At the time of writing, I am suffering and recovering from burnout. The first symptoms appeared in August of 2023: I was frequently exhausted, physically and mentally; I had a hard time motivating myself to work and in general, I felt like I was being dragged along in a relentless current of events that I had little to no control over. By September, my symptoms became physical: I had frequent unexplainable stomach aches and headaches. Eventually, one of my colleagues suggested visiting my general practitioner (GP).

There, I had to confront what I had been fearing but did not want to admit. In fact, it was me who suggested first that I might be suffering from burnout-related symptoms. My GP agreed. He referred me to the psychological well-being practitioner (PWP), known as a POH-GGZ in The Netherlands. The PWP agreed. The company doctor agreed. He referred me to a psychologist. The psychologist agreed. I could no longer deny the reality of the situation.

The next few months are a blur, with lowlights that included not being able to tend towards the most basic human needs such as keeping yourself fed, hydrated, clean and being unable to sleep. It was an incredibly hard period of my life that I do not wish upon anyone.

I started treatment with the psychologist where we explored the factors that lead to my burnout. Contrary to most stories, I do not feel my burnout was primarily a result of a high workload, but rather an inability to cope with a fair workload because of my personality traits, anxiety related issues because of childhood trauma and poor time management and executive function due to my ADHD.

Now, feeding into these three issues was a complicated relationship with technology that only amplified my symptoms. To put it very bluntly, I am addicted to technology. Perhaps if the title of this blog post caught your eye, then so are you. My hunger for knowledge leads me to being able to spend up to 8 hours a day on my phone in long sessions using (abusing) my (social) media of choice: YouTube, Reddit and news platforms. After a session, I will have often forgotten what I had consumed, be overstimulated and generally feel worse about myself.

The Discovery

Somewhere in the months of sitting at home and being in therapy came a desire to change my relationship with social media once and for all. That desire lead me to discover a sub-reddit - of course - called /r/digitalminimalism and the wonderful YouTube channel of the author Cal Newport.

Now, I had tried to reduce my social media usage in the past but had been unsuccessful. What I had always heard about is how to reduce your social media usage, but not the philosophy behind why to reduce your social media usage, what the effects are of social media usage and a supportive community that talks about the issues related to trying to reduce social media usage. The why and the community prove essential for me to be able to make a lasting change in any aspect of my life.

Digital Minimalism

Cal Newport describes Digital Minimalism as follows:

A philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else.

In my own case of abusing mainly YouTube and Reddit, the greatest gains to be had are from cutting out all the content I consume that does not directly bring value to my life - not cutting out YouTube and Reddit entirely.

There is value to be had in these platforms but it comes at a cost and it means cutting out harmful practices to consumers such as: advertising, infinite scrolling, content recommendation algorithms, auto-playing content etc.

It also means curating and constantly evaluating the content you do consume: by unfollowing channels that don’t bring a net positive value to your life and following channels that bring a strong positive value to your life you can create curated feeds that spark joy. Then you can use these feeds at (limited) time slots that benefit you,

The Future

I would like to invite you to join me on my journey towards a decluttered digital life. My intent is to write a series of blog posts exploring digital minimalism and how it impacts my life. Maybe these blog posts can serve as an inspiration for you to follow along.

I have a few topics in mind I would like to write on, including but not limited to:

  • Defeating online advertisements and taking back your attention;
  • Avoiding predatory content recommendation algorithms that keep you hooked;
  • Following creators, not platforms and consumer friendlier alternative video streaming platforms;
  • Implementing time limitations for (social) media platforms;
  • Healthier ways to deal with the constant stream of ever changing news bombarding us.

I hope these topics strike a chord with you and you follow along for the blog posts to come.