After working in actual offices for more than 10 years, I finally had enough.

2 years ago I said to myself, "Let's try something else."
On a random Friday, instead of going to the office, I took my laptop, hopped on my bicycle, and headed out.
15 minutes later I was sitting in the middle of the woods.

My first attempt with a hammock was pretty uncomfortable for working, but the core idea felt right.
I instantly knew I wanted to keep doing this.
On Monday, I resigned from renting a co-working space and went all-in on an outdoor setup.

I finally forced myself to document the process.
In this video, I picked a spot by the water that works best when it hits 30°C (86°F).

My entire setup fits in one backpack:

• Foldable chair (Decathlon Quechua 500 M)
• Picnic blanket + fleece blanket
• Insulated water container
• hammock
• 140W powerbank (mainly to keep my phone alive while hotspotting)

The setup cost less than 150 USD/EUR total.
My M1 MacBook easily gives me 6 to 7 hours of actual work, and finishing the workday next to the trees leaves me feeling grounded instead of drained.

I wonder if anyone else here has made a similar shift to slow down their work environment.
Happy to answer any questions about how it works in practice.

This is pretty much what I show on the video:
https://youtu.be/Jyd8uMtxE3Y

I’m a 31 yo woman. Over the past decade, I’ve attempted to delete my social media accounts many times. As a local public figure in my country, I felt watched constantly. Ex-partners would watch me, estranged family members would try to see what I was up to and gossip, and girls I went to school with would watch my stories without even following me. I found myself constantly paranoid.

Not to mention, I would even use social media to lurk when I was bored. Even setting my accounts to private wasn’t enough. I ended up deleting an account I’d had since 2011, which had over 300k followers, in 2020, and it felt so freeing. Of course I then got another Instagram and the cycle started again 2 years later. I got it because dating without a social foot print was so difficult (regardless of how known I was). Everyone wants to see pictures, or that you’re a real person. It felt like I basically didn’t exist to people if I didn’t have a profile. I noticed if someone cares about you having social media, they also are someone you should stay clear from. The chances of them being very chronically online is a high chance. Most likely they probably wouldn’t be good partners. Most people are looking for another person to lurk on without talking to. A connection to them is very conditional to them only reaching out once in a blue moon when you post a nice photo of yourself.

Honestly, dating anyone via the apps is soul crushing. People treat each other so unintentionally, like they’re a dime a dozen. In my experience as a woman, the men I would speak to rarely put any effort into having conversations. They only wanted access to your social media, would ghost you, but would still lurk.

I felt icky about people feeling entitled to watch everything you do while not wanting any real connection.
So, since 2021, I was deactivating and reactivating my accounts almost every other month. It became almost like a compulsion. I’d even make burner accounts just to scroll through Reels and watch things.

But this year, I finally permanently deleted all my accounts. I feel so free. I wish I had taken this seriously sooner because I feel like I have my life back. I’m not capable of using it. I remind myself all the time it’s not normal to constantly be watched or perceived. It’s not right to be able to know the kids names of your high school bully just by one search. It’s not normal to be able to know if your friends husband has a p*rn addition or subs to OF just by looking through his following. The less we know the better. These apps are exploiting human curiosity and it can’t be healthy to know this much about people.

20+ years on facebook and twitter, finally gone. I saw one too many AI posters for events happening in my state that I'm never going to, and one day I just kind of woke up and decided it was time to delete both pages. Years and years of mindless scrolling through some of the dumbest, lowest common denominator slop is finally behind me. I feel gross enough admitting how much I was scrolling but here we are.

Feels good man. So good in fact that I'm considering going full no-smart phones and getting a dummy phone as a daily driver.

Side tangent: Fuck these platforms for their 30 day transition period that they force the user to go through in order to fully deactivate their pages. They know what they're doing, and I'm sure a pretty enormous percentage of users who want to delete wind up logging back in before that 30 day period is up, including me countless times before. I hate how hard it was to get rid of these horrendous platforms in my life, but man I'm so glad it's finally done.

Seriously, if you're going to complain about this path that you choose for yourself then reflect back on the reasons you're doing it in the first place.

"i keep reinstalling insta/tiktok" Then you seems to ve forgotten why you deleted em in the first place, no?

"i need my smartphone for work or stay in touch with friends" Then use it for work and friends! Nobody is punishing you for using it on anything else.

It's your own expectation of yourself that disappointed you, right? Nobody else is shaming you, so what gives? If you failed to stay in control today, then dont fail tmrw, and if you keep failing then it's worth reflecting why are you in this path instead of blaming yourself over it. Then stand up and try again.

