Where did I hear of Penelope Fitzgerald? I can’t remember, but I believe I read about her recently.

It’s a subtle feeling, one I can’t substantiate. I could, I suppose, spend hours paging through my precarious stacks of magazines. There’s also the finger-snapping quickness of the Internet—which informs me that some 30 New Yorker articles in the past couple decades have made mention of her. None of these, however, jog my memory.

Perhaps this is fitting, as Penelope Fitzgerald is a writer of subtlety, who has herself, as an author, tended to fly under the radar. But she’s far from an unknown: even, apparently, to me. So when I was recently browsing through a little bookshop, and noticed a little book called The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald—I snatched it up.

The Bookshop is about an unassuming woman who opens up a bookshop in a remote corner of England. The novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and rightly so. The following passage, which ends a chapter, is a good example of the subtlety of Fitzgerald’s writing:

“She herself was going to take the ferry across the Laze, as it was early-closing day, to deliver thirty Complete Wild Flower Recognition Handbooks to the Women’s Institute. Remembering this, she took the top book off the crisp pile and looked through the illustrations for the green marsh plant which Raven had shown to her. It was not mentioned.”

Ah! So delicate, this passage. But why was the green marsh plant—the one plant, of all the plants on earth, most meaningful to the protagonist, as it was shown to her by a true friend, of which she had very few—not mentioned in the “complete” guide?

Perhaps the green marsh plant was not scientifically classified as a wildflower. Or perhaps the plant’s omission from the book was an error. But this is beside the point. The point is more filamentary. It has to do with the overlooked, the missing, the forgotten phenomena of the world.

What, after all, is the value of minute remembrance? What is the value of the overlooked, all those who are ignored by the public at large? What, indeed, is the value of books and magazines, when they never seem to contain what you’re really looking for?

During a Meetup event, the inquisitive one was chatting with an acquaintance. The acquaintance mentioned an unfortunate need to take a trip to the local department of motor vehicles. As it happened, the inquisitive one had the same unfortunate need. The two decided to visit the DMV together.

Early one chilly morning, an hour before it opened, they met at the DMV. There was already a long line. They stood together, in the cold wind, for an hour. With frozen fingers, faces, toes, and bones, they finally entered the building. They each took a ticket. Then they sat for hours on hard plastic chairs that didn’t fit the curves of their butts. The high, flickering florescent lights were round and ugly. The floor was spectacularly dirty. Finally, the acquaintance’s number was called, and the acquaintance stood up.

“If I don’t see you on my way out, have a nice afternoon!” said the acquaintance.

“You, too,” said the inquisitive one. “This was fun!”

“It was!” said the acquaintance.

At the next Meetup event, the inquisitive one and the acquaintance fell into conversation again. The inquisitive one mentioned an unfortunate need to file taxes. As it happened, the acquaintance had the same unfortunate need. The two decided to meet at the inquisitive one’s house and work on their taxes: separately, but simultaneously in the same room.

The acquaintance arrived at the inquisitive one’s house with a laptop and a large stack of papers. For many hours, they separately muscled their way through various forms and schedules. They puzzled over whether their dividends were qualified, ordinary, extraordinary, or woefully incompetent. They tried to recall how the Washington hockey team had played during 2018, so they could claim their Capitals gains (or losses). They had both, fortunately, kept records on how many times they had passed sugar around their tables, so they easily filled in their respective lines next to “Lump sum distributions.”

Both the inquisitive one and the acquaintance had several setbacks and restarts, upon realizing they had made mistakes. The heads of both the inquisitive one and the acquaintance started to hurt very badly. The two of them toiled and toiled until, finally, the acquaintance announced completion.

“Congrats on finishing your taxes!” said the inquisitive one. “I’m almost done, too. Goodbye, and have a great evening!”

“Good luck, and see you later,” said the acquaintance. “This was fun!”

“It was!” said the inquisitive one.

At the next Meetup event, the two approached each other.

“Hi!” said the acquaintance. “One of my favorite musicians is performing at a local venue next month. Do you want to go with me?”

