Oliver Burkeman is an expert in contrarian consolation. He’s also a former columnist at The Guardian and the author of several books that offer antidotes to the excesses of self-help culture. “Excesses” here meaning the promise offered by many books and podcasts that we can learn to be wildly productive, perfectly calm, and totally on top of things at some future date, if only we follow their formulas.

Many of us are suckers for these. Yet somehow, those ideas rarely seem to cross over from fantasy to reality.

Burkeman takes the opposite approach. Rather than teasing us with techniques that promise to turn us into productivity wizards, his titles — Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals and his newest, Meditations for Mortals — put the reality of our limited time front and center. (Because we’re all going to die, this focus also gives his work broad demographic appeal.)

Burkeman’s gentle reminders of our finitude add up to a bracing call to action: We may as well do that thing we’ve been waiting to do, imperfectly and now-ish, rather than continue to waste precious time pursuing a mirage of perfection.

Meditations for Mortals is structured as a four-week retreat for readers, with 28 daily reflections on this reality-based approach to life. Burkeman recently shared with us some of the central ideas of his latest book.

Q&A With Oliver Burkeman

Experience Life | What is imperfectionism?

Oliver Burkeman | Imperfection­ism is my umbrella term for the approach to life that I’m trying to describe in the book — one I hope to embody myself someday. It begins with accepting our limitations.

Our time is finite. There will always be too much to do. We will never be able to know the future. We can only understand a limited amount about what’s going on in the world. I wanted a name for the idea that says, OK, these limits are our reality. Now, how do we act in it? How do we do constructive, meaningful, difference-making things in it? Can we start from our lack of control and act anyway?

EL | You suggest the idea of “getting on top of things” is mainly fantasy.

OB | There’s a pretty universal desire to get to some future point at which life is all smooth sailing. And there’s plenty of productivity advice that suggests you can someday become efficient enough to handle everything that comes your way.

Yet the universe of meaningful things is much vaster than my individual bandwidth. It’s impossible for me to ever get to everything that matters to me. Realizing this can be quite relaxing. I describe this as the liberation of realizing that it’s worse than you thought.

EL | What happens when we realize that we’ll never get everything done?

OB | If you believe that getting on top of everything is difficult but somehow possible, that’s an agonizing way to live. But if you understand that getting completely on top of things is not just difficult but impossible, that may offer a relief; it’s hard to beat yourself up for not doing something that you understand you can never do.

This frees up your energy to do a few things that really count. You become absorbed in the things that you’re doing rather than seeing them only as stepping­stones to a place of ultimate control. You get to stop postponing life.

EL | What do you say to someone who’s afraid that slowing down will destroy their productivity?

OB | This notion that we’ve got to go hard at ourselves or we’ll completely slack off is not usually true. I do understand the panic in that question —  the worry that you have to keep going at a breakneck pace because good results have come from it before.

If you can allow yourself to unclench a little bit, slacking off is not what happens — at least not in my experience. Not only do you continue doing things but you do them with more energy and focus. You do things better because you’re no longer trying to spread your attention over absolutely everything.

EL | How does imperfectionism address the fear of failure?

OB | What imperfectionism says to worry is this: You will certainly get life wrong. If your goal was to do something completely perfectly, or to never waste a moment or disappoint a single person, it’s too late. That ship has sailed.

When you’re trying not to be a flawed human, you hold back. But you already are a flawed human. I find that thought motivating! If I’m already imperfect, then why not do the thing? This is definitely a contrarian form of consolation, but that’s what works for me.

EL | How might imperfectionism help us make better choices?

OB | We spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to make decisions that don’t cause any distress. But if we can accept that such consequences are unavoidable, every difficult decision becomes a question of weighing them.

Changing the time of a meeting may annoy your colleagues, but you choose to tolerate that so you can pick up your child from school. Or you accept the near-term agony of leaving an unhappy marriage to avoid the long-term suffering of staying. It’s about asking yourself which problem you want to have. There’s no way to have zero problems.

EL | What is scruffy hospitality?

OB | The phrase comes from the Anglican priest Jack King. He and his wife loved entertaining guests, but they also had this onerous checklist of tasks to complete before they’d have anyone over. So they decided to just invite people around and say, “This is how the house is, this is what we have in our cupboards, and this is what we’ve cooked for you.”

In my experience, this might mean you slightly apologetically invite people into a house that’s messy and serve them a bowl of spaghetti with tomato sauce, then find you’re more relaxed and connected than if you’d overprepared.

We put a lot of effort into maintaining our façades; sometimes that’s unavoidable. But whenever you lower them a little bit, you let people into your real life.

This is not just about dinner parties. It’s also about sharing our feelings and our failures. You’re saying that if you invite me around to your house, you don’t need to make it pristine first. And that if you’re ever feeling in a despondent mood when we hang out, you’re allowed to tell me about it.

EL | What is resonance?

OB | This comes from German social theorist Hartmut Rosa. He uses the example of a first snowfall of winter. It feels magical because it’s a gift; it isn’t something you could go out and get. It wouldn’t feel meaningful if it was a snow machine generating fake snow.

A relationship to the world that allows for resonance is, on some level, antithetical to control. We invite resonance when we aren’t trying to force life to unfold on our terms.

It’s not that all control is bad — to be completely at the mercy of your circumstances is horrifying. But you can be in a relationship with the world that’s more of a dance. You have agency and you do things, then you wait and see how the world responds.