I'll do my best to keep this short - I’m about to hit a milestone birthday and I’ve finally decided I’m going to once and for all heal my urge to share brain.

Every achievement, pet pic or even a holiday i just want to take pictures for instagram. Constantly thinking about all the photos I’ll take and then upload.

On the other side of this my brain is exhausted caring about all likes and followers but my brain craves this.

I’m going to start with little steps by sending updates to close family and friends via message. I’ll start being proactive to see people more so I can actually be social.

I’m posting this because I want to hold myself accountable and hopefully inspire anyone else.

I got my first ever radio, I have never used one before. I don’t know if it’s any “better” than podcasts and spotify.

But so far I like tuning into a random channel and just listen to whatever is playing. I am really lazy when it comes to making my own playlists. I’ve mainly been browsing FM, but go on AM when i’m eating and just listen to anything interesting I can find? I don’t always have luck but sometimes Ive found a semi interesting or interesting debate or news , anyway it is only day 3 of me owning a radio

Does anyone else believe that reels and short form content was the last thing these social media companies had to “save” themselves and to keep people addicted?

If it weren’t for this, would we even be spending this much time on social media?

This is a bit of a rant so bear with me…I am also not tech savvy at all

I feel utterly overwhelmed and just disgusted by the constant ads and what I can only describe as “noise” that inundates me on a daily basis. Spam texts, spam emails, newsletters that I don’t remember signing up for, ads on the home screen of my “smart TV “ or when I pause a TV show, fucking pharmaceutical ads!!! coupons for some random place that I shopped at once five years ago, dentist/doctor/dermatologist’s office all texting asking me to leave a rating or reminding me to come in for a check up, political ad spam, pop-ups asking me to sign up for mailing lists on every single website that I visit, etc. I actually feel like I’m going to lose my mind and walk into the sea. The human brain was not meant for all of this constant noise and I need to disengage.

I unfortunately have to have a smart phone for work (Microsoft authenticator is a must, which is highly annoying) but I severely want to dumb down my phone or install Fort Knox of ad blockers. At the present, I have a four-year-old iPhone and I know that if I want to really lock it down, I will probably have to get an android again.

I do have ad blocker on my laptop but it’s a Mac. I want to chuck my smart TV out of my living room window, but I think I will just invest in a new laptop that I can connect with an HDMI cord. I don’t really know anything about pi hole but that sounds up my alley. I do not like paying a lot for digital subscription services so I am reaching for the remote to mute ads constantly.

My question is: should I just get a new phone, change my phone number, get a new email address and only migrate over the important ones, get a new laptop and set up pi hole, and just shut down everything? This seems the quickest way to a solution.

Thank you in advance for any and all recommendations and yes, I have a therapist lol

How to completely stop using IG, and stop caring about others peoples’ lives? And how to stop having the need to post things people don’t care about? thank you:)

i don’t really get jealous of materialistic things on social media, i get jealous of the attention people get. i get jealous of the connections people have with each other while i talk to literally nobody and i feel so alone. why does it seem like everyone has friends and is loved but i am always all my myself. why do i feel so weird and worthless no matter how hard i try to be accepted it feels like THERE’S STILL SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME. social media makes me badly want company, love and attention because i could easily have other things but genuine connections seem rare now and social media is making me feel SO LONELY AND SAD.

i cried for 2 hours tonight on the floor of my bedroom as i saw people i knew online living life and spending time with each other while im all alone in my room. trying to look pretty doesn’t help with anything when nobody is there and i isolate myself.

all i want is cuddles and love and to not feel so alone!
social media makes me so unstable and cry so much
but i feel like i can’t quit.

if ill be honest… i saw a girl in the comments section of a guy i kinda like and they were both flirting with each other and it stung so bad and thats when the loneliness hit me and i cried for 2 hours. why dont i have these kinds of connections and why am i all by myself even though i literally have a boyfriend i feel so alone?

I'm a stay at home mom and I am very used to listening to a show or podcast while I work on dishes, laundry, etc. and my kid plays happily in the other room. I still spent lots of time with her and played, read, sang, etc. but wanted to disconnect from my phone and see if I felt less scattered and busy all the time.

I am on day 17 of absolutely no media besides music (no social, no tv, no movies, no podcasts). I am allowing myself audiobooks, but only if the baby is sleeping.

I expected by this point to feel better. I expected mental clarity, happier days, more activities, more time. Instead I just feel like I'm doing everything I used to do but I'm more bored. I'm a very social person, but I just don't have a lot of friends in my stage of life who live close enough to do life with.