“Why on earth would we do that?!” the inquisitive one cried out.

“Oh!” the acquaintance cried out.

“Just kidding!” said the inquisitive one.

“Yay!” said the friend.

What do women really want? Flowers? Chocolate? Doors opened for them? To be tied up on a train track and saved in the nick of time?

Honestly, I have no idea. I have a hard enough time figuring out what I want—let alone all women on earth!

So let’s talk about something I do know about: what you want. You, apparently, want to read a blog post called “What Women Really Want.” Furthermore, it’s likely that at least some of you want to read such a blog post not because, ten minutes ago, you were thinking to yourself, “The best use of my time right now would be to read a blog post about what women really want!”—but, rather, because you saw the title and felt mildly intrigued, while also feeling disinclined to do something more cognitively demanding than clicking a link.

In other words, it’s possible that some of this post’s readers—not you, of course!—fell for the clickbait I so slyly threw out there. But, trust me, they’re not alone! I succumb to clickbait all the time. I mean, it’s called “bait” because it lures us helplessly in! Moth to a flame! Nonetheless, however you ended up here, I’m genuinely glad you did, because I want to tell you about a great book called Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport.

Newport dedicates three separate chapters of the book to three different ways that we can spend the free time we will acquire if we stop mindlessly clicking around on the Internet. According to Newport, these three uses of time are essential to human health and happiness, and yet are often neglected in the digital age:

• Solitude
• Conversation
• Demanding activities

At this point, I’d like to share a passage from Newport’s book. It’s from his chapter on demanding activities, but, in my opinion, it applies to all three of his recommended uses of time:

“The value you receive from a pursuit is often proportional to the energy invested. We might tell ourselves there’s no greater reward after a hard day at the office than to have an evening entirely devoid of plans or commitments. But we then find ourselves, several hours of idle watching and screen tapping later, somehow more fatigued than when we began. . . . If you instead rouse the motivation to spend that same time actually doing something—even if it’s hard—you’ll likely end the night feeling better.”

Obviously, demanding activities are hard. (I’m trying to learn French at the moment, and facile isn’t exactly a word that applies.) But I would argue that solitude and conversation are also hard, at least for us moderns. With various technologies filling every waking moment, carving out time for solitude and conversation is hard to do. It’s also hard to learn how to enjoy being alone, or how to enjoy being social, if those aren’t activities that come naturally to you. But I agree with Newport that the hard work does pay off.

And if you have made it through this entire, 500-word blog post? Congratulations: that counts as a demanding activity! Will you also make time to be alone and to be social today?

I already knew, before beginning the book Digital Minimalism, that its author Cal Newport is no fan of social media. He argues against it regularly on his blog.

Yep, he draws a distinction between social media and blogging. For example, in his recent blog post On Blogs in the Social Media Age, he explains why popular blogs are more likely to have high-quality content than popular social media feeds.

What I didn’t see coming was Newport’s objection to the “Like” (sometimes called “Favorite”) buttons that are ubiquitous on modern social media platforms. In Digital Minimalism, he writes at length about what seems to be an innocent enough feature. And he makes a compelling argument for it being neither innocent nor harmless.

The “Like” button, Newport explains, is sleazy and harmful because it transforms a website from a “fun amusement” to a “digital slot machine.” In other words, social media companies use their “Like” buttons to addict people in the same way that slot machines are addictive. The difference is that slot machines take money directly, while social media sites get money from advertisers when many people spend lots of time clicking around. Logging in and seeing that red notification saying that someone “Liked” your post gives the brain a pleasureful ping—which we crave again and again.

So we lose time that we could spend otherwise. Newport describes many of the types of activities we are missing out on. One of the most important of these, ironically, is social interaction: the very thing social media is supposed to be providing us! He cites research studies that show that the more time people spend on social media, the lonelier they tend to be. Yikes! And here’s one of my favorite passages in the book, which neatly explains the difference between clicking “Like” and engaging in activities that prevent loneliness:

“Earlier, I cited extensive research that supports the claim that the human brain has evolved to process the flood of information generated by face-to-face interactions. To replace this rich flow with a single bit is the ultimate insult to our social processing machinery. To say it’s like driving a Ferrari under the speed limit is an understatement; the better simile is towing a Ferrari behind a mule.”

