Georgetown computer scientist Cal Newport's Deep Work sparked a movement around the idea that unbroken concentration produces far more value than the electronic busyness that defines the modern work day. But his readers had an urgent follow-up question: What about technology in our personal lives?
In recent years, our culture's relationship with personal technology has transformed from something exciting into something darker. Innovations like smartphones and social media are useful, but many of us are increasingly troubled by how much control these tools seem to exert over our daily experiences--including how we spend our free time and how we feel about ourselves.
In Digital Minimalism, Newport proposes a bold solution: a minimalist approach to technology use in which you radically reduce the time you spend online, focusing on a small set of carefully-selected activities while happily ignoring the rest.
He mounts a vigorous defense for this less-is-more approach, combining historical examples with case studies of modern digital minimalists to argue that this philosophy isn't a rejection of technology, but instead a necessary realignment to ensure that these tools serve us, not the other way around.
To make these principles practical, he takes us inside the growing subculture of digital minimalists who have built rich lives on a foundation of intentional technology use, and details a decluttering process that thousands have already used to simplify their online lives. He also stresses the importance of never clicking "like," explores the underappreciated value of analog hobbies, and draws lessons from the "attention underground"--a resistance movement fighting the tech companies' attempts to turn us into gadget addicts.
Digital Minimalism is an indispensable guide for anyone looking to reclaim their life from the alluring diversions of the digital world.

The goal of this book is to make the case for digital minimalism, including a more detailed exploration of what it asks and why it works, and then to teach you how to adopt this philosophy if you decide it’s right for you.
To do so, I divided the book into two parts. In part 1, I describe the philosophical underpinnings of digital minimalism, starting with a closer examination of the forces that are making so many people’s digital lives increasingly intolerable, before moving on to a detailed discussion of the digital minimalism philosophy, including my argument for why it’s the right solution to these problems. Part 1 concludes by introducing my suggested method for adopting this philosophy: the digital declutter. As I’ve argued, aggressive action is needed to fundamentally transform your relationship with technology. The digital declutter provides this aggressive action.
This process requires you to step away from optional online activities for thirty days. During this period, you’ll wean yourself from the cycles of addiction that many digital tools can instill, and begin to rediscover the analog activities that provide you deeper satisfaction. You’ll take walks, talk to friends in person, engage your community, read books, and stare at the clouds. Most importantly, the declutter gives you the space to refine your understanding of the things you value most. At the end of the thirty days, you will then add back a small number of carefully chosen online activities that you believe will provide massive benefit to these things you value. Going forward, you’ll do your best to make these intentional activities the core of your online life—leaving behind most of the other distracting behaviors that used to fragment your time and snare your attention. The declutter acts as a jarring reset: you come into the process a frazzled maximalist and leave an intentional minimalist. In this final chapter of part 1, I’ll guide you through implementing your own digital declutter. In doing so, I’ll draw extensively on an experiment I ran in the early winter of 2018 in which over 1,600 people agreed to perform a digital declutter under my guidance and report back about their experience. You’ll hear these participants’ stories and learn what strategies worked well for them, and what traps they encountered that you should avoid.
The second part of this book takes a closer look at some ideas that will help you cultivate a sustainable digital minimalism lifestyle. In these chapters, I examine issues such as the importance of solitude and the necessity of cultivating high-quality leisure to replace the time most now dedicate to mindless device use. I propose and defend the perhaps controversial claim that your relationships will strengthen if you stop clicking “Like” or leaving comments on social media posts, and become harder to reach by text messages. I also provide an insider look at the attention resistance—a loosely organized movement of individuals who use high-tech tools and strict operating procedures to extract value from the products of the digital attention economy, while avoiding falling victim to compulsive use.
Each chapter in part 2 concludes with a collection of practices, which are concrete tactics designed to help you act on the big ideas of the chapter. As a budding digital minimalist, you can view the part 2 practices as a toolbox meant to aid your efforts to build a minimalist lifestyle that works for your particular circumstances.