Brian Johnson argues for choosing analog over digital when you can. He describes reading The Economist on his phone, then switching to the physical magazine with his phone off, and felt the difference immediately. Seneca and Cal Newport frame the case for real-world engagement over constant distraction.
Chapters
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic one. In the last couple ones we spent some time chatting about a couple quotes from my morning ritual protocol. We started with this Seneca gem. Cherish some person of great character and keep them always in mind. Then live as if they were watching you and order all your actions as if they saw them. Then we chatted about this Cal Newport gem. He told us don't take breaks from distraction and instead take breaks from focus. Today I want to spend a little more time chatting about Cal. I've actually been meaning to write about this for a while. So here we go. A couple months ago I was leafing through my Economist magazine that I get in the mail note this used to be my only source of news. I've since resumed the habit of reading news digitally that needs a little work. Now in that physical copy of the Economist I saw an article on James Clear. That article was called Productivity Gurus through a matchup a link to it in the plus one. Now I started reading it and they compared James Clear and Arnold Bennett. James of course wrote the current best selling self development book called Atomic Habits. Arnold wrote an old school bestseller called how to live on 24 hours a day. We have notes on both. Check them out. But that's not quite the point of this +1. The this is in that Economist article they referred to Cal Newport. So I texted him and sent him a picture of the article. Then I went back to reading the article. Only rather than reading it in my physical copy of the magazine, I started reading a zoomed in version of the picture on my phone and I was like what are you doing? Good sir. Then I turned my phone off, opened the Economist and finished reading the post print edition as I reminded myself that when I have a choice, I want to get off my phone and into the real world. And that's today's plus one. If you feel so inspired, join me in finding ways to turn off our phones and connect to something in the real world. Whether that's a real human being or anything else that isn't digital physical contact. I heard it does a hero good. Let's make some today. P S. One of the main ways I practice my philosophy of going analog every chance I can. I never read books on a Kindle or other digital device. I'm all hardcover all the time. Highly recommend the practice.
