Many of you have seen the video and reviews of the new iPhone 4S, and yes, it looks great.

Don’t rush out to order it. Here’s why: you don’t need it.

True, it is sleek and sexy and full of great features like a great camera and personal assistant and a better screen, etc. But you don’t need it today any more than you needed it yesterday, or 5 years ago.

Yesterday, without the new iPhone, your life was good. Some of you were happy and content and were actually able to do your work and get on with your life without the new iPhone.

Today, Apple announces its newest device, and the press and tech bloggers swoon. We all have to get the latest device, or we’ll no longer be hip, we’ll no longer be part of the “in” crowd.

And yet, is it really that essential? I’ve wanted an iPhone for almost 5 years now, but haven’t bought one because I know I don’t need it. Will it make my life a bit more fun? Sure, possibly — but so will a walk in the park with my kids, or a hike with a friend, or a free book at the library. I don’t need to spend $199 plus thousands of dollars on a 2-year contract to make my life a bit more fun.

Five years ago, the iPhone didn’t exist. It wasn’t a need in your life. You were able to live perfectly without it. And now that it does exist, all of that is true.

It’s Apple’s marketing that has worked on us, and we’re fools for it.

The same, of course, is true of all other technology and sleek consumerist products. It’s just that Apple is better at it than most.

Don’t give in. Fight the marketing, by noticing and letting go of the urges that marketing creates in us. Find contentment without products. You’re better than that.

Also: Why I gave up my iPhone

Amidst the rocks I found a small cardboard sign with some neat handwriting on it:

“February 11 marks our 3,068th day living out here. Thanks P+T (for 3 weeks ago).”

Then there were numbers crossed out, marking the days after that, until it hit today’s total of 3,150. It also had a note inserted among the numbers that said “Happy Easter”.

It occurred to me that this hand-made sign is the most minimal blog there is. Basically a statement of how long they’ve been living out in the desert, and daily updates in the form of crossed-out numbers. With a shout out to friends, of course.

What is blogging at its best? This sign distilled blogging to its essence: regular updates that inspire others from someone doing something remarkable.

If you’re thinking of (or are already) blogging, don’t be intimidated. All you need is to do something remarkable, and let people know about it. All you need is a marker and a publicly-posted piece of cardboard, really.

I noted this in a feature Shawn Blanc did on my Sweet Mac Setup (and indeed it is sweet), and several readers asked for an elaboration – how do I use NV?

It’s not complicated. Notational, as many of you might know, is a lightweight program that does something very simple:

• It allows you to write text.
• It saves these texts automatically — you never have to press Save.
• It lets you find these texts very easily through a search bar that displays matches as you type the search, very similar to Google Instant.

The last part is the magic. In the location bar, you just start typing, and instantly whatever you’re looking for appears. Also if you start typing a name of a new file you want to create, you just press Return and the new file is create — no need to go to “New File” or something like that in a menu.

It’s extremely simple, but it works better than any other text editor I’ve used, and so I decided it would be all I use. I haven’t looked back.

My Setup

1. Under Preferences/Notes/Storage, I’ve set it to store notes as plain text files. This allows me to email individual text files to people if necessary, to open them in other text editors, and to access the files from my phone if needed.
2. I also have it synchronizing with Simplenote’s online service. I don’t use Simplenote as I don’t have an iPhone (if I did I would) but I like having all my notes backed up and accessible online. You can do this under Preferences/Notes/Synchronization. It’s free.
3. Lastly, I moved the “Notational Data” folder in which all the plain text notes are stored to my Dropbox folder. I haven’t used this yet, as I only use one computer yet and don’t need to access my files from other computers, but I like that it’s instantly backed up and accessible online — once again. It’s also free and easy to set up.