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Goals come in all shapes and sizes. For many, especially around the turn of a calendar year, their ambitions center around shorter-term objectives like eating healthier and building strength. Others may be thinking about longer-term plans, like what they want to achieve in their careers or the travels they’ll enjoy once they’re empty nesters.

Regardless of the type of goal you set, there is one constant: What you choose to do with your time on a daily basis can influence what you ultimately achieve.

Time moves fast, and if you’re not intentional with what you do with it day in and day out, it can slip away — and your goals with it.

To provide inspiration around how daily habits can connect to larger pursuits, we asked five healthy-living experts from Life Time to share the goals they’re going after and the actions they’re taking on a regular basis to help them get there.

Barbara Powell, MA, NBC-HWC

Holistic performance coach for Life Time Mind

Goal: Write a book on running and mindset.

I adore both writing and running, as well as sharing helpful information and stories with others to help them feel empowered. This big and lofty goal allows me to evolve in both my career and in my personal development.

I am actively working through self-limiting beliefs that get in the way of writing regularly. I’ve learned that the more we do, the more we believe in ourselves. And for me, the more I write, the more I believe I’m a writer. The more I run trails, the more I believe I’m a trail runner. This is a goal I’m both scared of and eager to accomplish. This last year I trained for and ran a 100-mile race, which reminded me that I am capable!

Daily Habits to Get There

• Write or edit, ideally in the morning. That is the time of day when I’m energetically at my creative peak.
• Move my body, ideally outside. Movement keeps my mind active and feeling nourished — and even better if I can reap the benefits of nature while I’m doing it too.
• Read, ideally in the evening. I want to prioritize reading so I’m regularly feeding my mind a variety of writing styles and storytelling.

Austin Head

5-Star ELI group fitness performer at Life Time Dumbo in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Life Time 23rd Street, Life Time One Wall Street, Life Time Sky (Manhattan), and Life Time Midtown in New York City

Goal: Setting the Guinness World Record title for performing the most lunges in an hour.

I turned 30 in August, and I wanted a big challenge for myself for this next year. I was talking about this idea with one of the fantastic members at Life Time who also works for Guinness World Records and she encouraged me to do this. The current record is 2,376 lunges. I’m excited to push myself more than I ever have before!

Daily Habits to Get There

• Work on mobility. I teach MB360 (a mind-body training program that combines meditation and mobility work with functional strength and conditioning exercises) almost every day, and that is where I get a lot of my mobility work done. On days I don’t teach MB360, I will incorporate mobility exercises on my own.
• Focus on lunges. I aim to do one to two miles of lunges at least three to four times per week.
• Make time to meditate. I practice guided meditations around visualization and gratitude every day. This helps me see my goal so I can believe my goal.

Mike Thomson, CPT

Dynamic Personal Trainer at Life Time in Overland Park, Kan.

Goals: Run several races at a number of distances, including 200 meter, 800 meter, and 1 mile track races, as well as the Life Time Miami Half Marathon, Chicago Spring Half Marathon, and fall Chicago Half Marathon races.

I’m also doing the Leadville Trail 100 MTB and am aiming to improve my time from last year — and going for the big buckle as a prize! I will also be competing in some HYROX adventure races that involve a mixture of running, conditioning, and strength-based movements.

I like to be part of the communities that I coach, which includes endurance athletes and hybrid athletes. I train athletes online and in person in each of these distances and disciplines, so being able to “walk the walk” and “talk the talk” is important to me.

One takeaway from 2023 that I’m integrating into 2024 is cross-training. In the past, when I focused on a running race, I thought my biking mileage had to decrease, and vice versa. I now know the two sports can coexist. As a matter of fact, I feel better when I add more biking, rowing, assault biking, and ski erging into my routine — and of course, I always do my strength training.

Daily Habits to Get There

• Prioritize sleep. If I get the right amount of sleep, I’m more driven, focused, and I recover faster so I can do the next hard workout without risk of injury.
• Grow my Life Time training community. Having training partners is going to be key for my training this year, and I try to get as many people to train with me in the Life Time community as I can. I have different groups for each sport: I have both running and biking groups, I have strength-training buddies, and I attend group classes for strength and HIIT training.
• Focus on nutrition. Now that I’m older than 40 years old, I can’t be as willy-nilly as I might’ve once been able to about my training. I feel the difference after a night of drinking or having too many sweets. Additionally, hitting my daily supplement goals is important because I know it will help speed up my recovery and allow me to keep training hard.

Rosalind (Roz) Frydberg

Group fitness instructor and ARORA lead at Life Time in Woodbridge, Ontario

Goal: Increase protein intake and improve how frequently I eat, as well as gain physical strength.

I love the feeling of working out on an empty stomach, but sometimes I stretch it for too long. Due to the nature of my schedule, I work most evenings, get home late, and wake up early. Through trial and error, I’ve learned what to eat in the morning that leaves my body feeling the best, and I know I need at least 60 grams of protein for my body weight. As of late, I’m taking supplements, vegan collagen, and eating hardboiled eggs mixed with tuna or chickpeas.

In terms of getting stronger physically, I want to run farther distances and improve my speed walking and breathing. Additionally, I want to be able to perform 150 pushups with a maximum of a 30-second break after each block of 50, and be able to do this three times a day for a year. I turned 70 years old on Christmas Day, and my reason behind these goals is ultimately to stay healthy, active, and strong!

