Why It's Worth Trying Digital Minimalism
Every day, it repeats. Still in bed in the morning, the thumb automatically slides to the social media icon, eyes skim a few posts, then email notifications, then messages in three different messengers – and before you get out of bed, twenty minutes have passed. During the day, this pattern repeats dozens to hundreds of times. According to data from Statista, the average Czech person spends approximately three and a half hours a day on their smartphone, with a significant portion of that time spent on activities they themselves would describe as pointless. This is precisely where digital minimalism comes into play – a philosophy that doesn't promise you'll give up technology, but that you'll start using it consciously. And one of its most practical outcomes is a surprisingly simple goal: declutter your phone and reclaim up to two hours a day.
The term digital minimalism was popularized by American computer science professor Cal Newport in his book of the same name from 2019. Newport defines digital minimalism as "a philosophy of technology use in which you focus your online time on a small number of carefully selected and optimized activities that strongly support things you value, and then happily miss out on everything else." So it's not about disconnecting from the world, no return to candles and carrier pigeons. It's more of a conscious decision about what deserves our attention – and what doesn't. And the phone, which we carry everywhere with us, is the logical place to start making this change.
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Why a phone full of apps is so problematic
Most people have between sixty and ninety apps installed on their phone. They actively use around fifteen of them. The rest either remained from the time they were tried once, or they are pre-installed programs the user doesn't even know about. Yet even unused apps have an impact – they take up space, send notifications, and create visual noise on the home screen. Each icon is a small stimulus the brain has to process, and each notification is an interruption from which our focus recovers in an average of twenty-three minutes, as shown by the frequently cited research by Professor Gloria Mark from the University of California.
Think of it as a desk. When it's covered with papers, mugs, cables, and notes, it's hard to concentrate, even though most of those things have nothing to do with the current task. A phone works exactly the same way. Digital clutter diverts attention, even when you don't realize it. And what's worse, many apps are deliberately designed not only to attract attention but also to hold it for as long as possible. Infinite scrolling, autoplay videos, red bubbles with numbers – these are all design patterns that former Google design ethicist Tristan Harris compared to slot machines. It's not a coincidence; it's by design.
This is precisely why simply "limiting time on the phone" often isn't enough. You set a limit for social media, but then bypass it because in that moment it seems like a good idea. Digital minimalism offers a deeper approach – it's not about setting a timer, but about changing the environment itself so that temptation doesn't arise in the first place.
Take the example of Kateřina, a thirty-year-old graphic designer from Brno, who sat down one weekend and calculated how much time she spent on her phone each day. The result shocked her – four hours and twelve minutes, of which nearly two hours were on Instagram and TikTok. Yet she didn't feel like she was spending that much time on her phone. "It was always just a moment, a few minutes here and there," she described her experience. This very invisibility is the most insidious thing about excessive phone use. Individual moments seem innocent, but added together they amount to hours. Kateřina decided to try a radical phone declutter and after a month reported that she had reclaimed approximately one hour and forty minutes a day – time she began dedicating to reading and walking her dog.
So how do you go about it? How do you declutter your phone in a way that actually works and doesn't last just three days?
How to declutter your phone and reclaim two hours a day
The first step is an audit. Before you start deleting apps, you should look at the hard data. Both Android and iPhone offer a screen time tracking feature – on iPhone you'll find it under "Screen Time," on Android as "Digital Wellbeing." Just look at the statistics for the past week, and the results tend to be telling. Most people discover that three to five apps consume the vast majority of their time – and that these apps are usually not the ones they would describe as important.
The second step is making decisions based on values, not habit. Digital minimalism recommends asking a simple question about each app: Does this app bring me something that deeply supports my values and goals? If the answer isn't a clear "yes," the app should go. This doesn't mean you'll lose contact with friends – it means you might choose one communication channel instead of five. That you'll keep maps and a podcast player but delete the third game you only play while waiting at the doctor's office.
The third step, and perhaps the most effective one, is changing your phone's environment. Even if you don't delete all distracting apps, you can significantly reduce their impact. Turning off all notifications except calls and messages from close ones is a change that productivity experts recommend virtually unanimously. It also helps to move social media from the home screen into a folder on the second or third page – the more steps required to open an app, the less likely you are to open it out of habit. Some people go even further and switch their phone to grayscale mode, eliminating the colorful stimuli that attract the brain.
The fourth step is creating alternatives. One of the reasons people reach for their phone so often is that they don't have anything else at hand. Moments of boredom, waiting, transitions between activities – these are all moments when the hand automatically reaches for the pocket. Digital minimalism recommends filling these moments consciously. A book in your bag, a notebook on your desk, a short walk instead of scrolling during a break. It's not about being constantly productive, but about replacing passive consumption with something that truly fulfills you.
Some might object that two hours a day sounds like an exaggerated promise. But just do the math. If you spend three and a half hours a day on your phone and after decluttering and reorganizing it drops to an hour and a half, the result is clear. And those two hours a day mean fourteen hours a week, which is almost two full working days. Over a year, that's more than seven hundred hours – enough time to learn a new language, read fifty books, or run thousands of kilometers.
It's important to mention that digital minimalism is not a one-time cleanup but an ongoing process. Apps accumulate again over time, habits return, new services tempt you to try them. That's why Cal Newport recommends a regular "digital declutter" – for example, going through your phone once a month and re-evaluating what belongs there and what doesn't. Just as you regularly clean your apartment, you should regularly clean your digital space too.
Interestingly, people who practice digital minimalism often report not only more free time but also better sleep quality, lower anxiety, and higher satisfaction. A study published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology in 2018 showed that limiting social media to thirty minutes a day led to a significant reduction in feelings of loneliness and depression. This makes sense – less time spent comparing yourself to others and more time devoted to real relationships and activities naturally leads to a better mental state.
"The key to a happier life with technology isn't less technology, but better technology – carefully selected and consciously used," wrote Cal Newport. And that is precisely the core of digital minimalism. It's not about asceticism, it's not about being against progress. It's about taking control of a tool that should serve us, not the other way around.
Practical tips can be summarized in several points that serve as a checklist for anyone who wants to get started:
- Review your screen time statistics and identify the biggest "time eaters"
- Delete apps you haven't used in the last thirty days
- Turn off all notifications except calls and important messages
- Move social media off your home screen
- Log out of apps so you have to enter your password each time you open them
- Charge your phone outside the bedroom and get a classic alarm clock
- Schedule specific times to check emails and messages instead of monitoring them continuously
Each of these steps on its own saves only a few minutes. But together they create an environment where conscious phone use is the default setting and mindless scrolling is the exception. And that is precisely the goal.
In closing, it's worth mentioning that digital minimalism naturally connects to the broader trend of a more conscious lifestyle. Just as people are beginning to choose what they eat, what they wear, and what they clean their homes with, they are also beginning to choose what they give their attention to. The phone is just one piece of the puzzle, but it's a piece that each of us carries in our pocket – and that influences how we experience every day. Two extra hours a day doesn't sound like a revolution, but try to imagine everything you could do with them. Perhaps this is exactly the change worth trying.
