For months, people kept telling me to read James. Three different people whose taste I trust, independently of each other. I resisted anyway, because retellings and I have a complicated history. Too often they lean on the original like a crutch and add nothing of their own. Then I finally gave in, and you can probably guess how this ends: James is the best book I have read this year, and it is not close.
What James is about
James tells the story of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but this time we hear it from Jim. Or rather from James, which is the whole point. The enslaved man who drifts through Twain’s novel as a kind-hearted sidekick gets his own voice here, and what a voice it is: educated, dry, precise. And hidden. Around white people, James speaks exactly the way they expect him to speak, and the gap between how he talks and how he thinks creates more tension than most thrillers I know. We read Twain at school in German translation, and I mostly remember the whitewashed fence and nothing at all about Jim. Which is, I think, exactly the point Everett is making.
What surprised me most is how funny this book is. Really funny, in the middle of horror, and Everett never lets one cancel out the other. There is a scene about getting hold of a pencil, just a pencil, that carries more weight than entire chapters of other novels. I had to put the book down a few times to breathe. I mean that as the highest compliment I can give.
Why you should read the book
You do not need to know Huckleberry Finn. James stands completely on its own. If anything, it made me want to go back to the original and argue with it. The book has won more or less every prize there is, including the Pulitzer, and for once I have no objections at all.
The books that stay with me longest are the ones that make me sit with a perspective I do not live in. They Can’t Kill Us All by Wesley Lowery did that with journalism. James does it with fiction, and it reminded me why I believe that authors can change the world, one reader at a time.
Have you read it? Please tell me in the comments, because I finished it weeks ago and I still need to talk about it.
Do you remember the 30-day digital declutter I did in 2020, inspired by Cal Newport? I wrote about it in my self-experiment in digital minimalism, and a year later I went one step further and deleted my social media accounts completely. People still ask me about it, and they always ask the same question: did it last? Five years feel like enough distance to answer that honestly.
What survived
The phone still sleeps in the kitchen. In 2021 I bought an actual alarm clock, a hideous yellow one, and it still wakes me every morning. There are still no social media apps on my phone. And the first thing I do after waking up is not scrolling. Most mornings I read. Not every morning, I want to be honest here, but often enough that I read noticeably more books per year than I did before 2020. If the whole experiment had given me nothing but this one habit, it would have been worth it.
I also kept my suspicion of the word “just”. Just checking, just five minutes, just this one video. When I catch myself thinking it, I try to put the phone down. Emphasis on try.
What crept back
YouTube. In the evenings. Disguised as documentaries. I also somehow ended up in eleven group chats that together behave exactly like the feed I thought I had left behind. And at some point I discovered that endless online window shopping scratches the same itch that Instagram used to scratch: new things, always more of them, with a little reward feeling on top. So no, I am not cured.
What I do differently today
The biggest change is that I stopped treating all this as a project with an end date. The declutter had 30 days, real life does not. What remains are a few default settings instead of rules: no feeds on the phone, one screen-free evening a week (we treat it like an appointment and it has survived birthdays, deadlines and a house move), news once a day. And when a new app wants a place on my phone, it first has to answer a simple question: what are you for? If the honest answer is “nothing, really”, it stays off.
I break my own rules about once a month, by the way. I have decided that this is fine.
Would I do the declutter again? Yes, tomorrow. Not because it turned me into a disciplined person, see above, but because it showed me what I want my mornings to look like. If you have been thinking about trying it yourself: a new month starts in a few days. That is all the starting line you need.
Amsterdam and books, for me that is a love story with a very concrete starting point. A few years ago I was in the city for a day, it started raining (of course it did), I fled into the nearest bookshop and walked out with Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell. That one impulse buy later sent me all the way to Scotland to run a bookshop myself for a week. So you could say Amsterdam bookshops have a lot to answer for.
After my lists for The Hague and Haarlem, Amsterdam was overdue anyway. All five places are in the city centre, you can easily walk from one to the next, and together they make a perfect plan for a rainy day. So: for most days.
1. The American Book Center: book shop
Let me start with my favourite. The American Book Center on the Spui sells English books only, three floors of them, and has been run by the same family since 1972. What gets me every time are the handwritten staff recommendations tucked between the shelves. Last time I went in to buy one specific book as a present. I left 45 minutes later with three books for myself and without the present. It is that kind of shop.