My Usage

1. I append prefixes to the file names so I can group things — so for Zen Habits posts, I’ll have a “zh-” prefix, before the post topic, so that when I start typing “zh” it’ll show all my Zen Habits drafts. I do the same for mnmlist posts, chapters and notes for my new book “focus”, and interviews.
2. I make the text editing field a bit bigger than default. I just like more space. Other than that, everything is default, including font and text size and all that.
3. It would be nice if you could write in full-screen mode in NV, but instead I will just paste a file into WriteRoom or Ommwriter and enjoy the full-screen focused glory, and then paste back into NV when I’m done, where it’s instantly saved. I love instant save — why isn’t this done always in every program?
4. I have a todo list in NV that I don’t refer to very often. I don’t use todo lists much anymore, except as a dumping ground for things I might need to remember later. Most days I know what I want to work on — whatever I’m excited about at the moment.
5. Instead of keeping a list of ideas for posts for my blogs, I just start a new post (with the prefix I mentioned above). It’ll have notes for the post. Then when I want to look at my post ideas, I just type in the prefix (like “zh” or “mnml”) and I’ll see the list of post ideas.
6. I store other snippets of text, like commonly used html tags I put into posts, or links to ebook downloads for those who have trouble downloading, etc. On my old iMac I had these snippets in TextExpander, which was nice, but I’ve been too lazy to set up TextExpander and all the snippets I use on my Macbook Air so they’re in NV.

That’s about all I can think of. If you have questions, ask on Twitter and I’ll add to this post.

I love NV for its lightness, its simplicity, its speed. It does everything I need with a minimum of fuss, which is basically perfect.

The types of reading seem to grow all the time: from traditional paper books, newspapers and magazines to blog posts, online news articles, forums, Tweets, Facebook updates, emails, email newsletters, and much more. Each of these types of reading presents an ever-growing and often overwhelming reading list that we must keep up with: an email inbox, an RSS reader with the latest blog posts, various news websites, a long list of status updates and forum posts, and so on.

Keeping up with these lists becomes near impossible, a full-time job. My solution is to give up on keeping up — it’s a self-invented need, not a real one — and to pare down as much as possible. So I pare my list of blogs to the essential, I barely do email, I have only a few friends on Twitter and Facebook. So I’m not the most up-to-date guy, and so I don’t make everyone happy by being their online friend … life seems to go on.

Even with a pared-down reading list, reading can still be a challenge: how do you read without distractions? It’s incredibly difficult, as each reading form pulls us away from the others, and alerts and updates are coming in all the time, not to mention other forms of communication like phones, IM, and (gasp) real people trying to get our attention.

Here’s how I find undistracted reading:

1. Books. My favorite type of reading is the novel. I rarely read non-fiction books, even though I’m a non-fiction author myself. And while the iPad and Kindle each present lovely ways of reading books, they also each contain various distractions. And so I still love the paper book, for its simplicity and lack of other things to do while you’re reading it. Close the computer, turn off the phones, find a quiet spot, and just read. Try to do it in large chunks, like 30 minutes or an hour or more, and you can get lost in another world. Simply beautiful.

2. Blog posts. I love to read blogs, though I keep up with fewer these days than I did a few years ago. I’ve pared my reading list down and use Google Reader to quickly get through the list each day. When I find a post I want to read in full, without distractions, I open it in a new browser window — not a browser tab, but a window, so no other tabs show — and use the Readability bookmarklet or similar to focus only on the text. Then I read without switching to anything else until I’m done.

Here on mnmlist, and there on Zen Habits, I’ve already pared my posts down to just the text. I’ve done the work for you, for undistracted reading. On other blogs, you have to do some work — install the Readability bookmarklet, hit a button when you want to read an article without distractions. It’s OK. A little hard work never killed anyone, except my Uncle Murray but I think it was more his complaining about hard work that did it.

3. Focused browsing. If you open a bunch of tabs, keep things focused by using a little service I discovered called Instapaper (I don’t think anyone else knows about this, so feel free to leave 5 cents on your way out for the tip). Instapaper all your open tabs for reading later, then read one at a time when you have some undistracted reading time.

4. Email, Twitter, Facebook. Basically, open these as little as possible. They lead to distractions for other reading, for work, etc. Open them for 5 minutes, do a quick scan, post an update or reply if necessary, then get out. Only open one at a time, do them with focus, and close the tab. Give yourself some time to do this on a regular basis — 5 minutes at the top of each hour, or at 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., or whatever works for you.

5. News articles. I don’t read a lot of news sites. They tend to lead to lots of distractions. But when I do, I open a few of the articles that look interesting, scan them, and Instapaper the ones that I want to read later. Then I’ll plow through Instapaper with some undistracted reading, when I have time.

It was lovely.

A break from digital communication, which I try to do now and then, is refreshing. It clears your life of the noise, and allows you to find quiet, to focus on the important, to be at peace.