Daily Habits to Get There

• Eat at more regular intervals. Although I’m a fan of intermittent fasting, I will reduce the length of time I’m fasting so I can increase and distribute my protein intake more efficiently.
• Perform pushups every day. This intentionality with my schedule will help me focus on including pushups in my exercise routine.
• Start a log or journal. I quantitatively measure the number and type of pushups I complete as well as how much time it takes for me to do my desired number of reps. I also document how I feel when I do the work and track my energy level and food intake to see if that correlates with performance.

April Fort, 500 E-RYT, PRYT, AYS, YACEP

Yoga leader at Life Time in Cypress, Texas

Goal: Prioritize self-care.

Self-care is the practice of taking action to preserve or improve one’s own health. Unfortunately, one’s own health is often placed behind getting things done: grocery shopping, taking care of children, and/or the countless tasks that happen day in and day out of the fast-paced society most of us live in.

I’ve made prioritizing self-care my goal because I need to be reminded to do the little things every day that ensure health and happiness, so they don’t get buried underneath my to-do list.

Daily Habits to Get There

• Begin the day with meditation. I’m aiming for at least 10 minutes at the start of the day. The guided meditations in the Life Time Digital app help me a lot — especially when sitting and trying to meditate on my own doesn’t suffice.
• Drink 8 ounces of warm water before I eat or drink anything else. According to Ayurveda, drinking warm water jumpstarts your Agni, or digestive fire, so your body is able to assimilate nutrients in a more efficient manner through the rest of the day. This is also beneficial for hydrating after being asleep all night.
• Do one thing per day for myself. Whether this looks like a workout, a nap, reading a chapter from my favorite book, or a quick moment of sitting in the sunshine, I want to find even just five minutes to prioritize myself each day.
• Reflect before starting a new project. Before I say yes to something, I want to ask myself, Does this contribute to creating the life I want to live? We often need to pause and assess if what we’re doing lines up with the life we’re hoping to create, the values we live by, and what we strive to be our priorities.

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Let’s face it: Longer sweat sessions just aren’t an option some days. Yet doing something is always better than doing nothing — and a workout doesn’t need to be lengthy to be effective.

“A good workout is about the effort and consistency you put into it, not necessarily the time devoted to it,” says StaiSean Lyew, coach and group fitness performer at Life Time Bergen County and The Shops at Riverside, both located in New Jersey.

Here, Lyew and three other Life Time performers share their top tips for maximizing your workouts when you’re just trying to squeeze them in.

StaiSean Lyew

Lyew (@staisean) is a coach and group fitness performer at Life Time Bergen County in Montvale, N.J., and Life Time The Shops at Riverside in Hackensack, N.J. Find his classes on the in-club schedule.

1. Opt for a full-body workout.

When I’m short on time, I like to do a full-body workout that includes compound movements. These exercises use more than one muscle group at a time. Take a thruster, for example: A thruster combines a front squat with an overhead press, working muscles in your upper- and lower-body and core. (Learn more at “How to Do the Thruster.”)

2. Consider a strength-cardio combo.

In between rounds of a strength routine, hop on a cardio machine or perform a body-weight movement that elevates your heart rate. Choices can include bursts on the treadmill, bike, rower, or skier, or movements such as burpees or jumping jacks.

Sheila Genao

Genao (@sheilagenao_) is a group fitness performer who teaches at Life Time Dumbo in Brooklyn, N.Y., Life Time Westchester in West Harrison, N.Y., and Life Time Florham Park and Life Time Berkeley Heights, both in New Jersey. Find her classes on the in-club schedule or live-stream schedule.

3. Pick the best time.

Choose the time of day that you know is best for you to achieve a short workout with little to no interruptions — and then block it on your calendar! Busy days make it easy to push off to-dos, so you want to have your workout scheduled in, even if that time is as little as 10 minutes. (Try this: “The 6-Minute Sweat Workout.”)

4. Gauge your energy level.

Choose a workout based on how you’re feeling instead of trying to force yourself to do something you think you “should” but that doesn’t feel right. Maybe that looks like a solo full-body workout, feeding off the energy of others in a group fitness class, or getting outside for a walk or short run. (See more: “Fitness Classes for Your Feelings.”)

5. Acknowledge your efforts.

Don’t let negativity enter your mindset: It doesn’t matter if your workout is five minutes, 20 minutes, or an hour — you showed up today! Every step is a step closer to a healthier life.

Austin Head

Head (@austin_head) is a 5-Star ELI group fitness performer at Life Time Dumbo in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Life Time 23rd Street, Life Time One Wall Street, Life Time Sky (Manhattan), and Life Time Midtown in New York City. Find his classes on the in-club schedule or live-stream schedule.

6. Put your phone on do not disturb.

Avoid the common pitfall of using your phone during your workout. Not only can this hamper the effectiveness of your workout, but it also prevents you from experiencing the full mental benefits of your exercise session.

7. Incorporate supersets.

If you’re aiming for a comprehensive full-body strength workout within a limited timeframe, supersets are your go-to strategy. By performing exercises back-to-back with minimal rest, you can accomplish a lot in a short span of time.

Optimal supersets involve alternating push and pull muscle groups. For example, combine exercises like the chest press with a deadlift to row, or dumbbell front squats with pull-ups.

8. Curate an energizing playlist.

Personally, I find my best workouts coincide with the perfect playlist. Look for DJ sets with mashups, often available on platforms like YouTube or SoundCloud. These 30- to 45-minute sets can help keep your energy levels high and power you through your workouts.

Christine Chapman

Chapman (@chris_chapman5) is a studio leader at Life Time in Edina, Minn. Find her classes on the in-club schedule or live-stream schedule.