2. Athenaeum Boekhandel: book shop and news centre
Directly next door. Which is dangerous. Athenaeum is the more serious, more beautiful sibling: international literature, art books, translated fiction you will not stumble over anywhere else. Attached to it is the Athenaeum Nieuwscentrum with newspapers and magazines from all over the world. When I had just moved to the Netherlands and missed reading in my own language, a shop like this felt like a small lifeline. It still does, a bit.
3. Waterstones: book shop
Yes, a British chain, I know. I do not care!! Four floors in a gorgeous old building on Kalverstraat, and nobody looks at you strangely if you sit down in a corner with a pile of books and stay there. The children’s section upstairs is the best I have seen in this country. If you need a present for a small reader, this is where you go.
4. The Book Exchange: second-hand book shop
A canal-side second-hand shop on Kloveniersburgwal, in business since 1978, with tens of thousands of English titles sorted into wonderfully specific categories. It smells exactly the way an old bookshop should smell. I normally have a rule not to buy more books than I can carry home comfortably. This shop is where that rule goes to die.
5. Scheltema: book shop and café
The largest bookshop in the Netherlands, right on the Rokin: five floors, a couple of hundred thousand books, its own café and even a floor with second-hand books. Most of it is Dutch, but the English sections are big enough to keep you busy for a long while. My routine: collect a small tower of candidates, carry it to the café, order a coffee and pretend I will only buy half of them. I never do.
And because I apparently cannot count to five: Evenaar on the Singel sells nothing but travel literature, and Architectura & Natura on Leliegracht is the place for architecture and nature books. Both small, both lovely.
Have I missed your favourite place in Amsterdam? Tell me in the comments. My list of reasons to go back is already long, one more will not hurt.
An exclusive early look at Gero Wenderholm’s debut novel Manfred Mi Amor – a hilarious, heartfelt romantic comedy about modern dating, apps, spreadsheets, and a very unconventional Amor. Due out summer 2026.
Have you ever tried to optimise your love life with a spreadsheet? Or sent the exact same opening message to seventeen different people on a dating app, convinced that A/B testing your way to romance was a perfectly reasonable strategy? If even a tiny part of you has nodded along just now, then Manfred Mi Amor was written for you. And yes, I mean that as a compliment.
I was lucky enough to get an exclusive early look at this debut novel by Hamburg-based author Gero Wenderholm, and I have to say: it is one of the most fun, unexpectedly moving, and thoroughly modern takes on the chaos of dating that I have read in a very long time. Manfred Mi Amor is due out in summer 2026, and if you are even remotely interested in funny books about love, romantic comedies with real heart, or simply a good laugh at the absurdity of modern dating culture, put this one on your radar right now.
Books can change minds – but some authors go further and change lives. Here are five international writers known not just for their stories, but for the real-world kindness they put into the world.
There is something I keep coming back to, again and again: the idea that the most powerful thing a person can do is use whatever they have – their voice, their talent, their platform – to make the world a little bit kinder. And when authors do this, something extraordinary happens. Their words reach people who have never met them, in countries they have never visited, and quietly change the way those people see the world.
Today I want to share some international authors who do exactly that. People who don’t just write about change – they live it.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
If you have not yet read We Should All Be Feminists, please stop what you are doing and go find a copy. Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – also known for Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun – gave a TEDx talk in 2012 that became a cultural touchstone. The essay that grew from it has now been read and shared by millions, and in 2015 the Swedish government distributed it to every secondary school student in the country. Not as a controversy. As a gift.
Adichie doesn’t run a foundation or organise charity galas. Her activism lives in her writing, her speaking, and her unflinching refusal to be quiet. She uses her voice to challenge how we think about gender, identity, and what it means to be equal. In a world that often rewards silence, that takes real courage.
Isabel Allende
Chilean-American author Isabel Allende is one of the most beloved storytellers in the world. Her debut novel The House of the Spirits swept readers into a world of magic, politics, and family across generations. But behind the lyrical prose is a woman who has turned personal grief into something remarkable.
After her daughter Paula passed away in 1992, Allende founded the Isabel Allende Foundation in her honour. Since 1996, the Foundation has awarded grants to more than 100 organisations worldwide, supporting vulnerable women and girls through access to healthcare, education, and protection from violence. The Foundation focuses particularly on Chile and California – the two places Allende has called home. It is, in the truest sense, a monument built from love.
