You have been trained to reach for your phone the second you get bored, and it is quietly costing you the ability to think.
Cal Newport, a computer science professor and the author of Deep Work, sat down with Lewis and explained why he has never once had a social media account. He also wrote Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, and to test the idea he ran a 30-day declutter with about 1,600 readers who sent back reports on what happened when they stepped away.
The results are hard to shake. Roughly half found no real value in social media and dropped it for good. Of the half who did find value, like visual artists who needed Instagram to see other people’s work, about 95% moved it off their phones entirely and onto a scheduled desktop session, sometimes twenty minutes on a Sunday night. Cal also points to college mental health centers that saw anxiety cases jump around fivefold the same year students started arriving on campus with smartphones.
Lewis tells his own story here too. Fifteen straight years with a phone on him every single day, then a trip to Hawaii where he left it at home. He got lost, asked strangers for directions at a gas station, and by day two he was floating in the ocean with zero anxiety. Cal calls that the baseline, not a breakthrough.
Listen and you will start noticing the small reach for your pocket at dinner, in line, on a walk. Then you will try leaving the thing at home once, and find out what your own thoughts sound like again.
Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload
Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love
