Preamble

While I read a lot of reviews before deciding on which book to read, I’ve always refrained from writing a review myself. This is because I used to be worried that I might not do justice to the book or that I might inadvertently highlight something seemingly unimportant which I should have overlooked and instead highlighted another positive attribute about the book. Recently I realised that it’s alright and no one’s going to be mad at me if I say something silly or stupid. Given that I hardly have few readers as of this writing, if one (or more) of them think that I’m being silly, I’ll sleep peacefully knowing that there’s someone out there who has willingly read my post fully before deciding to send me a scathing email as to how I ‘insulted’ their favourite book. All that being said, my reviews are going to be nice as there’s no point in talking about the books I didn’t enjoy. Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, here’s my first book review.

Review

If only we had more time after work, we’d spend it reading a book, or going out for a walk, or indulging in a hobby. Sounds relatable?

Cal Newport argues that minimizing the use of technology for low-quality leisures would ultimately result in us find time for high-quality leisure. Examples of low-quality leisures are browsing social media or texting a friend, while high-quality leisure would be going out for a walk, gardening, reading a book, or carpentry.

He takes us through the need behind digital decluttering and how it would help us grow as a human being, just like we were meant to. While the arguments he makes would not sit well with the heads of any social media company today, we as readers can relate to how much the so-called ‘digital decade’ has played its magic on us, unsuspecting victims, pulling us into a state of believing in likes and comments and not to mention an insatiable desire for validation from our friends, colleagues, the society, and sometimes the unknown ‘channel subscribers’ from halfway across the world.

The book comprises of two parts viz., Foundations and Practices. Under Foundations, the author addresses the current state of things in the digital world and how we arrived here. This is to help us understand that despite the brilliant advantages that technology offers us, there are parts of what was once conceived as a means of silly entertainment for a short while turned out to be so addictive that we are constantly distracted by their notifications, not to mention the strategies such companies employ to keep us coming back for more. This is virtually equivalent to a gambler in front of a slot machine putting in coins thinking he’ll win his losses back in the next pull. The second part addresses the how-to. The ideas discussed are so captivating that we can easily relate to them and can implement in our day-to-day lives. It gives us a lot of practical ‘way out’ from the pull of Social Media, Instant Messaging, and even emails. To piggyback on the gambler analogy, the author explains about how to cut the losses and step out of the casino.

One of the points I found interesting from reading the book is that as long as we have too many silly things on a given day that we have to attend to, for example, the need to instantly like/comment every time someone posts something or having to instantly reply to every text/email, we will never find time to indulge ourselves in activities that necessitate time and practice. As we get older, we like to have fewer items on our plate that we want to attend to. Having to indulge in less number of activities doesn’t mean we’re lazy, it’s quite the opposite. It means that we can only concentrate on a limited number of high-quality activities that deeply resonate with us. In the long run, it would make us happier that we associated ourselves with things that matter to us rather than flitting from one activity to another. That’s what the book sets out to achieve and it does a good job doing that.

4/5 Stars!

Note: The same review is available in Goodreads.