Tag: digital fast

What I Learned After a Month of Digital Minimalism

In late March, I read Cal Newport’s insightful new book, Digital Minimalism (affiliate link). In it, he proposed a digital fast–that is, a time period of at least thirty days where you would dramatically curtail your social media usage and steeply curb the amount of time you spent on electronics devices.

He proposed setting strict boundaries for yourself around your electronics usage, such as only checking email once per day, and taking a break from all social media for the month.

The idea, he said, was to interrupt your social media usage patterns to get a better idea of how and how much you were using social media and to break the mindless usage.

At the same time, he recommended cultivating some new activities for your leisure time, something he found to be critical as you broke the hold of your social media on your life.

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A Year of Good Money: A Digital Fast

What does a digital fast have to do with getting better at money? I think it might be quite a lot, actually.

This year, my family is focusing on making better spending decisions. To that end, we’re (I’m) engaging in twelve eleven (I forgot in March) money experiments designed to help us reexamine our spending patterns and hopefully, get better at them. I’m calling this A Year of Good Money.

In February, I took on a no-spending challenge, my Frugal February challenge, and we spent less than we had in a year. The crazy part was, I was the only one in my family engaged in the challenge. I set rules for myself, which were that I would spend nothing outside of groceries, gas, and bills, but I wouldn’t involve my family members in the challenge, since Mr. ThreeYear was traveling a lot and I didn’t want to make things harder on him, and I didn’t want to stop the boys from their activities.

I think the experiment showed me how programmed I am to spend money. Sadly, in March, I went back to my old ways, and spent more than ever, as some commenters predicted. To be completely effective, it’s clear that I’ll need to engage in a no-spend period that’s longer than a month, because I did delay spending for a month, rather than stop spending in a certain category at all. Here are all of my thoughts on what I learned during the month.

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