He deleted almost every app from his phone.
That was it.
No announcement. No big talk. No post on social media.
He just sat on the edge of his bed one morning, the sun not yet up, and deleted them one by one. Twitter. Gone. Facebook. Gone. Instagram, Slack, YouTube, even the news. All of them. He kept only the weather, the clock, the maps.
He stood up and made coffee. The silence felt like something real. Like a friend had come back.
That was nine years ago.
Since then, he wrote four bestsellers. Quiet books. Straightforward. No gimmicks. Books that asked people to stop scrolling and start thinking. Some people didn’t like them. That was fine. He didn’t write for people who wanted to be liked. He wrote for those who wanted to be free.
His name was Cal. Cal Newport.
He had a face like most men. A voice you could forget. But when he looked at you, it felt like he saw past the noise. Like he had lived through something you hadn’t noticed was happening.
He said the phone was making us mediocre.
People laughed at that. They said it was harmless. That it helped them stay connected. That it gave them joy. But he knew what they didn’t say.
He knew they reached for it first thing in the morning. That it pulled at them in meetings, at dinner tables, on walks with their children. That it was never just one scroll, never just a glance. That their thoughts had grown short and thin, like breath in cold air.
He knew because he had studied it.
The science said what the silence had whispered: the phone was stealing our minds.
Even turned off. Even facedown. It sat like a weight on the desk. It asked to be picked up. The brain said no, again and again, until it had no strength left for yes.
One glance, they said, could cost you half an hour of deep work. The kind of work that mattered. The kind of work that built things.
So he made a choice.
He called it Digital Minimalism. The name didn’t matter. The work did.
Use technology only when it served your values. Cut the rest.
No half measures.
He kept his phone, sure. But he made it stupid. No notifications. No news. No feeds. Just tools. A compass. A flashlight. A way to call home.
He said people weren’t addicted to their phones. They were addicted to dopamine. To the feeling that something new might be waiting. That next swipe, that next alert. A promise never fulfilled. That’s what kept them going.
The real tragedy, he said, wasn’t distraction. It was forgetting how to be alone with your thoughts.
He told people to block their apps. Force themselves to choose. Make it hard to cheat. Use tools like Roots or others like it. Not because they were perfect, but because habits were hard to break alone.
The goal wasn’t to kill the phone. It was to reclaim the mind.
He told them to make tech-free zones. Meals without screens. Mornings without buzzes. Evenings with quiet.
The kind of silence you feel in your bones.
That’s when the good thoughts came. Not the loud ones. The deep ones. The ones that float up from the bottom when the surface is still.
The brain, he said, needs boredom. That’s when it lights up. That’s when the Default Mode Network hums. That’s where ideas are born.
But the scroll killed boredom. It fed you junk and made you think you were full. It made people mistake noise for nourishment.
He told them to find better leisure. Learn something hard. Play an instrument. Fix something. Go outside. Sweat a little. Write a sentence that matters. Stack enough of those, and you’ve got a book. Maybe even four.
He wasn’t selling magic. He was selling work.
And the work was simple: Get your mind back.
He taught them to build boundaries. Hard ones. Not the kind you bend when you’re tired. The kind that hold when the world pushes. That’s why he liked tools that didn’t allow logging out, uninstalling, or tricks. You needed walls to hold the line.
He said to block everything when it was time to focus. Not just the loud apps. Everything.
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Do it when you write. When you think. When you drive. When you’re with someone you love. Because those moments don’t come back.
He told people to stop using their phones like pacifiers. Use them like hammers. Tools. Pick them up for a reason. Put them down when you’re done.
He shared numbers sometimes. His screen time dropped from four hours to one. His pickups fell from 150 a day to 50. But the numbers weren’t the point.
The point was this: His mind felt more calm. More clear. More creative.
And it showed.
Four books in nine years.
Not bad for a man with no Instagram.
But he didn’t care about the books. Not really. He cared about the silence that made them possible. The silence that let him hear his own mind again.
He said there was power in solitude. Not loneliness. Solitude. The kind you choose. The kind that makes room for what matters.
He said if you never let your brain be quiet, you never find out what’s inside it.
He told the story often. Sitting on the bed. Holding the phone. Choosing to delete.
One tap at a time.
It didn’t feel dramatic then. But it changed his life.
Most people won’t do it. That’s fine. Not everyone wants to be free.
But some will. Some already have. They’ll read his words and try it. They’ll feel their hands twitch. They’ll notice how many times they reach without thinking. And then they’ll stop.
Maybe for a minute. Maybe for a day.
But that minute matters.
It’s the first step back to themselves.
He said the world is loud enough. You don’t have to add to it.
Find a place. Sit down. Turn the phone off. Face down. Or better yet, leave it behind.
Then breathe.
Think a thought all the way through. Follow it down. Write what you find.
Do it again tomorrow.
Do it for nine years.
And maybe—just maybe—you’ll find what he found.
Not fame. Not followers. But clarity. Peace. And work that endures.
He deleted almost every app from his phone.
And that made all the difference.
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Inspiration for This Story.
This story was inspired by Cal Newport’s radical approach to reclaiming focus in a distracted world. His belief that smartphones diminish our cognitive capacity—even when idle—sparked a deeper reflection on silence, solitude, and the kind of work that demands everything of us. Drawing from Newport’s concept of Digital Minimalism, the story channels Hemingway’s style to reveal the quiet strength behind deliberate choices. It’s about more than deleting apps—it’s about reclaiming the mind, honoring deep thought, and building a life rooted in clarity. In a world addicted to noise, Newport reminds us: real freedom begins when we choose to be alone.
—John Rinaldo
Haven’t read that one. But I liked Deep Work and Slow Productivity
To find those without social media these days is rare, but a digital detox is a good thing. I don't tend to look at my phone until mid-afternoon.