Ha! No, let’s not waste our time towing luxury cars behind pack animals! Though I suppose it might be necessary in certain circumstances. Pack animals do travel rough, mountainous terrain better than sports cars. And the “Like” button can keep people in touch despite the rocky terrain of busy lives and far distances. Newport admits that social media can provide real benefits to individuals: it’s not all bad. His point is that we should think carefully about how we spend our time, and make darn sure that we aren’t replacing rich and real human interaction with the poorest sort of contact possible.

I chose the accompanying photo because I like that it can symbolize this post’s theme in two opposite ways. Does the computer represent the human brain and all its rich processing power, while the candle represents the “Like” button and its limited ability to illuminate? Or does the candle represent the real-world homeyness of sharing a space with someone, while the computer represents the coldness of machines?

You travel to the tropics and arrive at your beachfront lodging. Tired, you take a 20-minute nap. You awaken and decide to go out into the hot sun. All your stuff is laid out before you, as in this photo. Which of these items do you reach for first—before touching any of the other items?

Don’t think about it too much. Just look at the photo, pretend the stuff is yours, and envision reaching for one of your things. What do you grab?

If you grabbed your phone—so you could check whether you’d gotten any texts, emails, or social media notifications during the past 20 minutes—you may, according to Cal Newport in his most recent book, suffer from a particularly subtle, invidious, pervasive, and modern addiction.

Three years ago, Newport brought us the book Deep Work, which elucidates truths about the human brain, as regards getting things done. As it turns out, to be maximally productive, we need periods of deep work—that is, sustained concentration on difficult tasks—but also breaks from deep work. Trouble comes when people’s schedules become unbalanced one way or the other. For most people, the scales tip toward too much time doing mindless things like Internet surfing, and not enough time in sustained concentration.

In his newest book, Newport examines the causes behind why so many people have difficulty carving out time for deep work. Unsurprisingly, he identifies digital devices, their applications and apps, and how we incorporate them into our days as key culprits. Also unsurprisingly, he uncovers evidence that large, web-based corporations that profit off people’s time (through advertising revenue) actively strive to foster addiction among their users. Newport then recommends remedies for us hapless addicts (and I def include myself in that category!).

The 2019 book is called Digital Minimalism. In its opening pages, Newport defines the term digital minimalism:

“A philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else.”

FOMO is not permitted in Newport’s philosophical world! To cure readers of its pull, he recommends taking a one-month hiatus from all nonessential digital use. Only then, he says, can one break the compulsive habit and gain enough perspective to make rational decisions on how to reincorporate nonessential digital activities into one’s daily life.

And so, I took the month-long journey. I did not use social media for the month of February, with some exceptions for essential activities. For example, I manage the social media accounts for the company I work for; naturally, I continued to perform this paid work. There were also instances in which I needed to log in to the sites to access information or communicate with people whom I could not conveniently contact another way. In addition, I deleted some of my most tempting phone apps and used only my laptop to access those sites. I also turned off, or restricted by time of day, my phone notifications. And I used an app blocker to prevent me from accessing certain apps at certain times of day.

I wish I could say that taking this journey cured me. I still struggle to control my urge to check, check, check, all day long. I am still experimenting with different phone settings and personal codes of conduct, in an attempt to hold on to the biggest benefits of owning a smart phone, while also avoiding disruption to more important life activities. However, even though digital minimalism is still, for me, an unrealized goal, I have seen big improvements in my quality of life. I do have more time in my day when I’m not being constantly sucked into the digital app vortex. I do feel better able to concentrate on deep work tasks. And the next time I take an actual journey, maybe—just maybe!—I’ll reach for the flip-flops first.

Have you taken any minimalist journeys lately?