist named Caleb decided he could still listen to podcasts, but only on his two-hour-long daily commute. Brooke, a self-described writer, educator, and full-time mother, decided she wanted to swear off access to the internet altogether but, to make this sustainable, added two exceptions for when she could still launch a web browser: email and buying household items on Amazon.

Generally, too many operating procedures might make the declutter experiment unwieldy, but most people required at least a few of these more nuanced constraints. You should probably also include video games and streaming video in this category.

Your mind has developed certain expectations about distractions and entertainment, and these expectations will be disrupted when you remove optional technologies from your daily experience. This disruption can feel unpleasant.

Many of the participants in my mass declutter experiment, however, reported that these feelings of discomfort faded after a week or two. Brooke described this experience as follows: The first few days were surprisingly hard. My addictive habits were revealed in striking clarity. But then things got better. The only thing left on her phone that she could check for new information was the weather. A major reason that I recommend taking an extended break before trying to transform your digital life is that without the clarity provided by detox, the addictive pull of the technologies will bias your decisions.

If you decide to reform your relationship with Instagram right this moment, your decisions about what role it should play in your life will likely be much weaker than if you instead spend thirty days without the service before making these choices.

The goal is not to simply give yourself a break from technology, but to instead spark a permanent transformation of your digital life. The detoxing is merely a step that supports this transformation. With this in mind, you have duties during the declutter beyond following your technology rules. Figuring this out before you begin reintroducing technology at the end of this declutter process is crucial.

For many people, their compulsive phone use papers over a void created by a lack of a well-developed leisure life. Reducing the easy distraction without also filling the void can make life unpleasantly stale—an outcome likely to undermine any transition to minimalism.

As stated, the goal of the reintroduction is to put technology to work on behalf of specific things you value. This means to an end approach to technology requires clarity on what these ends actually are.

The good news is that the participants in my mass declutter experiment found it easier than expected to reconnect to the types of activities they used to enjoy before they were subverted by their screens. A graduate student named Unaiza was spending her evenings browsing Reddit. During her declutter, she redirected this time toward reading books that she borrowed from both her school and local library.

By the end of the declutter, she had made an offer on a house, which was accepted. Kushboo finished five books during his declutter. This was a big deal for him, as these were the first books he had read voluntarily in over three years. He also restarted his once cherished painting and computer coding hobbies. A full-time mom named Marianna became so engaged in creative pursuits during her declutter that she decided she would start her own blog to share her work and connect with other artists.

I was delighted to discover seven different books that seemed interesting. During his declutter he rediscovered the satisfaction of spending real time with his boys instead of just spending time near them with his eyes on the screen.

He noted how surreal it can feel to be the only parent at the playground who is not looking down. She also ended up playing the piano again and relearning how to sew—underscoring the sheer quantity of the time that can be reclaimed when you sidestep mindless digital activity to once again prioritize the real you. As I stand here now from the outside looking in, I see there is so much more the world has to offer!

These feelings, however, will pass, and this resulting sense of detox will prove useful when it comes time to make clear decisions at the end of the declutter. The goal of a digital declutter, however, is not simply to enjoy time away from intrusive technology. This period should be one of strenuous activity and experimentation.

You want to arrive at the end of the declutter having rediscovered the type of activities that generate real satisfaction, enabling you to confidently craft a better life—one in which technology serves only a supporting role for more meaningful ends.

This reintroduction is more demanding than you might imagine. Some of the participants in my mass declutter experiment treated the process only as a classical digital detox—reintroducing all their optional technologies when the declutter ended.

This is a mistake. The goal of this final step is to start from a blank slate and only let back into your life technology that passes your strict minimalist standards. This is the only condition on which you should let one of these tools into your life. The fact that it offers some value is irrelevant—the digital minimalist deploys technology to serve the things they find most important in their life, and is happy missing out on everything else.

Once a technology passes this first screening question, it must then face a more difficult standard: Is this technology the best way to support this value? Because PRO precedes an infinitive, it does not carry case, although it carries features such as person, number, and gender.

Another subtheory is the Binding Theory, a theory of coreference which is concerned with the conditions under which a NP can be interpreted as referring to the same entity as another NP in the sentence.

Three word classes are relevant, namely: a. In short, Binding Theory contains the following three part principle: a. In the sentence Chris showed his comics book to Olga the NP Chris is the agent, his comics book is the patient and Olga is the goal. A verb such as show is specified as having three possible roles. The remaining subtheory, Control theory determines the potential for reference of PRO.

In certain aspects, PRO behaves like a pronominal because it takes its reference from another NP, but can refer independently. These two possibilities are clarified in 6 a and 6 b : 6. Another interesting feature of GB is that it allows for variation across languages. This is due to the presence of parameters that can assume one of two possible values. The initial value is the unmarked setting. This value is changed to the marked setting if evidence from the input is compatible with the initial setting Asher It applies to languages that require overt sentence subjects.

The other setting is applicable to languages that allow such subjects to be absent such as Italian i. It permits bare verb stems i. The other setting applies to languages where bare stems are not permitted i.

However, this grammar is idealization since every language has a periphery of borrowings, inventions and historical residues that make the language an imperfect system.

These peripheral structures are marked because they have to be acquired through direct experience Leonard and Loeb The Government Binding Model enjoyed far reaching influence and appealed to many scholars due to the claim that cross-linguistic differences are only apparent and a basic structure of these languages is the same with different values of parameters.

During the s, Chomskyan linguistics shed new lights on the first language acquisition. The principles and parameters that exist in human languages have been attested with various language acquisition data. At the end of the s, Chomsky re-examined the real nature of various linguistic operations and rejected them as non real.

This is known as the beginning of the Minimalist Program. But what exactly is the Minimalist Program MP? So, the MP tries to incorporate concepts such as simplicity, economy, symmetry and non- redundancy within its framework. He claims that since every human language is composed of sound and meaning, these two have to be interpreted.

PF is the interface level on which sound is interpreted as information to be sent to the articulatory-perceptual system. Explain that your passions lie there, and in return, ask them what their passions are. Your identity should come from your meaningful life, not from how you earn a pay-check.

The best thing about passion is that there are no rules, you can literally be passionate about anything you want. As long as it brings you joy, is rewarding for you, then it's perfectly legitimate. Any line of work can be your mission. Joshua and Ryan point out two distinct characteristics that differentiate people who are passionate from people who are uninspired.

Your paycheck does not define who you are or what you can do. Make changes, make adjustments, get uncomfortable.

Hopefully, after you followed the previous steps, your vision will be clearer and you can focus on pursuing your passion. Joshua and Ryan suggest that the best and most efficient way to turn your passion into your mission is to emulate what someone else is already doing. They saw the way these 4 people lived their life and used it as the recipe for their success. But it's worth it. You deserve to pursue your passions, you deserve to live your mission, you deserve to live a meaningful life.

The journey must always be evolving and adapting in order for your life to remain meaningful. There are two types of changes that Joshua and Ryan explain we take; — Giant leaps: those immediate and sizeable changes that have a dramatic effect. Ending a relationship, quitting a job.

The decision to make a change is the very first step to take. And when you have the realisation that you are going to do this, your journey has only just begun. Joshua and Ryan recommend that you use leverage to speed up the change process.

This is where it all begins and the small steps add up to massive change. Before you know it, you can look back at where you started and be proud of how far you have come.