Interesting ideas from Digital Minimalism - Cal Newport

Cal Newport wrote about digital Minimalism which is about the tools to beat digital distraction. As you know I'm a fan of Cal's so good they can't ignore you and Deep work. So though this topic felt familiar I felt compelled to read it. And boy I am not disappointed. There are many great tools about beating digital distraction. So you should just go and read the book. What follows are things that I found interesting and would like to remember.

After convincing us of the fact that being distracted always is not doing is any good, he asks us to do a one month digital detox. I.e completely do cold turkey on digital media. Then after one month deliberately bring back those tools which you feel add value to your life and only if that tool is the best way to add that value. Then after adopting that tool develop a strict standard operating procedure for using it basically about when you're allowed to use it and for how much time. This is the gist of the process.

Then he goes on to give various practical tactics about using digital tools effectively. Following are the things that felt very useful to me.

Create a seasonal leisure plan. This is a great idea as the kind of things we can do varies by season and by thinking and planning your leisure for the season you can follow them effectively.  Pair them with weekly plans to make it concrete.

Choose active leisure. - Mr Money Moustache who is a millionare buys and fixes up houses and his leisure consists of making things.

Join a group - There is a cafe in Canada called the snakes and Lattes cafe where you go in a play board games with whoever is before you.

Life 3.0 - Interesting things I learnt from that

I read an interesting book called Life 3.0 written by <>

Memory and computation are substrate independent.

AI can grow and develop very fast

Once it develops there are various ways in which it can takeover

Earth is doomed in millions and billions of years. So the way for human race to live is by becoming an interplanetary species. If we develop vehicles which can travel very fast we can go and that is where we should focus.

There are multiple theories of studying consciousness. According to an interesting theory, consciousness is how it feels when our body is processing and reconciling the data with existing data stored 

The wonder of scientific development

The story I'm about to tell may be obvious to lot of you but it was not obvious to me at all.

This is about how scientific inventions and discoveries happen. 

Since ancient times it was evident that rubbing fur on a smooth thing have people shocks. But it was not possible to study the nature of electricity. Then Volta found a way to create electricity on demand. People started to play with it and then slowly the principles surrounding electricity were discovered. Then in one experiment someone discovered that electricity can cause magnetism and playing with that again caused people to play with it and they discovered electromagnetic effects and then it revolutionized everything and more and more secrets of the nature opened up.

Let's consider the theory of gravitation.  He wondered how Earth and moon are hanging in balance and why is an apple falling to earth. Building on Galelio and Kepler's theories and with his grip on maths he calculated and proved that the attraction between objects varies based on the square of the distance between objects. In doing so he also created a new field of calculus. It was a giant leap for mankind in unlocking the secrets of nature.

What I'm trying to say here is that there are few true new inventions, most of the things are invented in the adjacent possible whenever a new invention happens. Just by playing with the new invention, combining, applying that to multiple unsolved problems, diligently experimenting and analysing the results  that have us 90% of the inventions and discoveries and that doesn't take a genius but just a committed,  diligent and curious person. There is also a role of serendipity in this. Lot of times speaking and working with other intelligent people can help break a logjam. So the learning here is that keep up to date with new discoveries in the field, experiment with it, talk about it and share your learnings. You might find or do something that can push mankind forward.