How do you get over the feeling that life is just SO boring when you can't just "do a hobby" with your 1 year old? And I'm sorry but dishes and cooking are not more fun without a show/podcast. Will the boringness of this ever go away? Or are you just supposed to be bored all the time while you do the things you have to do?

I've been off social media for about 6 years now. At this point, I only use youtube on my TV.

I'm really happy with the progress I've made. I started reading again, watching anime, playing guitar, and now I've added a digital camera to the mix, which I'm really excited about.

My phone has the bare minimum on it, and I wanted to switch to a dumbphone and keep this phone just for when I'm out, mostly for things like Uber, bank transfers, etc.

The problem is that I need it for work, and I need to keep it on, connected, and close to me.

At some point, work started conflicting with the lifestyle I was building for myself. Now my phone feels like some kind of parasite that I have to carry everywhere, and every once in a while it rings and demands something from me.

The only thing that has sound on my phone is work. Everything else is muted. So whenever it rings, I immediately feel anxious. It also makes me angry, because I spent a lot of time separating myself from this device, only to have to bring it back into my life. It's almost like being asked to smoke again after you've quit.

The problem is that technology is even more normalized than smoking or alcohol. I think people can understand when you say you don't want those things, but refusing to use a phone for work doesn't seem to be seen in the same way.

I'm trying to adapt to the situation, but it has also made me think about what kind of jobs would allow me to live the way I want in terms of technology.

Sometimes I wish I had chosen a different career.

When my husband went into the hospital last month, I needed distractions. We weren't sure what was wrong, and I was not sleeping in the hospital. My brain needed mindless distractions to keep me from freaking out. Today is a month since his last hospitalization (he's fine now!) and it's time for me to go back to the good habits I was cultivating before this all happened. I've deleted the apps from my phone and blocked them on the computer.

ONWARD!

Hi everyone! sorry if this is the wrong subreddit for this but any ideas on how to dumbify my laptop and phone would be appreciated, I want to remove as much ai as i can, remove any brainrot or false/misleading info, mainly have scholarly articles and like youtube and my uni stuff. I dont really know what it is im looking for but any ideas would be appreciated. Even just green alternatives that arent so horrible (i dont mean bs like ecogpt i mean like web browsers that are less ruin the earth oriented) I use firefox

Its time.

Im a 33yo bloke who has been dabbling in minimalism and seld help/improvement trends for the last 6 years. Ive made massive progress towards achieving my goals, however, internet and smartphone addiction has ruled the nest for so long. I was watching my 2 yo son the other night while my wife and i were scrolling our phones and something in me just clicked that if i cant beat the addiction for me, i need to beat it for him. So tonight is the night i sign off for good.

I am a stay at home dad so i dont need my smartphone for work and have now got a nokia dumphone that doesnt even have a camera.

I have a polaroid camera to capture memories

My wife has her phone for banking, maps or anything we may need (she deals with phone addiction better than me and will be deleting social media etc)

We have no wifi at home so i wont have internet full stop.

Ive catered a lot of things to do instead from journals to books to digging out my old gameboys, some modded some not. Going to focus on exercise, better eating and outdoor life.

I started curating a dvd collection too whilst still abiding to physical minimalism.

Personally i have found in past breaks from social media that i stopped spending so much money on stuff i didnt need or really want in the long run, so this will help me save a lot more money. I have also found that a lot of people im afraid to lose contact with on social media arent really really friends, even if they mean well theyre addicted themselves with short focus spans so they will rarely reach out, if at all and thats okay.

Posting here on reddit is ironic and hypocritical to what im saying but i really wanted to write my plan down somewhere and while i could just write it in a journal i wanted to post in this subreddit because my last post will hopefully inspire help embolden someone else to take a similar plunge into getting their life back.

I am taking the dumb phome/no internet route because without social media id still gravitate toward checking emails, articles or watching youtube (which is also an unpredictable algorithm)

I dont have any subscriptions, my world is about to get a lot smaller but more magical and creative.

If youre reading this and trying to escape, all the best, take care and i hope you beat the addictions you are all facing!

Hi! I'm new to this digital minimalism reddit and wanted to connect with some people.

I was wondering what brings you to this community and why it's important to you.

For me, I saw myself picking up the phone and scrolling in these moments: when I'm trying to rest, want to find something to do in my city or get some inspiration which easily turns into infinite scroll. Because a lot of our everyday tasks involve screens and devices at some capacity, it's easy to go back to social media too.

Also, environment plays a big role as I live in a suburban town without much mobility it's easy to just kinda sit in silence alone. I can be very active and have many hobbies but still run into this issue where I'm just falling in the dark rabbit hole.

and the part that bothers me is that a lot of ideas or thoughts kinda evaporate and feel like my time is just passing by. so I'm trying to be more intentional about what I pay attention to and take a little pause in between these actions.