Khaled Hosseini
The Kite Runner was the kind of book that made me want to know more about the world. Khaled Hosseini’s writing brings Afghan stories to readers who might never otherwise encounter them – and then he makes sure those stories don’t stop at the last page.
Since 2006, Hosseini has served as a UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador, travelling to Afghanistan, Lebanon, Uganda, Jordan, and elsewhere to bear witness to the lives of refugees and displaced communities. In 2008, inspired by a trip to Afghanistan with UNHCR, he founded the Khaled Hosseini Foundation to provide humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people – funding shelter, education, healthcare, and programmes that support women’s empowerment. He has consistently used his public profile to amplify voices that too often go unheard.
Gero Wenderholm
Not all social engagement makes headlines – and perhaps that is what I find most admirable about the work of Gero Wenderholm. Based in Germany, Wenderholm is an online marketing expert and writer who has made it his quiet mission to bring ethics and sustainability into a field not always known for either.
He advises Webmasters for Future, a network of digital professionals committed to greener, more responsible web practices. He volunteers with Schlaufox e.V., an organisation dedicated to educational support for young people. And he has put his energy into fundraising for Stiftung Mittagskinder, a foundation that ensures children have access to nutritious meals.
What perhaps sets Wenderholm apart most is his altruistic approach to sustainability in online marketing – an area where short-term thinking so often wins. He is proof that you do not need a global platform to make a difference. Sometimes the most meaningful acts of kindness are the ones done consistently, in the background, without fanfare.
Arundhati Roy
Indian author Arundhati Roy won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her debut novel The God of Small Things – a book about love, loss, and the quiet violence of caste in Kerala. She could have spent the years since writing comfortable literary fiction. Instead, she chose something harder.
Roy became one of India’s most outspoken activists, campaigning against the Narmada dam project, which she argued would displace hundreds of thousands of people with little compensation. She donated her Booker Prize money to the Narmada Bachao Andolan movement. She has spoken out on behalf of indigenous communities, environmental justice, and the rights of the marginalised. In 2004, she was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize for her social campaigns and advocacy of non-violence. Her activism has not been without cost – she has faced legal challenges and imprisonment – but she has never stopped.
What strikes me about all of these people is that they are not waiting for the perfect moment or the perfect platform. They are using what they have – words, time, money, courage – right now.
I think we sometimes tell ourselves that kindness on a big scale is for other people. For Nobel laureates and foundation founders and people with important titles. But Gero Wenderholm volunteers at a tutoring club. Isabel Allende gave her daughter’s memory a practical form. Khaled Hosseini got on a plane to see for himself.
I believe that the world would be a better place if we all showed more compassion and kindness. I believe that showing others that you care about them and the world around you does not have to either costs a lot of money or time: A compliment to the co-worker that always helps you polish up your presentation, a random postcard to your best friend or father or telling the neighbour that you really enjoy walking past their flowers in the morning. This all doesn’t cost a lot of money, if any at all, but make the other person smile and feel appreciated. With this blog, I am hoping to spread more kindness and happiness and to help myself, and maybe others along the way, to realise that the world is a good place, that people are kind and loving and to have a collection of my happy moments throught the years.
This year, I have decided to not set any goals for my online shop or any other business/ project I have and to just do whatever I feel like doing in my free time. Since I have made that decision, I find myself reading more than I used to last year and it makes me very happy. Finding new stories, listening to unknown voices and learning is something I thoroughly enjoy. So here are the books I read in February:
For the last six or seven years, I have been reading more and more non-fiction books. They are, for me, the perfect way to learn about a new topic without getting lost in too much information or an abundance of webpages. In February, I read eight non-fiction books:
Smoke Gets In Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty
Caitlin Doughty tells about her work as a mortician and crematory employee. While the book provides detailed descriptions of what happens to you once you are dead, the book also points out how detached we are, as a Western society, from death and dead people. Doughty makes a case for letting death and talking about it become a part of our lives, thus making the thought of dying and everything that comes with it less scary and taboo. Doughty also has a youtube-channel called Ask a Mortician where she answers questions and gives more insight into her work. I will write a more detailed review of this book as I feel it raised a lot of thoughts and things I would like to write about.