9. Have a plan.

Heading into your workout prepared is key. When time is limited, you don’t want to waste it the limited minutes you have deciding what to do. Consider creating your own routine that works multiple muscle groups and focuses on intensity over duration. Or reserve your spot in a 30- to 45-minute group fitness class — that way the instructor does the planning for you.

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In many ways, this is just the next chapter in the fascinating story of human existence — the ongoing mystery of who we are and how we’re wired. A drama of human versus machine, light versus dark, good versus evil.

The story starts in caves with hunters and gatherers, our existence today thanks to the survival of the strongest and fittest. Over time, our brains evolved, and we began making tools out of stone, wood, and bone. Then plows from forked sticks. Hoes of stone. Things started to move with gears and pulleys.

The advantage shifted from muscle and speed to invention and efficacy: Who could harness the power of water, fire, and steam? The transition from “simple” to “self-acting” ­machines accelerated quickly, driven by the desire for better productivity.

We entered an age of intelligence, a time for our more developed brains to think and solve problems. The need for skilled labor faded. Mechanization turned to computation, and through iteration, we made more and more impressive calculations. It was initially slow as we were limited by bytes and bandwidth, waiting long minutes for dial-ups and downloads.

But we kept moving forward and found ourselves in a web where infor­mation was as available as oxygen. Once again, the paradigm shifted: With so much data at our fingertips, we faced the real test of figuring out what we could do with all of it.

Many of us have experienced the evolution from clunky desktop computers to supercomputers smaller than a credit card. Our contemporaries have launched rockets, ­experimented with self-driving cars, and photographed black holes. Yet this pales in comparison with what we’re now facing.

The age of artificial intelligence (AI) is here — it’s actually been here for a while. The concept gained traction early in the 20th century through science fiction, inspiring the scientists and innovators of the next generations. Hollywood, too, became consumed with the idea: Movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey and A.I. Artificial Intelligence stoked our imaginations.

In some ways, it’s already working for us: unlocking phones through facial recognition, helping Alexa gather the current weather, providing personalized recommendations from Netflix and Nordstrom. Yet in just the last few months, AI has dominated headlines and conversations all around us.

The definition of AI is intelligence demonstrated by machines — a catchall term for applications that perform complex tasks quickly, mimicking intelligent human behavior, all with considerably less human input.

The operative word here is quickly: AI is expanding logarithmically, at a rate unlike any past progression.

AI is here — there’s no denying or stopping it. So, our responsibility? ­Understand it and engage with it — and fast. Study the development. Keep up and use it where it is beneficial.

And many aren’t wasting time adopting it. In November 2022, the natural-language processing tool ChatGPT was launched. It answers questions, composes emails, and writes essays with human-like characteristics. Built for persuasion and seemingly equipped with emotion, it offers help to those who need it, assistance to the busy, friendship to the lonely. With one million users in its first five days, it has the fastest-growing user base of all time.

ChatGPT is only one in a great big sea of new tools and applications. They’re being used to improve and advance a variety of industries, objectives, and efforts.

Some experts predict AI’s computing abilities may exceed the processing power of the most intelligent human brain on earth by midcentury. Futurist Ray Kurzweil, for instance, says that “2029 is the consistent date I have predicted for when an AI will pass a valid Turing test and therefore achieve human levels of intelligence. I have set the date 2045 for the ‘Singularity,’ which is when we will multiply our effective intelligence a billionfold by merging with the intelligence we have created.”

Based on the current rapid pace of development, this is highly probable — and offers excitement and anticipation, uncertainty and fear, concern and optimism.

“AI is probably the most important thing humanity has ever worked on. I think of it as something more profound than electricity or fire,” says Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

Meanwhile, Tesla’s Elon Musk has cautioned, “I think we should be very careful about artificial intelligence. If I were to guess at what our biggest existential threat is, it’s probably that. . . . With artificial intelligence, we are summoning the demon.”

Whether your reaction is “This is exciting” or “This is the end,” AI is permeating our lives — and it’s unlike anything we’ve experienced. Yet we can approach it the same way we approach the many things in life that challenge and change us: That is, to look at it from multiple perspectives, including both peril and possibility.

From a positive angle, design, manufacturing, marketing, distribution, and more can all be accomplished more efficiently with AI. Routine work is more easily completed by a workforce that doesn’t call in sick, take vacations, or need benefits. It can take care of the dull and laborious, liberating us to focus on what intrigues us. It can give time back to us.

Health, wellness, and healthcare are already experiencing the effects of AI. Many of us monitor our own health with smart devices that provide smarter data. Doctors — given access to this wealth of information — can detect and protect with greater speed and accuracy, potentially avoiding and curing disease, and increasing lifespans.

Metropolitan areas are on their way to becoming “smart cities,” in which technology will assist in environmental planning, resource management, and energy utilization.

On the economic front, some estimates say AI could increase global GDP by $15.7 trillion by 2030. In education, using AI as an instructional aid has the potential to yield better test scores and overall performance.

There’s more to this glass-half-full perspective. But now, a few things that scare us.

With many day-to-day tasks already being automated with AI, our cognitive, social, and survival skills may diminish. This reliance could lessen human agency and autonomy, depleting control over attitudes, ­behaviors, and decisions.

Intelligence is only one aspect of being human. We are brilliant, complicated constellations — an accumulation of histories, idiosyncrasies, memories, sensations; an array of atoms assembled for just one finite experience.

Humans are wired to need other humans, and we’re already experiencing the effects of less of each other. There’s more depression, anxiety, and anger in a society that’s restless, irritated, and isolated. Many face life-threatening loneliness.

