What is digital simplicity?

Digital minimalism is not the answer.

Let’s define digital simplicity and compare it to digital minimalism and digital maximalism. This post is for anyone who feels overwhelmed by their tech, but knows it’s not sustainable to ditch it altogether. Just know that by adopting digital simplicity as a life philosophy, you can start to use technology as a tool and streamline your workflows to foster your creativity and growth.

In short, digital simplicity brings about abundant creativity.

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Hi y’all. You know me as Jenny Lee. If you’ve been following me for a while, you may know that I’ve been a minimalist since 2013. Since then, I’ve been working to keep all aspects of my life—physical, digital, emotional, spiritual, relational, entrepreneurial, etc—as simple as possible.

Let’s explore what digital simplicity is in terms of these 3 points of view:

Emotionally: What it feels like.
Practically: What it looks like day to day.
Logistically: What your general philosophy is.

The emotions behind digital simplicity, digital minimalism, and your current state of digital maximalism

How digital maximalism makes you feel

Let’s assume you’re in a digital maximalism, having landed on my blog post somehow.

Emotionally, you probably feel super overwhelmed with your technology use.

There’s too much information in this connected world. Too many great things you need to consume:

Books
Blog posts
YouTube videos
Tweets
Podcasts
Email newsletters

You’re consistently behind. You have popcorn brain: you’re subconsciously searching for dopamine bump after dopamine bump.

Not to mention your personal tech overwhelm:

You’re drowning in digital files.
You don’t know what to do with your photo library.
You try to stay organized with your digital life but can’t find the time.
Your focus is constantly broken from those nonstop group text messages—or even worse, you may forget to respond to texts altogether.

There’s a better way.

The emotions behind digital minimalism

If you’re anything like me and lean towards extremes, your knee-jerk response may be to swing the other way and cut yourself off completely and dive head-first into digital minimalism.

Spoiler alert—digital minimalism isn’t the real answer.

With phone-free weekends and month-long social media cleanses, you may feel a huge relief at first, but then you may start to feel FOMO. And then you may actually miss out on important things.

Digital simplicity evokes confidence and accomplishment

By nature, digital simplicity gives you a sense of control and balance.

When you have your (digital) shit together, you will be able to:

Find things quickly in a simple personal knowledge management system.
Have workflows and habits set up so that you cut down on transition time.
Use your technology as your second brain so that you can be more present and in the moment.

What digital simplicity looks like day-to-day

Sweeping solutions feel good, like dumping out your backpack or sweeping everything off your desk. While you might learn stuff about yourself in the process of quick and drastic fixes, this approach may not work out for you in the long run.

Digital minimalism isn’t a sustainable solution

If you opt for digital minimalism, you may end using tech minimally as possible. Or not at all. These solutions come to mind:

Paper planners
Notebooks abound
Piles of hardcover books
Notecards, sticky notes, and scraps of paper strewn across your desk
Sore arms from carrying this all around in your backpack

But then what do you do when you have an email to follow up on? Or a blog post that you want to bookmark?

If you’re here reading this, chances are you’re a tech-forward person like me. So an analog-first approach won’t serve you, and you’ll feel friction between your analog and digital worlds. (I can say this because I’ve tried a digital minimalism approach—several times—and failed.)

Digital maximalism won’t allow you to focus

Day to day? Digital maximalism means constant notifications. And configuring everything, like, all the time. And having an app for everything:

Starting a fast? Wait, first you have to open up your app and start your timer.
Going on a roadtrip? Stop, first we have to get a selfie so I can post it to my IG stories.
Finally have some heads-down time? Oh, 5 emails just came in. Let me check those first.

Your digital life will rule your existence. You may not even notice it for a while. But digital maximalism is also not a sustainable solution, because it will lead you down a path of not really doing and not being present. No bueno. (Again, I can say this because I’ve been here—several times.)

Digital simplicity is both sustainable and flow-inducing

Digital simplicity allows you to use the simplest solution that works for you.

You’ll be able to use your tech and be in control of it:

Using certain devices for focus and productivity.
Automating notifications so you have smart focus times.
Keeping a digital planner and actually using it.
Using a time tracker to stay on task.
Using a simple note-taking app like Apple Notes as your second brain so you can focus better.
Keeping your bookmarks and tasks in a simple, centralized location like Todoist.
Maintaining a (digital) journaling habit.

Spoiler alert: adopting digital simplicity as a lifestyle feels really good.

And because you have Focus states set up and you aren’t wasting time designing your dashboard for the nth time, you’ll be able to just get down to work and stay in your state of deep work until your Pomodoro goes off or your next focus block begins.

What digital simplicity is logistically

Logistics is the organization and implementation of a system. It’s the bigger picture when compared to your day-to-day, and it’s your general approach or philosophy towards technology.

Digital minimalism + logistics

With digital minimalism, you end up stripping away everything in favor of a utilitarian approach. This usually ends up meaning you go to extremes and:

Delete social media apps.
Do 30-day tech cleanses.
Turn off your wifi to do deep work.
Lock yourself away in a remote mountain cabin.
Generally favor disconnect over intentional use.
Check email once per week.

This may work for you if your life’s work doesn’t depend on the internet for income, self-improvement, connection, and the like.