Bleaker House by Nell Stevens
The book has a subtitle: How Far Would you Travel to Become a Writer? And Nell Stevens sets out to answer this question with a trip to the Falkland Islands. More specific Bleaker Island. A place where roughly two people live, next to animals and nothing else. Stevens, aching to write a novel, applies for a scholarship that allows her to spend time anywhere she wants. And while her colleagues choose Spain, Indonesia, or Sweden – Stevens wants to spend her time far, far away from anyone. She spends three months on the Falkland Islands and tries to write the novel that would make her name. I enjoyed reading her book because I read it at a time during which I also longed for solitude. No internet, no human interaction, no distractions and I could relate a lot to her wish and hopes. But also because the idea of being so far off the grid just sounds amazing and I would love to do it one day. It also made me wonder how many really remote places there are still in the world. Untouched nature, wilderness, and stillness.
The Nature About Nature. Why We Need the Wild by Enric Sala
Encouraged by Steven´s book, I started reading Sala´s book by the end of the month. Sala, the founder of The National Geographic Pristine Seas project, explains why we, as humans, need wild animals, untouched seas, and more protected nature. It shows the connection between ecological diversity and economical success. While the book paints a rather dark picture of the future and the impact humans have on animals and nature, it also shows what has to be done to make a change and to stop the destruction of our planet. Reading the book made me want to learn more about our nature, and projects that fight for more protected oceans. But also, to understand how I can make a difference and put pressure on politicians. I will keep you updated on this and write a more detailed review of the book.
What We´re Told Not to Talk About (But We´re Going to Anyway) by Nimko Ali
Orgasms, periods, menopause, pregnancy – four topics the majority of women do not talk about on a regular basis, if at all. In her book What we´re told not to talk about (but we´re going to anyway) Nimko Ali sets out to listen to women from “East London to Ethiopia” tell their story and what it means to be pregnant or have your first orgasm. I did enjoy reading the book, mostly because it led to good conversations with my boyfriend and my friend Jule. However, it was lacking intersectionality and it did leave me with a bitter taste about womanhood and what it means to be a woman. You can read my review here.
Was weiße Menschen nicht über Rassismus hören wollen aber wissen sollten by Alice Hasters and exit RACISM by Tupkoa Ogette
I found the books by Hasters and Ogette very similar, and equally important. Both women write about racism, in Germany but also in society as a whole. The books are aimed at white readers and how we, as white people, need to finally acknowledge our privileges. Hasters and Ogette share very personal experiences with Anti-Black racism and how it has, and still is, impacting their lives. I can recommend both books to anyone who wants to leave their privileged “Happyland”, as Ogette calls it, and make the world a fairer world by understanding how we are all socialized in a racist society.
Anti-Racist Ally. An Introduction to Action & Activism by Sophie William
Sophie William´s book is a very short, yet precise, introduction to terms about racism. You can read it in less than an hour and it is recommended to anyone who is not familiar with terms such as “race pay gap”, “tone policing” and “redlining”. Every week, Williams asks her Instagram-followers what they have done that week to fight racism. A question we must ask ourselves!
The 5 AM Club by Robin Sharma
And now to the worst book, I have read so far ever: The 5 AM Club by Robin Sharma aka The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. Uagh. I absolutely hated this book for several reasons and it sparked a whole blog series I am about to start this month. So look out for it if you want. I will also write a review of this book and what I think is wrong with it. Until then, let me just say, that I found the book even worse than Jordan B. Peterson´s 12 Rules for Life and that means a lot.
Review Fiction books
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
I got this book from my dear friend Jule and she said it was one of her reading highlights last year, so I was of course curious. And boy, the book did not disappoint. I found myself rushing through the pages, wanting to know what will happen next. I even cried at times as the words touched me so much. A little Life – many say it is the story of four friends and their life. While this is true, the story is mostly about violence, abuse, and how to live with it. Some people call it “violence porn” and I understand why. However, I think you can read graphic violence and still call the book “a good book”. It is also a book that many people either hated or loved. It seems like there is nothing in between.
