On Tech Advice From the Amish

This Week’s Topic: Digital Tools

1 Strategy 🎯 

My wife and I made our first trip to Lancaster, Pennsylvania recently (AKA Amish country).

Going in, I thought I had a solid grasp of Amish philosophy. They love beards and they hate technology. Pretty straightforward. 

Turns out their relationship to technology is more nuanced.

They don't allow cars, but they do allow skateboards.

They don't allow electricity, but gas-powered farming tools are fine.

Turns out the Amish aren't anti-technology. They're just exceptionally thoughtful and intentional about which technologies they allow into their society, and which technologies they reject.   

To understand the Amish approach to tech adoption, you need to understand their values. Above all, they value strong family bonds and close-knit community. 

Starting with these core values, they work backward to decide whether a given technology will result in more harm than good. 

Will this technology strengthen family bonds?  

Will this technology bring community members together?

If the answer to either question is 'no', it gets rejected. 

As modern knowledge workers, we often approach decisions around tech adoption from a completely different perspective.

Can I afford it?

Are there any benefits?

If yes, sign me up!

Productivity evangelist Cal Newport calls this the 'Any-Benefit' approach to tool selection. With an 'any-benefit' mindset, we justify the use of a tool or technology if we can find any possible benefit to using it.

This mindset can blind us to the potential negative consequences of adding a new technology to our lives. Consider these troubling statistics around modern tech usage.

• The average Netflix subscriber spends 45 hours per year just deciding what to watch.

• The average teenager today gets 200 app notifications on their smartphone per day.

• Assuming current social media usage stays flat, the average 10-year-old today will spend the equivalent of 6.7 years of their life on a social media app.

In his best-selling book "Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World", Cal Newport recommends an approach to tool selection that looks and feels quite Amish.

He calls it the Craftsman Approach to tool selection:

1. Identify the core factors that determine success and happiness in your personal and professional life.

2. Adopt a tool only if its positive impacts on these factors substantially outweighs its negative impacts.

By prioritizing the positive impacts of digital tools on our personal and professional lives over fleeting benefits, we can navigate the digital landscape more deliberately, ensuring that the tools we choose are helping us become the best versions of ourselves. In a world inundated with distractions and quick fixes, we can all benefit from acting a bit more Amish when it comes to technology.

Reply to this email and let me know how it goes! I look forward to hearing from you.

See you next Wednesday,

Darin

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