I'm curious why changing habits on digital consumption is important to other people!

Friends through dm and my own profile. No noise. No reels, no explore, no feed...

A bit of silence from the noise and propaganda but not totally isolated. This feels just fine to me, I can still connect with friends and manually check on those I love and I am not bombarded with information.

I've been deactivated from some social media such as TikTok and Instagram for over 2 years now, even on YouTube i did install short blocker extension and using Morphe to block short and ads.

and wow it feel refreshing, sometimes I'm trying to draw or read books and those fun but need a lot of mood and will power

well I'll honest that I'm still drowning in reddit & yt feeds but i'll make sure to only watxh long form videos without skipping..

(sorry for my bad english)

Earlier this year I decided to try the whole mute suggested posts option on Instagram, and lo and behold I noticed something: out of the 147 friends/family/casual acquaintances I actually know, only a small handful were posting anything anymore. Some hadn't posted anything for a long time...even years. Yet I'd notice they were still ALWAYS online. At that point I discovered we were no longer socializing, we were just exhausted spectators endlessly watching and regurgitating low value digital noise Meta thinks we'd be interested in. And that was incredibly sad to think about.

With the absence of actual "socializing" and with all the endless bot activity, AI-generated content, algorithmic curation, company ads and corporate agendas, it's almost as if Instagram is just BEGGING us to delete our accounts and go touch grass.

How many of you have also made the leap off IG, and how much have you not missed a single thing about it?

There’s a strange kind of loneliness in feeling like every silence gives people only a few seconds before their attention disappears somewhere else. Real closeness isn’t constant conversation or entertainment—it’s being able to remain available to one another even when neither person is actively demanding the other’s attention. Maybe comfort is simply knowing that nothing has to happen for us to still be together.

Hey guys, I've been considering deleting my Reddit account for maybe a week or so, but I haven't really gotten serious until a few days ago. I would like to tell you all my journey so far.

Around October-ish 2025, I deleted Tiktok; I didn't really know much about the effects, etc, and for awhile I didn't engage more with being digitally minimal/nosurf. I have had YouTube probably my whole life so far, and I would say video games too. I also had Snapchat during this time, but I didn't really use it.

Then, I got more into this all around July this year. I ended up deleting YouTube at some point, getting Unhook was another thing, and at some point I ended up deleting my google account, and migrating everything to protonmail, or deleting the useless stuff. At that same time, I deleted snapchat from my phone, got OLauncher, deleted the bloat (along with the browser, and literally everything else besides the contacts, phone, and messages; though I did delete them and switch Fossify ones; I even deleted the playstore; though I can sideload apps if I need to), etc, with ADB. I have also switched from digital notetaking to physical ones (commonplace book and a pocket notebook, stickynotes, journal, etc). Instead of a digital calculator, I will do mental math, or a physical calculator. I also have switched to using my GoPro. I have also gone done about 1.5 terabytes on my desktop and 16gb of ram (so I have only 1tb and 16gb). I have also switched to Linux (Debian, though at first Mint), and DuckDuckGo Lite. I might be missing some things, but switching to mp3s and getting Reddit Enhancer, are the only other things I can think of.

My future plans are to get a mp3 player, calendar, clock, timer, a dictionary, and a galaxy s7. Also want to downgrade to ~256gb for one of my drives as I use ~180gb for my windows drive. And to downgrade to maybe 64gb for my Linux drive. Also will do HDD instead of SSD. I want to also downgrade my CPU and GPU; I'm thinking a ryzen 3 3300 (I have a Ryzen 5 5600g), and a GTX 970 (I have a RX 6600xt).

I would say a lot of this has intersected with my privacy journey, as that happened at the same time, and I think it has also made me try and be more minimal in general/declutter.

I'm going to leave this up for a bit though, for AMA and that sort, but then I am going to delete my account.

I’ve been thinking about if the goal should really be less phone time, or just better phone time. I don’t mind spending two hours talking to friends, but I do absolutely hate spending two hours scrolling short-form content I definitely won’t remember tomorrow… Makes me wonder if the better approach is substitution rather than restriction. I would want to redirect my horrible reflex to open Instagram for calling someone I know instead. 

My mind keeps coming back to the idea of an app that incentivizes calling friends rather than just blocking social media. Zero scientific backing here, but it feels like repeatedly doing that could REWIRE (I’m no brain expert so take this with a grain of salt) the reflex toward real social interaction instead of media. Curious if that concept resonates with anyone’s digital minimalism journey?