On October 12, 2022, at exactly 2:14 PM, I realized my life was a mess. I was sitting in a rented cabin in the Catskills, surrounded by expensive pine trees and silence, trying to do a ‚digital detox.‘ No phone. No laptop. Just me and a notebook I bought for $22 that I hadn’t written a single word in. I was supposed to be ‚recharging.‘ Instead, I was vibrating with anxiety because I knew my boss, Sarah, was probably pinging me about the Q4 budget spreadsheet. I lasted four hours before I dug my iPhone out of the bottom of my rucksack like a junkies looking for a fix. I had 42 missed notifications. I wasn’t refreshed. I was just behind.
Minimalism is for people with trust funds
That’s the problem with the whole ‚Digital Minimalism‘ movement. Cal Newport and the rest of them make it sound so noble. Just delete the apps! Go for a walk! But if you work a remote job in a ‚general‘ role like I do—where you’re the glue between three different departments—you can’t just disappear. If I delete Slack, I don’t have a job. If I stop checking email, things break. Minimalism feels like a luxury for people whose work doesn’t depend on being reachable. For the rest of us, my phone felt like a vibrating cigarette in my pocket; I knew it was killing my focus, but I couldn’t just throw the pack away.
I used to think minimalism was the goal. I was completely wrong. Minimalism is about less. But when you work from home, ‚less‘ usually just means ‚more stress later.‘ You can’t minimalist your way out of a 40-hour work week that happens entirely behind a screen.
The truth is, digital minimalism in a remote-first world is just a recipe for professional suicide.
I tracked my misery for 14 days
I decided to stop listening to gurus and actually look at my own data. I’m not a scientist, but I tracked my ‚focus levels‘ on a scale of 1-10 every hour for two weeks. I also tracked how much I spent on productivity ’solutions’—it was $240 in 2023 alone. Total waste. Here is what I found during my 14-day experiment:
- Minimalism Phase (Days 1-7): I deleted everything non-essential. My focus averaged a 4/10. Why? Because I spent all my energy wondering what I was missing.
- Essentialism Phase (Days 8-14): I kept the apps but set brutal, almost mean boundaries. My focus jumped to a 7.5/10.
What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently. Digital minimalism is about the quantity of tools. Digital essentialism is about the purpose of the tools. It’s a subtle shift, but it’s the difference between starving yourself and just eating a balanced meal. I’d rather have 20 apps that I use like a surgeon than 2 apps that I use like a distracted teenager.
The part where I complain about Notion
I know people will disagree with this, and I’ll probably get emails telling me I’m ‚using it wrong,‘ but I absolutely loathe Notion. I think it’s a productivity cult. It is the antithesis of essentialism. It’s a tool that encourages you to spend three hours ‚organizing‘ your life instead of actually living it. Using Notion is like trying to build a house while the blueprint keeps changing its font. I’ve seen more people burn out trying to maintain their ‚Second Brain‘ than I have from actual work. I refuse to use it. I’ve gone back to a single Apple Note and a physical calendar. It’s ugly. It works.
Anyway, I digress. The point is that essentialism requires you to be an asshole about your time. I started telling people ‚No‘ to Slack huddles. If it’s not an emergency, put it in an email. I’m sure my coworkers think I’m less ‚collaborative‘ now. I don’t care. I’m not burning out anymore.
Which one actually cures the burnout?
Minimalism is a performance. Essentialism is a strategy. If you’re remote, you can’t escape the digital world, so you might as well learn to dominate it. I might be wrong about this, but I think the ‚detox‘ culture is actually making us weaker. We shouldn’t need to go to a cabin in the woods to feel okay. We should be able to look at a notification and decide—without emotion—to ignore it until 9:00 AM tomorrow.
I still struggle. Last Tuesday I spent forty-five minutes scrolling through a thread about mechanical keyboards I can’t afford. It happens. But I don’t delete the app anymore. I just remind myself that the app isn’t the boss of me. I am.
It’s a trap to think a new philosophy will fix a broken work culture. But if I have to choose, I’m picking the one that lets me keep my job while keeping my sanity.
Which app are you keeping only because you’re afraid of what happens if you delete it?