S (Ship of Theseus) by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst
This book has been on my shelves for years and it always felt intimidating to me. But I have read it now for my book club and can say that I am happy I finally did. Not because I enjoyed it tremendously, but because it is a whole different reading experience. You basically read two stories: S (the main story) and The Ship of Theseus which takes place in the margins of the book: a conversation between two readers, strangers at first who connect through the book S, and the search for the author´s identity. The book contains postcards, letters, drawings, and maps – all adding to the reading experience. Or taking your attention away from the story. The book raises questions such as “Can you separate work from the author?”, “How much of the own life does a writer really add to a story?” and most interesting to me “Is it necessary to know anything about the author to understand its work?”. We will have the book club discussion next weekend and I am curious o hear what my friends think about it.
The 57 Bus by Dashka Slater
This book read like a lengthy newspaper article. It is based on a true story about a crime that took place in 2013: Sasha, 18 years old and identifying as agender, is riding a bus, sleeping when Richard sets their skirt on fire. The book tells about Sasha´s identity and raises the question if Richard´s crime was a hate crime. And while the book does not give a clear answer, I found it interesting to think about how media portrays crime, in general, but also in this particular case.
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
This was the first book I read by Gyasi and I absolutely enjoyed it. Gyasi tells the story of a mother and daughter. A family torn apart, but united at the same time, by drugs and depression. A father who leaves the family, a daughter who is trying to keep her mother alive while finding her way in an academic world. I enjoyed the way it was written and that it touched upon so many different topics in a raw, honest way.
Im Park der prächtigen Schwestern (Las Malas) by Camila Sosa Villada
Another book I´ve read for one of my book clubs. Sosa Villada tells the story of trans women in Argentina in the late 1980s and 90s. The book feels very realistic at times. I guess that is the case because Camila Sosa Villada herself is a trans woman who experienced many things mentioned in the book. I enjoyed the story but I did not fully enough the way of writing. The magical realism-passages felt out of place to me, but some of my friends really liked them. The book is full of violence, heart brake and tales of prostitution and survival. It definitely gives insight into a world that is very different from what my life looks like and opened my eyes further to what others have to suffer from for just being themselves.
Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson
The debut novel of photographer Caleb Azumah Nelson was my favourite fiction book this month. It tells the story of two friends falling in love. Nothing special you might think. But it is – the book, only roughly 140 pages long, is so full of heartbreak and emotions. It tells the story of an unnamed person falling in love with a woman. And while love is central, the story is also about what it means to be a Black man living in London, experiencing racial profiling, losing friends, and finding his own way. The language of Nelson is almost poetic, raw, and just beautiful. I am sure this is a book I will read again and give as gifts to my friends.
Have you read any of the books? What have you read in the last weeks?
Why I deactivated and deleted my social media accounts and how I hope to find some inner rest as a result of it.
Quitting social media
Since last year when I did the “digital detox,” I have been thinking about deleting my accounts on Facebook and Instagram. Mostly because I realized that social media and the sheer amount of input I got did make me feel bad about myself and my life. It made me feel like I am not doing enough, like I am not enough. But then there always was this other part of me that said “Anne, just try harder, make the best of it, use it to grow your business” and I´ve found it difficult to not log in to Instagram.
So a few days ago, I finally made the decision to find out if my constant mood swings (going from “Yeah, life is awesome” to “What are you even doing with your life?” several times per week/day) are because of a deep-rooted issue within me and if letting go of social media can help me find some inner rest and calmness and enjoy my life more. And this is where I am now. I have deleted my Facebook account and deactivated my three Instagram accounts. To make sure I cannot access them, I have changed the email address connected to these accounts to my boyfriend´s address. In case I want to log in and reset my password, he gets a notification. It makes me a bit sad that this outer control is necessary but yeah, I think I abused social media and this is the price to pay now.
What I hope will happen now
To be honest, I do not want to have high expectations, but I also know that I have them already. For months, if not years, I am constantly battling myself about the purpose and meaning of my life. I have been chasing some goals and highs that did not make me happy after all and I secretly hope that by the end of the year, this will have stopped. My wish is to find out what I really want to do in my free time, without influences from outside like it was before. I hope I will start the majority of my days listening to what I want to do that day and then do it. And find joy in doing these things, not only in a “shareable” result. I wish that I will feel better about myself and my life. That I find many moments of deep work, where I get into some kind of flow, fully immersed into the task ahead. I wish to deepen my connection with the people in my life. But most of all, I wish to live according to my values.
