First off, hello all! I am new here, but have been an essentialist much of my life whether I knew it or not years ago. I simply never understood everyone's obsession with constantly purchasing stuff they did not need. I am 37 years old and live in West Michigan. I work in critical transportation infrastructure, performing the federally required inspections, troubleshooting, and repair of railway signalling and grade crossing apparatus. I found this forum after being on Reddit for years, recently realizing how toxic it has become, and yearning for the old-fashioned, slower-paced message boards of the 90's-00's.
Now, for the question in my post title: How do all of you take on keeping your technology/digital life simple and distraction-free and how has it improved your life?
For me personally, I have taken great steps to keep my technology distractionless and stress free.
I own only a couple devices: an iPhone X, a Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Extreme, and a RaspberryPi powered "Nintendo GameBoy" (Retroflag GPi) for occasional vintage entertainment from my childhood when the rare urge strikes. My entire digital footprint only spans 23GB of data. My phone only has a very small selection of apps that I use on a daily basis which are: Photos, Camera, Overcast, Apple Music, Apple Wallet, Discover Bank, Outlook, Firefox, Lutron RadioRA2 Control app (for my home integration), Phone, and iMessage, with any stock apps that cannot be deleted hidden in a folder on the second homepage. That is it. Here is a screenshot of it:
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I have absolutely NO social media accounts, ALL notifications and background data are turned off on my devices (with exception of the phone app, and iMessage for specific contacts).
I use my phone maybe an hour per day total, and my friends and family know that I may not respond to a text message for sometimes hours or even a day. I try to answer phone calls from friends/relatives promptly, but only wen not focusing on something else, or when out with others. I prefer to be contacted in this order: In Person, Voice Call, E-Mail/Text Message.
How has this all improved my life? I have found that my attention is not stolen by meaningless social networks, and that my personal relationships are far more meaningful. When I catch up with a friend in person or call them on the phone, we always have these vibrant, interesting conversations since there is so much to catch up on (as opposed to being on social media where you are constantly drip-fed every detail of each others lives each waking moment, thus resulting in nothing new to learn about). My attention span has also GREATLY improved since leaving social media several years ago; I am no content with both the exciting moments, and the boring moments in life. It is almost as if there was a brain-fog and it has lifted. I have also noticed that I enjoy the small things in life now when out and about. For instance, instead of being glued to my phone while walking out in nature, I have instead found myself on more than one occasion just simply becoming totally captivated by watching birds for an hour, or watching the water flow through a stony stream. In all aspects it seems as though life has slowed down considerably and for the better.