Digital minimalism: How I’m changing my habits around digital consumption

In the past few months, I’ve been deeply rethinking my relationship with our digital world. Most significantly, that has meant a deep and critical re-examination of how I interact with social media, but it’s bigger than that, too—I’ve been rethinking how I consume digital content as a whole, both as a creator (used here to mean someone who posts online, as not as a euphemism for influencer) and as an audience member.

I have a lot of thoughts on this (surprise!) so I’ve put together this list of the four more tactical steps I’ve taken to change my digital consumption patterns. Let’s jump in.

1. Leaving social media

When we think of digital minimalism, I think social media is probably the first thing that comes up. It’s often the most immediate way that we interact with the digital world, the most ingrained habit in the internet space. And we’ve all seen people announce their “social media breaks” (guilty 🙋‍♀️) as they take a step back for any of myriad reasons.

I am one of those people. I first took myself off Instagram and TikTok in February during a rough mental health patch, but returned after a few weeks. Going back was fun for the first week or two, but then all the things that had made me leave in the first place started sneaking back in. I found myself getting overwhelmed with the flood of ALL THE INFORMATION ALL OF THE TIME, angry from being bombarded constantly with the opinions of others, scared and depressed about the state of the world, overstimulated and annoyed by ads and influencers selling me shit I didn’t need, and yet still entirely hooked in, day after day, post after post, scroll scroll scroll scroll scroll.

And so, about two months ago, I left again. My plan was for this to be temporary—it was the start of summer, I was beginning a new job, and it felt like a good opportunity to clear up some mental space. But two months in, I don’t know if I’m going back.

Now, I want to stop here and say that I don’t begrudge anyone their use of social media—everyone has a different relationship with social media and manages that relationship in their own way. And if you’re someone who has been online forever like me, it’s hard to walk away. There are plenty of times that I miss being in the loop, plenty of times I miss keeping up with friends and local events and small businesses I support and causes I believe in.

But that being said, quitting has had an exponentially positive effect on my life. I could go on and on about the time it has freed up, the mental space I now have, the return of my attention span, the new hobbies I’ve picked up. But there are plenty of people who have said that before (…including me, in my newsletter). So I’ll just tell you that being out of the loop kinda rocks. It’s quiet over here. I like it a lot.

2. Daily journalling

One of the habits that has really kicked off since leaving social media has been journaling. I’ve journaled on and off my whole life—I have a row of ten Moleskines that I filled over the course of my twenties—but I had fallen out of the habit in the past few years. When I was going through my rough patch this winter I started dabbling again, and it was like the floodgates opened. I tumbled (to mix metaphors) right down the rabbit hole, and can now hold a full-length conversation about my favourite Japanese stationery.

The thing that unlocked journaling for me again was the realisation that I was allowed to have fun with it. Journaling had always been a very serious, angsty experience for me (and still sometimes is). But it has also become something joyful—I print out photos to glue into my journal, I slather the pages in colourful markers, I over-use stickers egregiously just because it’s so fucking fun. It’s become my new favourite thing and I look forward to it every day. It’s a highly tactical, really real form of self-care and I find it massively satisfying.

For those curious: the brown journal is a regular sized Traveler’s Company journal with with three separate notebooks inside: one for my daily planning, one for work notes, and one as my actual journal. The Hobonichi Techo Avec is the July-December version, and I use it for scrapbooking/doodling/memory-keeping/drawing/whatever-I-want-ing. I also have strong opinions about pens, but we’ll save that conversation for another time.

3. No phone in the bedroom

One of the more significant changes in my digital habits happened back in February, when I was in a pretty bad mental space and was finding anything digital completely overwhelming (to the point that I couldn’t even look at my Kindle and had to go back to paper books for a while). One big change I made during that time was to stop bringing my phone into the bedroom. I bought a cheap old school alarm clock and got into the habit of charging my phone in my office overnight.

This has been a total game changer, and it’s something I’ve kept on since. Every night my phone and smart watch go on their charging stands in my office around 9pm, right when my sleep mode clicks on, and they stay there until I get up for the day the following morning.

That’s not to say that all technology is banned from the bedroom: I’ll sometimes bring my iPad in if I want to fall asleep to something or if I’m feeling like having a cozy Pinterest session snuggled under the covers. But removing the phone has broken maybe my worst digital habit: scrolling social media mindlessly first thing in the morning, right after my alarm has gone off. Instead, I now don’t look at my phone at all until I’m up and out of bed and ready for the day.

Just recently I had an interesting experiment with this. My husband was gone for a week and, being a woman alone in the house, I broke my own rule and kept my phone at my bedside while he was away. I hated it. Not only was my sleep worse (although we could blame that on a bunch of different factors), but every single morning I woke up and reached for it automatically. Even with social media gone, I still found myself reading the news or scrolling through useless information before I’d even fully woken up. It left me in a gross mood and started my days off badly. Lesson learnt—the phone stays away from my room.

4. A minimalist phone setup

My phone was definitely where a lot of my angst around my digital habits was coming from, and as such it has become the place where a lot has changed. Nowadays, this is what my phone usually looks like: a chill background colour, a focus switcher at the top, and widgets for my calendar, Spotify (go listen to Rattled & Shook if you like spooky things!), and my Favourites folder of pictures I’ve taken (that one is a beaver swimming through the marshes on a hike last spring).

This setup does a few things for me. For one, it keeps my most-used apps front and centre, while pushing everything that’s distracting to the back. When I need to interact with, say, my email, I can just scroll over for Gmail. Otherwise, things that need my attention end up in the Notification Center, where they’re easily accessible.

On that note, the other thing that’s huge here is the Focus switcher at the top (there are tons of videos on how to build this on YouTube). On weekdays I pretty much live in my Daily Focus, which basically allows phone calls, some apps, and messages from my husband through. Deep Focus just allows my husband and my doorbell app to get through, and Do Not Disturb mutes absolutely everything. I find it impossible to tune out incoming notifications, so this really helps me stay in control and better manage my relationship with my phone.

Taking control

As I’ve been writing this, I’ve realised that at the base of all these steps is the idea of taking ownership over my interactions. I’ve always felt somewhat at the mercy of social media/my phone (which really just means obligations and expectations from the outside world) and taking these steps has been a process of learning that I actually control how I move in the world.

I hope that some of this is helpful or food for thought for your own interactions in the digital space! ✌️