I will share my values and how I have found them in an upcoming post. That post will also cover how I have come to the conclusion that I have a lot of “junk values” and how I came up with my own definition of success and how I try to live up to it. I am currently preparing a long, in-depth post about success and our thinking about it, and knowing that I am taking the time to dig into this topic at my own pace makes me super happy already.
First observations
It has only been a couple of days that I have stopped using social media but I have already run into a couple of situations in which I could not access information because I do not have a Facebook account anymore. I wanted to, for example, look up some information about a little fruit and vegetable shop in the neighbouring city but they are only available on Facebook. I think it will happen more often in the course of the next months. And for a moment I was a bit annoyed by how inconvenient that now is, but then I thought “Well, I guess I have to go to the shop now to find out what I want to know” and that thought somehow made me happy again. It means I have to cycle there, talk to the owner – things that I enjoy and might lead to some nice conversations and opportunities.
I want to start writing here again as I enjoy writing and thinking about some topics. I also want to share the books I have read again and just find joy in writing and thinking.
I do not often read books that make me feel slightly embarrassed about how little I know. But What We’re Told Not to Talk About (But We’re Going to Anyway) by Nimko Ali did exactly that – and I am grateful for it.
Nimko Ali is a Somali-British activist and one of the most prominent voices campaigning to end female genital mutilation (FGM). This book is part memoir, part manifesto, and entirely honest. She writes about her own experience of FGM as a child, about the silence and shame that surrounds it, and about what it has taken – personally and politically – to keep speaking about it anyway.
The title says it all, really. There are things we do not talk about – in families, in communities, in public life – because they are uncomfortable, because they challenge the way things are, because speaking up has a cost. Nimko Ali pays that cost again and again, and she does it with warmth, humour, and an absolute refusal to be quiet.
What struck me most was the tone. I expected something more clinical or angry – and while there is righteous anger here, there is also a lot of joy and personality. Ali is funny. She is self-aware. She writes about her community with both love and clear-eyed criticism. And she insists throughout that this is not a problem confined to one culture or one religion – the silencing of women’s bodies, women’s pain, women’s voices is everywhere.
This is not an easy read in the sense that it is comfortable – it is not meant to be. But it is readable, it is human, and it is important. I finished it in two days and I have been thinking about it ever since.
Who should read it: Everyone, honestly. But especially people who want to understand the intersection of culture, politics, and women’s rights through one woman’s deeply personal story.
In the last couple of months, I have been spending a lot of time online. Especially Instagram became my go-to app directly after waking up. I am a person who tends to compare herself to others and their lives and successes a lot. And this comparing often comes with questioning my own behaviour, values, dreams, and goals. In most of the cases, my life seemed less exciting, less successful, and less great overall. And I am kind of done with this constant feeling of not being/doing enough. To clarify this: this feeling comes from within me. At no moment did anyone ever, over the last year, tell me I was doing a bad job at my business or not succeeding. On the contrary, people keep telling me that I inspire them to pursue their own dreams and list all the things I have achieved. This feeling of never enough and constantly looking for happiness and the next best thing is taking the joy out of almost everything I am doing. And this is why it has to stop.
My starting point
Until last week, I was using Instagram for about 2+ hours per day. Mindlessly scrolling, chasing new likes, and hoping for new followers. I was constantly checking my shop to see if I had new orders or if someone liked my products. My inbox was refreshed every couple of minutes, in the worst moments, and WhatsApp was constantly on. Until one day about a week ago, I had enough. I finally bought the book “Digital Minimalism. On Living Better with Less Technology” by Cal Newport, deleted Instagram from my phone and started reading.
Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
While reading the book, I soon realized that the apps itself were not the problem. Although they are designed to have users spend as much time as possible on them, they are not bad per se. It is how I used them that became the problem. I allowed an app to tell me how to feel: about my life, about my business, about the things I want to do, and about what success is. One of the first things to do to go through the digital declutter, as Newport calls it, is to identify the apps and technologies that are optional, and that cause the most distraction and reason to feel not good about me. For me, these are the following apps:
Instagram
Facebook
Gmail
Etsy
Youtube
WhatsApp and my laptop and smartphone in general.