We used to primarily interact at work, school, clubs, and churches. Now, through social media, our contact is continuous, though the concept of community has eroded; even our sense of time has shifted.

We’re confused with fake videos, photos, and content. We don’t know what is real and what is misinformation. Data can be incorrect or biased. AI can’t read between lines, inject wit, or understand context.

Will we surpass our ability to use technology wisely? Morally? Humanely?

By whom, and how, are these tools, platforms, and networks engineered, controlled, and distributed? If only a few decide how AI is used, will everyone else be dependent on their decisions? Should AI be regulated here and abroad — and to what extent?

Information is power, and entities big and small — including governments and organizations — gather and leverage data to affect communications, finance, transportation, power grids, and weapon systems. Who decides how they use AI to put it to work?

AI automation of skills and tasks could further exacerbate social and economic disparities, leaving more people — including more in the middle class — without jobs. Goldman Sachs economists predict that some 300 million full-time jobs could be automated at least partly in the coming years.

Whatever the risks and however societies and governments move to address them, AI will transform us.

Our abilities to communicate, write, and remember — all faculties that make us human — may weaken. We may forget we’re already equipped with an advanced operating system.

As linguists Noam Chomsky and Ian Roberts, along with philosopher and AI expert Jeffrey Watumull, note in a recent New York Times opinion piece, intelligence is not just extrapolating answers. The deepest flaw of machine learning is “the absence of the most critical capacity of any intelligence: to say not only what is the case, what was the case, and what will be the case — that’s description and prediction — but also what is not the case and what could and could not be the case. Those are the ingredients of explanation, the mark of true intelligence.”

Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” And in Letters to a Young Poet, Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke reminds us: “I want to beg you . . . to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

AI is here — there’s no denying or stopping it. So, our responsibility? ­Understand it and engage with it — and fast. Study the development. Keep up and use it where it is beneficial.

At the same time, continue to welcome unexpected insights and each light-bulb moment. Find the fun in forming and testing a hypothesis. Don’t be afraid to follow gut feelings. Get into debates, incite discussions. Ask for — and get — a good explanation.

Intelligence is only one aspect of being human. We are brilliant, complicated constellations — an accumulation of histories, idiosyncrasies, memories, sensations; an array of atoms assembled for just one finite experience.

Which takes us back to the beginning and to the twists and turns of our story. The pages are turning faster than ever as we face peril and possibility beyond our wildest imagination. True to our species, we must make the best of it and keep moving forward: The next chapter is as much about our humanity as it is about AI and technology.

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Explore the steps to becoming a digital minimalist:

1) Define Your Tech Rules
2) Take a 30-Day Tech Break
3) Reintroduce Meaningful Tech

Smartphones, wireless internet, digital platforms that connect billions of people — these are triumphant innovations. Few people think we’d be better off retreating to an earlier technological age.

Still, many are also tired of feeling like prisoners to their devices.

Our relationship with digital tools is complicated by the fact that they mix harm with benefits. One can simultaneously cherish the ability to discover inspiring photos on Instagram and fret about the app’s capacity to invade the evening hours that were once spent reading or talking with friends. These contradictions create a jumbled emotional landscape.

The most common response to such complexities is to attempt modest hacks. Perhaps if you observe a digital Sabbath, keep your phone away from your bed at night, or turn off notifications and resolve to be more mindful, you can keep all the good things that attracted you to these technologies in the first place while minimizing their worst impacts.

I understand the appeal of this moderate approach. It relieves the need to make hard decisions about your digital life; you don’t have to quit anything, miss out on any benefits, or suffer any serious inconveniences. Nor do you have to explain your digital absence to friends who may find it alarming.

Yet it’s clear to those who have attempted these minor corrections that willpower and vague resolutions are often not enough to stop these new technologies from invading our cognitive landscapes. The addictiveness of their design and the cultural pressures supporting them are too strong for an ad hoc method to succeed.

As a professor of computer science who has given a great deal of thought to these issues — and written several books about them — I believe what we all need instead is a philosophy of technology use, rooted in our deep values.

There are many philosophies that might satisfy these goals, but one stands out. I call it digital minimalism, and it applies the belief that less can be more. The key to thriving, digital minimalists have learned, is to spend much less time using tech.

Digital Minimalism in Action

Meet Tyler. He once embraced the standard social-media services for the standard reasons: to help his career, keep connected, and provide entertainment. But he later found that his compulsive use of these tools offered minor benefits at best, and he saw that monitoring social media was not the best way to use tech to serve his goals. So, he quit all social media to pursue more direct ways to connect with others.

A year later, Tyler was involved in meaningful volunteer work, exercising regularly, and reading three to four books a month. He was also learning to play the ukulele and feeling much closer to his family.

With digital minimalism, one works backward from their most deeply held values when deciding how to live their life.

With his phone no longer glued to his hand, his increased focus also earned him a promotion at his job.

Tyler is quick to admit that he can’t completely attribute all these things to his specific decision to quit social media. His choice, however, was about more than a tweak to his digital habits: It was a symbolic ­gesture that reinforced his new commitment to a minimalist philosophy.

With digital minimalism, one works backward from their most deeply held values when deciding how to live their life. This is the essence of this approach — one you can embrace, too.

The Digital Declutter Plan

I believe aggressive action is necessary to transform your relationship with technology and reclaim your time and attention. My suggested method is the 30-day digital declutter (plus time for preparation and reintroduction before and after). The declutter acts as a jarring reset: You come into the process a frazzled maximalist and leave an intentional minimalist. This is how it works.

