Yes Digital Minimalism Also Includes Substack Subscriptions
Unfortunately
When it comes to digital minimalism - it’s easy to focus on the bad stuff. Too many social media platforms run by megalomaniacs in hoodies on your phone? Too many pictures of the salad you made last week? Too many games sucking all your time in the name of crushing candy?
Delete, delete, delete.
That’s the simpler side of reducing your online hours. It might not be easy to delete TokTik but you at least know you probably should.
Everything gets more opaque when it comes to the “good” side of the internet.
The resources that make you feel brainier, healthier, and happier. Surely we should bring more of that sort of content into our lives?
In some cases, maybe. But in most, probably not.
Take Substack.
This is an incredible place to hang out on the internet with multiple thousands of intimidatingly good writers doing their thing. I want to subscribe to them all.
But I don’t. Because no one can get to the end of the internet - even the smaller, more pleasant corners where websites like Substack live.
If you try, it’s only going to make you feel worse, not better.
And I don’t like that sort of irony.
Friends, you have just 2 days left to take advantage of my April offer. Until midnight 30 April, access to the whole of Simple and Straightforward - including its food supplement The Capsule Pantry - is just $3.50 a month or $35 a year. This gives you three newsletters a week plus access to a huge archive of essays, flexible recipes, and courses. Not only that, you’re keeping this project - and an indie writer - going!
Every time someone subscribes to S+S I get a little notification. Often, this email will tell me what other Substacks that the subscriber reads. And sometimes it’s in the hundreds. My friend
recently wrote that he regularly sees subscribers read thousands of Substacks.That is SO much content.
Say an author sends out on average one article a week to their mailing list. That’s 1000 extra pieces of mail landing in an inbox every single week - or one every 43 minutes.
First, unless you read all day long, no one has time to read that many Substacks. Second, that is a lot of distractions.
Research suggests that it takes a human being on average 23 minutes to re-focus after a distraction like reading an email. Subscribing to too many - even ones that are good for you like many Substacks are - doesn’t exactly jive with living a simpler life. A life that is supposed to contain more white space, more time, and more stillness.
Because stillness isn’t exactly easy to achieve with your phone pinging at you every few minutes.
How many Substacks I subscribe to has been a hot topic of late, since Substack brought out “Notes” - a Twitter-like space where you can interact with your favourite writers, including me.
I’ve found so many amazing-sounding Subtacks since being on there and the number I subscribe to has dramatically increased.
This has landed me in a bit of simple living hot water. I now have a very stressful inbox, one I simply can’t keep up with alongside my tough writing schedule, full-time travel, and my attempts at living an easier, quieter life.
I appreciate it seems weird that I - someone who relies on as many people as possible subscribing to Simple and Straightforward - would sit here and tell you to stop with all the subscriptions.
But I genuinely believe in Substack’s mission to make the internet a better place. For someone who is striving to live a simpler life - and hopefully, this means you too - that includes the ability to shut down access to the internet whenever I can. It includes having a smaller, quieter inbox that doesn’t distract me from more meaningful pursuits.
As a writer of a Substack newsletter, there’s another reason I advocate limiting subscriptions. It’s because I want you to subscribe to Simple and Straightforward because you genuinely get something out of the content, not just because it’s a Substack featured publication or because nearly 4000 other people also hang out here (soz for the mini-brag there).
Despite what our Neanderthal and social media-soaked brains like us online writer sorts think, what matters more than the number of subscribers is the number of quality subscribers.
Sure I love the dopamine spike of new subscribers, but what matters more is how much those subscribers want to read my shit. I want my open rate and average read time to be high. I want people to get to the bottom of the email. I want people to respond and talk to each other. I want people to convert to paid.
Most of all I want people to feel like they learned something or that their life is a little better than it was before they opened my email.
It’s why many internet-based writers will routinely cull inactive subscribers.
It hurts our ego a bit. But it’s better for everyone involved, including the person whose inbox is no longer being infiltrated by a writer they don’t read anyway.
The internet can be good a good place. But what is also good - in fact, better - is setting boundaries for your inbox. Because however much I want you to have an inbox chockablock with fascinating Substacks, what I want for you more is the mission of this particular newsletter.
For you to live a simpler, easier life.
Protecting your inbox is a big part of digital minimalism. The average person will check theirs 15 times a day. If you’re anything like me and your inbox is your kryptonite, you’re probably checking it even more than that.
That is a lot of time you could recoup and channel into something more meaningful.
For my part, I keep a tight limit to the number of Substacks I read and I suggest you do too. Try Substacks on for size, see how they feel. If you’re not reading them after a few weeks, unsubscribe. Believe me when I say it’s kinder both to you and to the author. After all, no writer wants their work to be deleted without being read.
I hope Simple and Straightforward makes the cut for you. But if you decide your life would be simpler with one less mailout you rarely read in your inbox, I’ve done my job anyway.
So I’m happy.
THANKS FOR READING!
🌿 I WANT YOUR SIMPLE LIVING QUESTIONS! Every first Tuesday of the month I’ll answer reader questions on simple living, minimalism, and living sustainably. If you have a question for me, send it in here.
🌿🌿 GIVE ME A FOLLOW ELSEWHERE ON THE INTERNET - I’m on LinkedIn and I also write 2-3 extra essays a week at Medium (if you don’t have a Medium membership you can get one here).
Two weeks into Notes I feel this one all too much.
Inspriational. Thank you for sharing, esp the part about how reading much online materail makes us feel healthier, happier etc. I am moving this direction a little bit each day. Thank you!