One of the obstacles I felt during our recent 30-day digital declutter was getting myself (and others) to buy in to the two-fold commitment. What I love about the analog challenge is it encourages people to jump directly to engaging in high-quality leisure activity. This has a way of lessening - even if just briefly - the sense of anxious despair that emanates from the online upside down. There’s nothing more fundamentally human than gathering with a group of real people in real life to work on something real together. For many people, this might be the hardest commitment, but it’s arguably one of the most important, especially as we enter a political season where the pseudo-anonymity and limbic-triggers of the online world attempt to bring out the worst in us.
#Cal newport 30 day digital declutter full#
To get the full analog benefit here, you need to encounter and overcome the resistances of the physical landscape that surrounds you, as this is what our minds have evolved to understand as productive action. This could also be athletic, like biking, bow hunting, or, as is increasingly popular these days, Brazilian Ju Jitsu. This could be craft-based, like knitting, drawing, wood working, or, as I’ve taken to doing with my boys, building custom circuits. Participate in a skilled hobby that requires you to interact with the physical world. To hit the 20 person mark will require some advance planning: you might consider calling old friends or taking various colleagues along for lunch and coffee breaks. These conversations can be in person or over the phone/Facetime/Skype, but text-based communication doesn’t count (you must be able to hear the other person’s voice). Hold a real conversation with 20 different people during the monthlong challenge. Leave your phone at home: just observe the world around you and think. The goal is to rediscover what it feels like to make engagement with the written word an important part of your daily experience.Ĭommit to going for a walk every single day of the month. It doesn’t matter if they’re fiction or non-fiction, sophisticated or fun. The five commitments of the analog challenge are:Ĭommit to reading 3-4 new books during the month. Essentially, he was encouraging readers to embrace high quality leisure in five ways. Having recently spent copious amounts of time pondering the concepts of Cal’s book Digital Minimalism, I found the analog challenge quite interesting. I stumbled on his challenge just a few days after wrapping up the declutter here on The Focus Course blog. Unbeknownst to me, while we were plugging away at our 30-day digital declutter, Cal Newport was encouraging readers to participate in his own Analog January Challenge.
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