Update on my dumbphone v smartphone 'experiment'. Looks like the smartphone won. A couple of weeks ago I had to revert back to my Samsung 8+ and put the Nokia 105 back in its box. It just became too difficult to manage both phones and realised that in order to do my job and day to day activities, I needed the smartphone. Sending messages on Nokia was painfully slow and frustrating and I really needed quick access to my calendar and often to my emails.
So what did I learn from those two months? I learned that it's very difficult to completely break away from a device that has become integral to my working life. As I said in an earlier post, it was quite easy to use the Nokia over Christmas when I wasn't working. However, as soon as I was back working with schools it became more and more difficult to work effectively. I also appreciated how difficult it most be for our young people if we are asking them as educators to limit the amount of time spent on their smartphones and look for balance in screen time and non screen time.
But I have learned several things. The issue is not so much the smartphone itself (if you ignore it's use as a tracking / surveillance tool!) but the applications that we are using and their highly addictive qualities.
- I now haven't logged into Facebook for several weeks and to be honest feel much happier and haven't missed it at all. You should try it yourselves, I promise you you'll feel better in yourself and it's not just me saying this. The next step is to delete the account. Sounds easy but I need an account to post to a page I post to. I don't need to login into Facebook directly to do this as I use Hootsuite to manage social media postings to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram but I still need an account. I may ask my wife if I can use her account details instead of mine to post to the page.
- Stopped using my personal Twitter account and only use my business related account. I still need this to see what people are posting in the education world and for me to post out to my followers. I'm aware that I'm starting to read this quite regularly again and need to cut back a little on using it. I haven't installed the Twitter app and use it through a browser. The intention is to make it more difficult for myself to just simply click on an app and start pointlessly browsing.
- Switched off app notification sounds and also switched off location services to those applications who don't need it.
- With regards to privacy. Now using the Brave browser on my laptop and smartphone and use DuckDuckGo as my search engine. Using Brave and DuckDuckGo on my smartphone and iPad. DuckDuckGo also has a browser version which I use on my phone and iPad.
- Slowly trying to remove myself from the Google universe, which is going to be a long job. I've now started paying to use ProtonMail. It's a secure email based in Switzerland. All emails are secured automatically with end-to-end encryption. This means that even they cannot decrypt and read your emails. As a result, your encrypted emails cannot be shared with third parties. It's also built on open source software which I understand means that ProtonMail code is transparent allowing the open source community see how it's built and can't hide any back door access to others. I'm also using their ProtonVPN which can further safeguard online privacy. I've been cleaning up my data held by Google, removing search and location data. I've also set it to automatically clear every three months. Would love to start moving my personal files out of Google Drive but I'm waiting for ProtonMail to develop a cloud file hosting platform. I believe this is on their roadmap but may take sometime.
- Changed passwords for nearly all websites I use to unique ones for each account. Yes, I know I should I done that before but I'm only human!
I realise it's difficult, if not impossible to completely remove yourself from the digital world, especially when you've invested so much time and effort in the last 10 years or more in utilising many of the tools. Also, I'm not trying to be a luddite or technophobe, I'm just trying to get some balance back in my life. Technology has provided some amazing things. I couldn't have set up my business and run it the way I do without certain digital applications. We are in daily contact through digital applications with my daughter who is currently travelling through Australia - that's amazing. However, I never imagined I (we) would become so reliant or addicted to some of the applications used and ending up feeling so negative or exhausted after using them. So it was great to see that someone has a term for what I've been trying to do - Digital Minimalism. I've just started reading the book with that title by Cal Newport and it is about living better with less technology.
So what did I learn from those two months? I learned that it's very difficult to completely break away from a device that has become integral to my working life. As I said in an earlier post, it was quite easy to use the Nokia over Christmas when I wasn't working. However, as soon as I was back working with schools it became more and more difficult to work effectively. I also appreciated how difficult it most be for our young people if we are asking them as educators to limit the amount of time spent on their smartphones and look for balance in screen time and non screen time.
But I have learned several things. The issue is not so much the smartphone itself (if you ignore it's use as a tracking / surveillance tool!) but the applications that we are using and their highly addictive qualities.
- I now haven't logged into Facebook for several weeks and to be honest feel much happier and haven't missed it at all. You should try it yourselves, I promise you you'll feel better in yourself and it's not just me saying this. The next step is to delete the account. Sounds easy but I need an account to post to a page I post to. I don't need to login into Facebook directly to do this as I use Hootsuite to manage social media postings to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram but I still need an account. I may ask my wife if I can use her account details instead of mine to post to the page.
- Stopped using my personal Twitter account and only use my business related account. I still need this to see what people are posting in the education world and for me to post out to my followers. I'm aware that I'm starting to read this quite regularly again and need to cut back a little on using it. I haven't installed the Twitter app and use it through a browser. The intention is to make it more difficult for myself to just simply click on an app and start pointlessly browsing.
- Switched off app notification sounds and also switched off location services to those applications who don't need it.
- With regards to privacy. Now using the Brave browser on my laptop and smartphone and use DuckDuckGo as my search engine. Using Brave and DuckDuckGo on my smartphone and iPad. DuckDuckGo also has a browser version which I use on my phone and iPad.
- Slowly trying to remove myself from the Google universe, which is going to be a long job. I've now started paying to use ProtonMail. It's a secure email based in Switzerland. All emails are secured automatically with end-to-end encryption. This means that even they cannot decrypt and read your emails. As a result, your encrypted emails cannot be shared with third parties. It's also built on open source software which I understand means that ProtonMail code is transparent allowing the open source community see how it's built and can't hide any back door access to others. I'm also using their ProtonVPN which can further safeguard online privacy. I've been cleaning up my data held by Google, removing search and location data. I've also set it to automatically clear every three months. Would love to start moving my personal files out of Google Drive but I'm waiting for ProtonMail to develop a cloud file hosting platform. I believe this is on their roadmap but may take sometime.
- Changed passwords for nearly all websites I use to unique ones for each account. Yes, I know I should I done that before but I'm only human!
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| Digital Minimalism - Cal Newport |
I realise it's difficult, if not impossible to completely remove yourself from the digital world, especially when you've invested so much time and effort in the last 10 years or more in utilising many of the tools. Also, I'm not trying to be a luddite or technophobe, I'm just trying to get some balance back in my life. Technology has provided some amazing things. I couldn't have set up my business and run it the way I do without certain digital applications. We are in daily contact through digital applications with my daughter who is currently travelling through Australia - that's amazing. However, I never imagined I (we) would become so reliant or addicted to some of the applications used and ending up feeling so negative or exhausted after using them. So it was great to see that someone has a term for what I've been trying to do - Digital Minimalism. I've just started reading the book with that title by Cal Newport and it is about living better with less technology.
Minimalism is the art of knowing how much is just enough. Digital minimalism applies this idea to our personal technology. It's the key to living a better and more focused life.I'll finish with this quote from Cal:
"...we cannot passively allow the wild tangle of tools, entertainments, and distractions provided by the internet age to dictate how we spend our time or how we feel. We must instead take steps to extract the good from these technologies while sidestepping what's bad. We require a philosophy that puts our aspirations and values once again in charge of our daily experience, all the while dethroning primal whims and the business models of Silicon Valley from their current dominance of this role: a philosophy that accepts new technologies, but not if the price is the dehumanization Andrew Sullivan warned us about; a philosophy that prioritizes long term meaning over short term satisfaction."Digital Minimalism - On living better with less technology, Cal Newport, 2019, Penguin Random House, page XVIII
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