Step 1) Define Your Tech Rules

During your 30-day declutter, the plan is for you to take a break from “optional technologies.” The first step, therefore, is to define which technologies are optional for you.

When I say “technologies,” I’m not talking about your microwave, radio, or electric toothbrush. I’m referring to the class of things that may be considered new technologies — apps, websites, and related digital tools delivered through a computer screen or mobile phone — and are meant to entertain, inform, or connect. Text messaging, Instagram, and Reddit are examples of things you’ll evaluate when preparing for a digital declutter.

Start by identifying which technologies are most relevant for you, then decide which of them are optional enough that you can take a 30-day break from them.

Start by identifying which technologies are most relevant for you, then decide which of them are optional enough that you can take a 30-day break from them. My general guideline: Consider a technology optional unless its temporary removal would harm or significantly disrupt the daily operation of your professional or personal life.

If you stop checking your work email, for example, this will harm your career, so you can’t use this exercise as an excuse to shut down your inbox for a month. If your job occasionally requires you to monitor social media, or your daughter uses text messaging to let you know when she’s ready to be picked up from soccer, or your relationship with a spouse overseas depends on daily connections through FaceTime, then these would not be ­considered optional — but only when the technology is used for these specific purposes.

For borderline cases, I recommend developing some operating procedures. These will help you specify exactly how and when you will use a particular technology, allowing you to maintain some critical uses without having to default to unrestricted access. You could decide, for example, that you will text only with your daughter, and only when she is at soccer.

Keep in mind that just because something is convenient doesn’t mean it’s critical. A Facebook group that announces social events might be convenient, but choosing not to receive those messages won’t cause any critical damage to your social life in 30 days, and it might expose you to interesting alternative uses for your time.

Such inconveniences might even prove useful. Losing light contact with certain people can help clarify which relationships were real in the first place and strengthen your relationships with those who remain.

Key points:

• The digital declutter focuses primarily on apps, sites, and digital tools. According to participants in the original digital-declutter challenge that I hosted, video games and streaming video could be in this category, too.
• This will be a 30-day break from those technologies you determine are optional. In some cases, you’ll abstain altogether; in others, you may specify a set of operating procedures that dictate exactly how and when you’ll use the technology.
• Write down your list of banned technologies and relevant operating procedures. Put it somewhere you’ll see it every day. Clarity in what you’re allowed and not allowed to do during the declutter will prove key to its success.

Step 2) Take a 30-Day Tech Break

Now it’s time to make the break. You’re likely to find these days without optional tech challenging at first. Your mind has developed certain expectations about distractions and entertainment. Disrupting those expectations can feel unpleasant, like a detox.

Yet the detox experience is important; it will help you make smarter decisions about reintroducing some optional technologies when the break ends. Without the clarity that detox provides, the addictive pull of the technologies would bias your decisions.

For example, if you were to decide to reform your relationship with Instagram right this minute, your decision about what role it should play in your life would likely be much weaker than if you’d spent 30 days without it before choosing how to use it more deliberately.

It’s a mistake to think of a digital declutter as only a detox experience. The goal here is not simply to give yourself a break from tech, but to spark a permanent transformation of your digital life.

Still, it’s a mistake to think of a digital declutter as only a detox experience. The goal here is not simply to give yourself a break from tech, but to spark a permanent transformation of your digital life.

To achieve real transformation, you must also spend this period rediscovering what’s important to you in your analog life. You’re more likely to successfully reduce the role of your digital tools if you cultivate high-quality alternatives to their easy distractions.

Many people find that their compulsive phone use covers a void created by the lack of a well-developed leisure life, for example. But reducing phone use without also filling the void with enjoyable things can feel unpleasantly stale, and that will undermine any transition to digital minimalism.

Here’s the good news: Participants in the declutter experiment found it easier than they had expected to reconnect to the activities they’d enjoyed before they were subverted by their screens.

Unaiza is a graduate student who used to spend her evenings browsing Reddit. During her declutter, she redirected this time toward reading books she borrowed from the library. “I finished eight and a half books that month,” she told me. “I could never have thought about doing that before.”

An insurance agent named Melissa finished “only” three books during her 30 days, but she also organized her wardrobe, set up dinners with friends, and scheduled more face-to-face conversations with her brother.

Kushboo finished five books during his declutter — the first he’d voluntarily read in three years. Caleb’s search for analog activities led him to start journaling before bed each night. He also started listening to records on a record player, from beginning to end, with no earbuds in his ears or skip buttons to tap when antsy — which turned out to be a much richer experience than his normal habit of firing up Spotify and seeking out the perfect track.

Key points:

• The first week or two, you’ll probably find yourself fighting urges to check your optional technologies. This struggle will pass, though, and it will help you make better decisions at the end of the declutter.
• The goal is not simply to enjoy time away from technologies; it’s to explore higher-quality pursuits to fill the time the technologies currently take up. This period should be one of vigorous activity and experimentation.
• Aim to arrive at the end of the declutter having discovered the activities that generate real satisfaction, and feeling enabled to confidently craft a better life — one where technology serves a supporting role for more meaningful ends.

Step 3) Reintroduce Meaningful Tech

After your 30-day break comes the final step: reintroduction. This step is more demanding than you might think.

The goal is to start from a blank slate created by the 30-day declutter and let back into your life only those technologies that pass your strict minimalist standards. The care you take here will determine whether this process sparks lasting change.

For each technology, ask yourself some screening questions. The first:

Does this directly support something I really value? This is the most important factor for deciding whether you should let it back into your life.

