In the public consciousness, Marie Kondo is that woman who tells you to get rid of everything that doesn’t spark joy. It sounds like it’s about throwing things away.

But if you pay attention to what Marie Kondo actually says, you’ll find that her method is not about getting rid of things.

It’s about envisioning the life that you want — what you want to do in your home, who you want to spend time with there, how you want each room to serve your goals — and then designing your home around that vision. This inevitably involves getting rid of detritus that no longer serves you, but that’s only in service of pursuing your ideal life.

Digital minimalism is the exact same thing, for your digital life instead of your physical home. It’s not, at root, about deleting apps or even using your devices less.

It’s about figuring out what you actually want to be doing with your time, and then designing your life around that. This will likely require significant changes to how you relate to your devices, but only in service of, again, pursuing your ideal life.

A note on terminology:

The term ‘digital minimalism’ turns a lot of people off, because it sounds like it’s demanding that they give up their beloved devices entirely, and that’s a deal-breaker. When Cal Newport coined the term, he meant to invoke an existing modern ‘minimalist’ movement, but this nuance is lost in everyday usage.

I prefer to think of it as ‘digital intentionality’, which conveys the core of the philosophy without being needlessly controversial. But I know ‘digital minimalism’ already has a lot of memetic power, so I’ll continue using that.

So, to reiterate, digital minimalism does not mean giving up everything good that your devices provide. It only asks you to go through a period of seriously evaluating your device use, to help you create a digital life that actually serves your goals.

The original book Digital Minimalism centers around planning and executing a thirty-day digital declutter.

During the declutter, you strip your life of all optional device use. (The book defines optional as things that “you can step away from… without creating harm or major problems in either your professional or personal life”.) Then, in all your newfound free time, you “explore and rediscover activities and behaviors that you find satisfying and meaningful”. Afterwards, you reintroduce optional technologies only if they’re the best way to support something you deeply value.

A thirty-day time frame is long enough to actually change habits, but short enough that the end is always in sight — so even if it sometimes feels impossibly hard, you can usually find the strength to persevere.

I did my first digital declutter with my boyfriend in October of 2023. We both rediscovered reading books, after not doing it for years. I went for long walks by myself, and learned how to talk to strangers, and sat in a park watching children and butterflies. I journaled a lot and was surprised by how many ideas I suddenly had, now that I wasn’t constantly consuming other people’s thoughts.

That makes it sound magical. Some days, it felt that way, especially when the sun was up. But other times, it was harrowing. One night in the first week, sitting in my dark, silent apartment, I found my feelings too unbearable, and I scrolled on Facebook for an hour.

This isn’t surprising, or uncommon. You don’t suddenly become able to sit with your thoughts and feelings on the first day, after years of looking at your phone every moment you feel the slightest boredom or discomfort. It takes practice.

Ultimately, those unbearable feelings were really important to feel. They’re how I realized that a lot of things in my life were not working for me. Within six months after my digital declutter, I’d left my husband, moved into a new apartment with my boyfriend, and gotten a job after a year of unemployment — things I already knew I needed to do, but had been avoiding. My boyfriend, on the other hand, just got a cool new apartment with his girlfriend.

A lot of the benefits of digital minimalism started right away – more mental space, higher quality time with my loved ones, some indefinable sense of feeling more human. Some things got worse before they got better. Most benefits have deepened over time.

I did another digital declutter month in October of 2024, and I wrote in my diary “digital minimalism has been so easy I barely remember I’m doing it”. Last month I did my third digital declutter, and it mostly just felt like living my life.

My relationship with technology feels sustainable, and it supports the life I want. I want other people to have that, too.