Efficiency and Intentionality in Personal Digital Independence

When we think about building resilient systems for our personal usage of technology and making sure that we are not becoming dependent on too many services and live under the illusion that we cannot live without this or that, it helps to proceed methodically.

I think that we need to start by performing an assessment of the services that we're using and look at what is needed, critical, essential versus what is desirable. This helps us define what is non-negotiable and critical in our daily lives versus what is non-critical and therefore potentially expendable. This implies that we may have to introduce some level of friction in our lives.

In my view, doing the assessment is essential because it helps us understand, first of all, where we are and how the services that we use meet our needs. And by this I mean our real needs, not the convenience.

The other benefit of the assessment is to determine where those services are located on our map of values i.e., look beyond the service benefit itself, and assess how the company or its owner(s) positions map against my own moral values.

From there, we can start drawing an action plan:

• What can we afford? What is expensive?
• What do I want to pay for? What do I need to pay for?
• What makes sense? What doesn’t make sense? Do I really need this?

This helps us get into a better shape or a better state where we are consuming technology in a conscious manner.

The same applies with the platforms that we're using. Do I need to do this work on my computer and on my phone and on my tablet? Or can I, let's say, split the various workflows through different platforms?

There can be a reason that makes me want to only perform certain sets of activities on my computer, and that is intentional. And maybe it creates a bit of friction because, for example, I get a mail and I want to reply to it immediately from my phone or my tablet. But at the same time, introducing the friction kind of gives me the discipline to say, no, I will not sort this thing right here right now, but I will do that a bit later.

So, beyond the initial mapping, it is also important to differentiate what kind of work or what kind of activities I want to perform on a specific device. I could do a ton of things on my tablet, but there is a reason why I don’t want to be using the tablet before going to sleep and I want to use an ink reader. There are also reasons for me to use focus modes on my phone and tablet, just like there are reasons to run only the bare minimum of apps on my phone.

What about you - have you done similar assessments in the past?