But in this modern world? Digital minimalism is too extreme.

Digital maximalism + logistics

Logistically, when you think about where you might be with digital maximalism now: you’re overwhelmed by your devices and have a Pavlovian response to every single ping and toast notification you receive.

You feel like you need to respond to every email, text, phone call, work message, tweet, and DM right away.

With digital maximalism, your time isn’t spent intentionally. Your days always feel busy. But you’re not doing any meaningful work.

Continue down a path of digital maximalism and you’ll be in a constant state of stress and burnout. And you’re training your brain to respond to quick dopamine hits instead of teaching it to do deep work for bigger chunks of time.

Digital simplicity + logistics

Digital simplicity, on the other hand, is all about finding the sides of the diamond that work for you.

Yes, I said diamond.

Because in tech, there are never just two sides of the coin: it really is a multitude of facets and ways of working that could be the best solution for you.

With digital simplicity, you can:

Prioritize your tasks and put the big rocks first,

Keep your mind clear because your digital life is simplified and streamlined, and
Carve out time for your most important projects.

Digital simplicity is the answer

What is digital simplicity and how can it help you ditch tech overwhelm once and for all? — The definition of digital simplicity illustrated in a Venn diagram, and how it comes out of the best of digital minimalism and digital maximalism.

In this tech-forward world, it doesn’t work for us to bury our nose in the sand and pretend like tech doesn’t exist.

If we go from one extreme of digital maximalism and overwhelm to digital minimalism and deprivation, we’ll end up in waves of feast or famine.

Digital simplicity is the most sustainable solution in these modern times.

Some resources on digital simplicity in action:

What do you think about digital simplicity? Comment below.

Make sure to subscribe to my weekly newsletter for tips on how to work towards digital simplicity and mind minimalism all in the name of abundant creativity.

Click for Full Video Transcript

With digital simplicity, you could become a more prolific creator by prioritizing your tasks. You can also work to keep your mind clear because your digital life is so organized and streamlined that you know everything is in its right place.
If you want to read more about digital simplicity and go through everything in more depth than this video, make sure to check out the blog post which is linked below.
So we all know what it feels like to be bombarded by a constant flow of information, whether it's podcasts or email newsletters, videos like YouTube videos, et cetera. And we all know what it's like to get so many notifications all the time. It is very overwhelming. But what if you could be in control of your tech and ditch the overwhelm without having to lock yourself away in a remote cabin with no wifi?
Digital minimalism is not the answer.
By adopting digital simplicity as a life philosophy, you can start to use your tech as a tool and streamline your workflows so that you can be more productive and more creative.
In short, digital simplicity really brings about abundant creativity.
Digital maximalism brings about the feelings of overwhelm and drowning, lack of focus, and feeling like you're constantly busy, but never really productive. There are so many great things to consume and read and listen to. But here's the thing with digital maximalism, you end up feeling like you have major popcorn brain where it's really like your brain just going for small dopamine hit after small dopamine hits, searching for something that will keep feeding you that dopamine, but you never actually get into a flow state or a focus state.
So on the other end of things, there is digital minimalism. And if you're like me and tend to go from one extreme to another, you may have done this where you cut out your phone for an entire weekend or 24 hours, or you delete all your social media apps.
Well, the thing with that is that it causes a state of deprivation. And while it may make you feel refreshed at first, it'll start to feel like FOMO. And then you might actually start missing out on things.
Plus with digital minimalism, you might just want to go for paper planners and notebooks. With this analog first approach, you start to feel like, wait, where did I have that note written down? And why do I not have my notebook here with me to be able to reference this or take a note or something? And you have stickies all over your desk, or you have a pile of notes building up in your backpack.
An analog first approach may work for you, but it does not work for me because I like to have everything in my pocket at any given time, whether that's to write something down or to be able to reference references.
I feel like the reason I can talk about digital maximalism and digital minimalism and how they've both failed for me is because I've been in both places. And I still go to both places simply because I'm human and I'm not perfect. And, you know, even though I'm talking about digital simplicity, it's something that I'm striving for. And also that I feel like will help a lot of people.
By definition, digital simplicity is going to bring more of a sense of control and balance into your life.
Imagine being able to find things quickly and a simple but robust personal knowledge management system or PKM.
Also, you could have workflows and habits set up so that you weren't digging for the right place to store stuff.
Finally, you could use your technology reliably as your second brain so that you can be more present and in the middle.
Digital simplicity is so cool because it allows you to find the simplest solution that's going to work best for you.
In my workflow, I use apple notes because it is so flexible and awesome for me to be able to do digital planning, digital bullet, journaling, note-taking, writing, I use it for a personal content library. There's just so many things that I use apple notes for.
So really it comes down to choosing the app or the suite of apps that is going to work best for you.
In this tech forward world, it doesn't make sense to bury our nose in the sand and pretend like tech and digital devices don't exist. If we go from one end to the other between digital maximalism and digital minimalism, we'll end up going in a cycle that will just keep perpetuating and go from deprivation to overwhelm deprivation overwhelm. And it'll be a never ending thing.
Digital simplicity is the most sustainable and modern solution.
Thank you so much for watching. Make sure to subscribe to my weekly newsletter for tips on digital simplicity and how I use apple notes for my workflow. I'll see you next time.