The fact that a tool may offer some value is irrelevant — the digital minimalist deploys technology to serve their specific values and is happy to miss out on everything else. For example, you may learn that browsing Twitter doesn’t provide value, but following your cousin’s baby photos on Instagram does support the value you place on family.

If a technology passes this first question, it must now face a more difficult standard:

Is this technology the best way to support this value?

We often justify technologies that tyrannize our time and attention with some tangential connection to something we care about. Consider, for example, following your cousin on Instagram. Although a follow might initially be justified by your deep value of family, the next question asks if Instagram is the best way to support this value. Probably not. Something as simple as a monthly phone call with this cousin may be much better for your bond.

If a technology makes it through both screening questions, there’s one more to ask:

How will I now use this technology to maximize its value and minimize its harms?

Many attention-economy companies want you to think about their services in a binary way: Either you use them or you don’t. This allows them to entice you into their ecosystem with some feature you find important; then, once you’re a user, they deploy attention engineering to overwhelm you with options, trying to keep you engaging with their service well beyond your original purpose.

Digital minimalists avoid this trap by maintaining standard operating procedures that dictate when and how they use their digital tools. Instead of saying, “I use Facebook because it helps my social life,” they would offer something more specific: “I check Facebook each Saturday on my computer to see what my close friends and family are up to; I don’t have the app on my phone; I culled my list of friends down to just meaningful relationships.”

Here are some ways declutter participants meaningfully reintroduced tech: A digital advertiser named Ilona set up a regular schedule for calling and texting her friends. This supported her relationships by replacing lightweight check-ins with more intentional communications.

Abby, who works in the travel industry, removed the web browser from her phone. “I figured I didn’t need to know the answer to everything instantly,” she said. She also bought a paper notebook to jot down ideas when she’s bored on the train.

Caleb set a curfew for his phone; he can’t use it between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. A computer engineer named Ron allows himself only two websites to check routinely — a big improvement over the 40 or so sites he used to cycle through.

Key points:

• Your monthlong break from optional technologies resets your digital life. You can now rebuild it from scratch in a much more intentional and minimalist manner. To do so, apply a three-step technology filter to any tool you might reintroduce. The tool must . . .

1. 1. Serve something you deeply value. (Offering some benefit is not enough.)
   2. Be the best way to serve this value. (If not, choose something better.)
   3. Have a role in your life that is constrained by some standard operating procedure that specifies when and how you use it.

• This process will help you cultivate a digital life in which optional technologies serve your deeply held values instead of subverting them. Careful reintroduction will help you make the intentional decisions that will define you as a digital minimalist.

This article is reprinted from Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport with permission from Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2019 by Calvin C. Newport.

This article originally appeared as “The Great Digital Declutter” in the March 2023 issue of Experience Life.

The post How to Become a Digital Minimalist appeared first on Experience Life.

These days, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t have a smartphone — or a smartwatch or tablet or laptop. Even those of us who made it to adulthood without access to the internet have become largely dependent on these devices for communication, entertainment, news and information, creative projects, and education. For those who grew up with tech, the thought of living without it may be difficult to imagine.

For all the benefits of personal technology, it’s far too easy to fall into an unhealthy relationship with our screens. We asked several healthy-living advocates about the role of tech in their lives and sought their advice for how to strike a healthy balance.

Tony Gonzalez

Since retiring from the NFL in 2013, Tony Gonzalez has offered expert analysis for CBS Sports, Fox Sports, and Amazon. He’s been cast in TV and film roles and serves as ambassador for an after-school enrichment program in his community.

But the introverted Hall of Famer struggles to maintain a social-media presence. “It’s not a natural thing for me to be like, ‘Hey, look at my life right now,’” he says.

Gonzalez doesn’t follow much social media but admits he can get lost in YouTube. “I try to use it as a tool as much as I can, meaning I try to learn something from it.”

He finds lectures on topics that interest him, including history and philosophy. He watches master classes on acting and does much of his football research on the platform.

His own rules include not using his phone before 8 a.m., after 7 p.m., or at mealtimes, and trying to limit his use during the day.

Gonzalez also relies on his phone’s screen-time summary to let him know whether he’s spent more time online than he intends. “You’ve really got to check yourself and be honest when it’s getting out of hand,” he says.

The father of four is conscious of modeling healthy tech behavior for his family, as well as setting limits for himself and the kids. “There’s so much distraction out there, with everything vying for our attention, so you’ve got to come up with some hard rules,” he says.

His own rules include not using his phone before 8 a.m., after 7 p.m., or at mealtimes, and trying to limit his use during the day. “We need this present moment because otherwise it’ll slip away.”

(Read Gonzalez’s original cover story at “Game Changer: Tony Gonzalez“.)

Haile Thomas

At 22, wellness activist Haile Thomas has been in the public eye for more than half her life. Inspired by her mother’s efforts to transform the family’s diet after her father was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, the then-second grader started a YouTube channel to teach kids to cook, and she ultimately launched a nonprofit organization to educate young people about healthy eating.

Cooking demonstrations led to speaking gigs, collaborations on kids’ menus, and even multiple meetings with then-First Lady Michelle Obama. But it was Instagram that really raised her profile.

“Especially over the past few years, social media has not only become the staple of my activism, my writing, and my creativity, but an incredible way to connect with others,” says Thomas, who has more than 113,000 Instagram followers.

To keep herself grounded in real life, Thomas journals daily and occasionally shuns her devices during multiday “digital detoxes.”