The next step was to make rules for each of these apps/devices and to stick to them for 30 days. I am now on day 2 of these 30 days and I can already feel a difference.
My rules for each app/device are
Instagram: Delete theapp from my phone, use once per week (to stay in touch with people who ordered a custom made embroidery from me)
Facebook: Delete the app from my phone, do not use at all
Gmail: Deactivated app from my phone (deleting was not possible somehow), check and reply to emails from 11.00-12.00 every day (Monday to Friday)
Etsy: Delete the app from my phone, check traffic and likes during my Gmail time
Youtube: Either listen to music while working or watch inspirational videos while stitching. No mindless murder documentaries, no mindless videos in the evening.
WhatsApp: Mute notifications, check WhatsApp and reply to messages and stay in touch with friends only between 8.30-9.00 and 17.00 -17.30 each day
Laptop: 1h per day during my working time has to be screenless work. Today, for example, I spent an hour sitting on the guest bed brainstorming about my business and the direction I want it to take.
Phone: Turn sound on so people can reach me in case of an emergency, leave the phone in thekitchen after 20.00 o’clock
Screenless Saturdays: No screens at all until 15.oo o’clock on Saturdays
This might seem like a lot of rules, but I already feel the benefits. I have really realized that I was not in control of how I use the apps and technologies. And that I really want to have this control and power back.
Blocking the sites
My next step was to block the sites mentioned above on my laptop. I scheduled the times during which I can use the apps and it has helped me a lot already. I am using the Chrome Extension BlockSite for this and I had it set up in less than five minutes.
Newport points out that it is important to know how you can fill your new free time and to fill it with meaningful projects or activities. My third step was therefore to make a list of activities I knew from experience would make me feel good and I considered valuable.
Cal Newport: Digital Minimalism (2019)
Things to do in my new free time
Educational/Learning
Write my blog: Yes, you might think, really Anne? You did not post anything in months. True 🙂 And this will change again because I am shifting my focus away from fastpaced apps like Instagram and towards more in depth-writing which I find appealing and would like to do more of on a regular basis.
Follow online-courses: My boyfriend and I are doing the course Science of Happiness at edX by Berkley University and I enjoy it a lot. I have also signed up for the courses Gender and Sexuality: Applications in Society and European Paintings: From Leonardo to Rembrandt to Goya.)
Read: I already read regularly, but reading is one of the first things I stop doing when I think I have to perform and produce. It is also something I easily stop when feeling stressed.
Try new recipes: Mostly, my boyfriend cooks but I enjoy it, too, and have the goal to try one new recipe per week for the next twelve weeks.
Outdoors
Cycle: My boyfriend and I cycle now almost every day. Some days just an hour, other days 100km. It is great to be outside and it helps me to find a bit of solitude.
Photography: I want to learn how to use my camera better and go for solitude walks (recommended by Newport and others). I want to discover the world around me a bit better and photography always helps me with that.
Home/Family/Friends
Declutter our home: We have just bought a house and are moving in November. So sorting through our stuff, selling what we don’t need anymore, or give it to others is a valuable and necessary project.
Meeting friends and family: Of course, this is not so easy and recommended to do during this pandemic, but I can also meet my friends in a video call and have a deep conversation with them instead of just connecting by liking their Instagram photos.
The schedule
Yesterday, I took 90 minutes to make a schedule that includes all the rules above but also gives a clear overview of my tasks for this week and the projects I want to work on.
My day tomorrow, for example, looks like this:
6.30-7.30: cycle
7.30-8.30: shower, breakfast, read
8.30-9.00: WhatsApp
9.00-11.00: Project/ Focus hours: Writing
11.00-12.00: E-Mails, orders
12.00-13.00: Lunch
13.00-14.30: Designing new patterns for my shop
14.30-17.00: Stitching
17.00-17.30: WhatsApp
17.30-18.30: Dinner, Science of Happiness-Course
18.30-21.00: Reading, projectwork, Board Game
Some of you might find this too much planning, but for me, it helps me to know that everything will happen eventually and that I planned it. I will do the first recap of this experiment after week 2 and one final one after 30 days with a detailed plan on how to use social media and the apps mentioned above for my values and purpose. But I think my first conclusion so far is: Social Media will only play a part in my business life, not in my private life in the future and I feel great about it already.
