This is a linkpost for https://mingyuan.substack.com/p/the-first-two-weeks-are-the-hardest
Kind of funny the buttermilk interaction hit me with the fact that we have always had access to the equivalent of the best AI models, asking questions about not too niche knowledge to the people around us.
I honestly wouldn't even have considered asking a stranger a cooking related question like that, but at least for myself, I would absolutely love to answer that question if a stranger asked me.
On a related note, you have access to most of the worlds experts. You can reach them via email (or twitter). Some of them have office hours.
Of course, please don't annoy people with frivolous stuff or dump crackpot writeups on them.
I did a solo bike trip across the U.S. a few years ago. There was one day in Kansas, in the middle of nowhere, where the wind was so high that I had to just buckle down. I spent the entire day in the hallway of a rest stop that connected two bathrooms.
I was posted up in there with my bike and everything, so it was pretty clear what I was doing. There was no cell service, so I was just sitting there with nothing to do.
Every time an older person came in to use the restroom, they would talk to me when they came out. We would talk about where we were headed and what I was doing, make jokes, and banter. They would usually ask me if I needed anything like help or food before wishing me the best of luck with my trip.
But the young people (people in their 20s, like me) looked at me with actual fear. They would glance at me, immediately avert their eyes, and speed-walk into the bathroom even when they were in groups. It was a horrible feeling to have people be afraid of you for just existing. While the older people stopped to make jokes, the younger crowd seemed paralyzed by "stranger danger."
I did make friends with the woman who came by twice a day to clean (she was in her early 30s). When she came back that night, she surprised me with dinner and unlocked the back storage room so I could sleep in there instead of the hallway.
It was reassuring, but the experience stuck with me. You don't realize how much young people have isolated themselves from the world until you are on the receiving end of it.
[Context: I'm not a digital minimalist but I am somewhat of a "digital reducetarian": I don't have social media (besides LinkedIn) and have a browser plugin that reduces my access to particular websites (like LessWrong).]
Cool post :)
For me, there's something "strange" here (not surprising, but unlike my own experience), where the implication is that people have huge swaths of "free time" that they use for scrolling and the like (which you instead use for what's described in this post). I spend the vast majority of my time either working or doing something with kids/lovers/friends. (I did read this post in bed preparing to start my day, and am sneaking in this comment between breakfast and work.) Plus short breaks from work, and a short time in bed before sleeping, during which I read fiction books (admittedly using digital means, but in principle I could use physical books just as well, if I could fit them all into my apartment).
It's fun to hear about your experience talking to random strangers! Catalogued it under "I would never do this but I'm glad some people do".
I did something similar last year for ~2.5 months or so. I never finished my write-up of after, but here's my before:
https://sayler.substack.com/p/on-living-with-intentionality-im
When I talk to people about it, I also say the first two weeks were certainly the hardest! I spent a lot of time journaling—the first two weeks I journaled approximately 15,000 words.
Unfortunately, once I stopped doing the minimalism thing completely, I don't think I've had any super obvious lasting effects. I do feel more confident talking to strangers, and with not checking my phone for long periods of time during social interactions. But I unfortunately don't have less attachment to technology in a grander sense.
I've sometimes wondered if what can loosely be called "pickup" or "daygame" (read: talking to strangers in the day to strike up romantic connections with them) might be anti-depressive. My instinct is that you need to be in a good mood first to attempt such a thing but it's possible it's actually a big mood booster – even just offering someone a compliment and moving on.
I tried to do complete “digital fasts” a few times before too, and the boredom can be pretty intense. I found it helps to have some stuff planned and/or some non-digital hobbies or activities you want to do already arranged ahead of time.
My own experience is very different from those described in this post. I find it relaxing instead of stressful to spend time doing nothing, and felt this way even when I was a child and hadn't started meditating regularly. I also don't enjoy using a smartphone, due to the small screen size and reliance on touch inputs, so I don't fill gaps in activities by browsing the Internet on my phone. It's also common for me to have brief interactions with strangers even though I'm young. People frequently ask me for directions when I'm on my way to or from work.
It is unbearable to not be consuming. All through the house is nothing but silence. The need inside of me is not an ache, it is caustic, sour, the burning desire to be distracted, to be listening, watching, scrolling.
Some of the time I think I’m happy. I think this is very good. I go to the park and lie on a blanket in a sun with a book and a notebook. I watch the blades of grass and the kids and the dogs and the butterflies and I’m so happy to be free.
Then there are the nights. The dark silence is so oppressive, so all-consuming. One lonely night, early on, I bike to a space where I had sometimes felt welcome, and thought I might again.
“What are you doing here?” the people ask.
“I’m three days into my month of digital minimalism and I’m so bored, I just wanted to be around people.”
No one really wants to be around me. Okay.
One of the guys had a previous life as a digital minimalism coach. “The first two weeks are the hardest,” he tells me encouragingly.
“Two WEEKS?” I want to shriek.
Hanging out there does not go well. My diary entry that night reads “I sobbed alone and life felt unbearable and I wondered what Cal Newport’s advice is when your digital declutter just uncovers that there is nothing in your life, that you are unwanted and unloved and have no community or connections”.
It is not a good night.
On a Thursday night, I think about going to a meetup. I walk to the restaurant, but I don’t see anyone I know inside, and I don’t go in. I sit on a bench nearby for half an hour, just watching people go back and forth, averting my eyes so meetup-goers won’t recognize me. A bus goes by. Three minutes later, a woman around my age sees me sitting on the bench. “Excuse me,” she says, “do you know if the bus went by yet?”
“Yeah, it did,” I tell her. “Sorry!”
“Oh, thanks!”
I’m ecstatic with the interaction, giddy. A person talked to me! I helped her!
I wander away from the bench, but I don’t want to go home yet. I usually avoid the busier, more commercial streets when I’m out walking, but today I’m drawn to them — I need to hear voices, I need things to look at, lights and colors and things that move.
I go into the Trader Joe’s on the corner of my block, just because it’s bright inside and full of people. An older man asks an older woman if she knows where the coffee is. This is something I will notice repeatedly and starkly: that only older people talk to strangers, and they seem to have learned that young people don’t want to be asked for things. Is this a post-pandemic thing? In 2019 at this same Trader Joe’s I asked a guy my age to reach something off a high shelf for me and he was happy to oblige.
In any case, the older woman does not know where the coffee is.
“Hi,” I stick my head into the conversation. “The coffee’s over there, by the bread.” I point.
“Oh, thank you!”
He’s so genuinely delighted. Is this what it could be like to go through the world?
When I get home my upstairs neighbor is outside, and I talk to him a bit. He’s in his 60s, too. Young people don’t talk to each other.
A few days later, back at that Trader Joe’s with my Post-it note shopping list in hand, I find that the store doesn’t carry buttermilk, which I need for a recipe. Standing in the long checkout line, I turn to the woman behind me.
“Do you know what I can substitute for buttermilk in a baking recipe?” I ask her. She’s in her 60s. The man behind her, in his 40s, gets into the conversation, seems happy to offer me solutions.
I tell a friend about the encounter later and they say that every part of them clenched just to hear about it. They could never imagine doing such a thing, and they have no desire to.
I hadn’t realized I had any desire to, either.