While she believes social media’s ­potential to inspire and bring people together outweighs its pitfalls, she admits that it can be difficult to maintain perspective and positivity in a digital environment.

“Nuance can be erased in online spaces when we forget the wholeness of the human beings behind the screens,” she says, noting that it can be easy to fall into the comparison trap when scrolling through the carefully curated content people share to represent themselves online.

To keep herself grounded in real life, Thomas journals daily and occasionally shuns her devices during multiday “digital detoxes.”

“I believe there is a way we can develop healthy relationships with technology, and it can support us in doing our work on this planet,” she argues. “It can be a wonderful tool, but we have to get in the driver’s seat and understand that power.”

(Read Thomas’s original cover story at “Cooking Up Change: Haile Thomas“.)

Sanjay Gupta

CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta, MD, views the impact of personal technology on our lives through both the wide-angle lens of a journalist and the medical loupe of a trauma neurosurgeon.

“The use of smartphones and social media represents a novel and fundamental change in human sociology,” Gupta says. “Anybody who’s trying to speculate where this all goes is guessing.”

One fascinating, if frightening, facet of this change is personalization and privacy. “It’s quite likely your device knows you better than you know yourself,” he says. “It knows that the last 10 times you were about to make a certain decision — such as whether to pick a window or aisle seat — you made this decision. For you, each time feels like you’re making a new decision, but your device could tell you with a great deal of accuracy.”

And although studies link screen time with detrimental health effects like disrupted sleep, decreased physical activity, and increased depression and anxiety, Gupta believes the most urgent concern is the use of these devices while driving.

To protect our privacy and keep our impulses in check, Gupta recommends using the settings on our devices. He turns off notifications and has created a “VIP” contact list to let only certain messages ring or buzz through.

“The number of patients I see who go from having a normal day to the worst day in their lives because they decided to text while driving blows my mind. Almost nothing else matters in terms of advice if you are still using tech while driving, because that will kill you.”

To protect our privacy and keep our impulses in check, Gupta recommends using the settings on our devices. He turns off notifications and has created a “VIP” contact list to let only certain messages ring or buzz through. He has turned off his phone’s voicemail feature, which leaves him one fewer messaging channel to monitor. And he no longer uses his phone as an alarm clock, leaving it in another room while he sleeps.

“We’re going down this road,” he says. “Now it’s mostly about the guardrails.”

(Read Gupta’s original cover story at “On the Leading Edge: Sanjay Gupta“.)

Latham Thomas

As the founder of Mama Glow, a New York City–based company that provides holistic lifestyle support for women from pre-pregnancy through new ­motherhood, Latham Thomas used to post frequently on social media. She ­promoted her business, and she also shared content about wellness and her personal life in support of the brand she leads.

“There was a time when I felt it was a responsibility to be on social media,” Thomas recalls. “I felt pressure to use my platform.”

This felt out of alignment with her beliefs about being present to the rhythms of body and mind.

Ironically, this shifted when the pandemic shut down Mama Glow’s in-person doula trainings. Thomas and her team had to find ways to use technology to recreate the deep community and interpersonal connection students needed.

“We found that it was possible to convene in a deeply powerful way,” she says. “It’s not just what’s happening in the room — it’s what’s happening in your heart. You can bring that energy from your heart space to whatever you’re doing, even virtually.”

When in-person gatherings resumed, Thomas found herself using social media more intentionally. Her personal posts have declined from one per day to a handful each month.

“When you put aside your devices, stuff surfaces,” she cautions. “Things you don’t want to deal with, things you need to heal, things you need to get in right relationship with. That’s what many of us fear — that those issues will find their way to the surface. But when you’re present with yourself, healing is possible.”

(Read Thomas’s most recent cover story at “Owning Her Glow: Latham Thomas“.)

Jon Kabat-Zinn

The real challenge of this time in history, says Jon Kabat-Zinn, is that we’re analog beings in an increasingly digital world.

“We have the most complicated arrangement of matter in the known universe under the vault of our skull,” the ­renowned scientist, author, and meditation teacher explains. “It’s the product of 3.5 billion years of evolution — not 50 years of very clever people in Silicon Valley.”

Yet today’s “attention economy” is designed to capture our analog minds for as long as possible, he notes. It primes us to seek out and consume a mix of distracting and enriching entertainment, information and misinformation, unity and division, connection and separation.

“It all boils down to ‘What are you going to pay attention to?’”

Enter mindfulness practice — a time-tested tool for paying attention to what’s carrying your attention away. Even in the storm of digital distraction, there’s always an opportunity to return to the present moment.

“Pre-digital, it wasn’t about cellphones. But now that there are cellphones, laptops, and the internet, these can become the objects of the meditation practice,” he says. Learning to recognize when your devices are pulling you away and to come back to the present, time and time again, builds your capacity to “inhabit the full dimensionality of human awareness.”

Kabat-Zinn remains sanguine about humanity’s ability to find a healthy balance with technology.

“It’s going to take a generation or two for us to figure out how to optimize the benefit and minimize the harm, but ultimately, it’s not the technology that’s going to be the problem,” he argues. “It’s the human mind and heart, and how intimate we are with what we love, our values, and our ethics. And that’s something that’s cultivatable.”

(Read Kabat-Zinn’s cover story at “Being Present: Jon Kabat-Zinn“.)

This article originally appeared as “Tech In Balance” in the March 2023 issue of Experience Life.

The post 5 Healthy-Living Experts Share Their Strategies for Using Tech Mindfully appeared first on Experience Life.