What I didn’t do on my digital break:

• Check email.
• Check Twitter or tweet.
• Check or update Facebook, which I use just for keeping up with family.
• Read my RSS feeds.
• Check any news sites.
• Watch any TV except for the last Lost episode.
• Watch any YouTube or other online videos.
• Listen to any radio.
• Read any Internet except for a few longer articles I already had open in my browser. These were OK, because they were just reading, nothing updated or connected.

Some of the things I did do while on my break:

• Went for a run with my wife Eva.
• Did a short zazen session with Eva.
• Had really nice, long conversations with Eva.
• Wrote a couple of blog posts.
• Spent some time playing with my kids.
• Watched the historic finale of Lost.
• Had coffee.
• Read some of the novel I’m reading, John Updike’s Rabbit, Run.
• Caught up with the aforementioned long articles I’d wanted to read.
• Shaved my head and beard.
• Had a short visit from my dad.
• Had a long, excellent visit with my grandma.
• Had dinner with my mom and sisters, their kids, and Eva and the kids.

Looking over what I didn’t do, and what I did do, I’d say the day was a success. I did things that gave me joy, and cut out things that just take up my time.

Am I saying we should all cut out these things — email, Twitter, Facebook, reading blogs, reading news? No, I think in smaller doses, they enrich our lives. We just need digital breaks on a regular basis, so they don’t take over our lives.

I plan to take a digital break once a week. Give it a try, and let me know what you think!

—

Honestly, I’m sure it’s the future of computing, the most beautiful computer ever, the coolest thing since Pulp Fiction, the world’s best gaming platform, the vehicle for some of the most amazing apps ever (already there are drool-worthy ones available) and I don’t doubt I’ll get one eventually. My wife will probably get one.

But I didn’t need an iPad last month or last year, and I will venture to guess (I could be wrong) that I’ll be just as happy, fit and productive without the iPad.

The iMac and Macbook Air I bought two years ago are working brilliantly and fulfill my every computing need, and probably can for at least 2-3 more years. I’ve resisted buying an iPhone for several years because I don’t need one (despite their ultimate coolness), and the iPad is another way cool gadget I don’t need.

This is the old-school computer expert lecture, and if you enjoy doing those kinds of things, that’s cool.

I actually don’t, and so I don’t do it.

What do I do instead? Here’s a simpler method:

• store files online (Google Docs or Zoho for documents, Picasa or Flickr for photos, code in github, etc.)
• keep working files in Dropbox (including my 1Password file, Notational Velocity notes, drafts, and more)

Using this method, I’ve never lost an important file.

There’s an off-chance I might lose a scrap of information, because I’m not as anal about backing up as others. However, I’ve also realized that my data isn’t as important as I once thought, and letting others worry about backing up my files (Google, Zoho, Yahoo, Dropbox, et al) means letting go of control and letting go of those worries.

Will I lose something someday? Sure, maybe. But will it be the end of the world? No. If it takes 20 minutes to recreate something, that’ll be less than the hours I would have spent cumulatively backing things up or buying hard drives and USB thumb drives and off-line storage. If I lose a dozen photos of thousands I’ve taken, it’s not a big deal.

I’ve let go of the need to obsess about every bit of data, and with it I’ve dropped the need to obsess about backups.

As I talked about before, having a ton of friends on social networks is a major pull on your attention, and results in superficial relationships anyway. I prefer deeper relationships when possible.

Facebook hasn’t worked well for me as a social network in the past. I loved connecting with close friends and family, and old friends from high school. But as I added friends without any criteria, it became too much — a stream of people leaving updates, sending me “gifts”, inviting me to all kinds of things, leaving things for me on my “wall”. I couldn’t stand it, and rarely checked Facebook. Twitter became my social space.

In the last month or two I’ve slowly been unfriending people on Facebook, a dozen or so at a time. It was a tedious process, so I did it in small chunks. But with more than 1,500 friends (at the peak), it would take all year to unfriend everyone.

So today, with the help of a reader on Twitter, I found a faster method: go to Account, then “Edit friends” and click the “X” next to people’s names. There was still an annoying popup confirmation dialog box, but with my mouse hovering over the “X”, and a finger on the Enter key, I could do it quickly.

It took me 36 minutes to delete more than 1,000 friends. My criteria: I only left actual, real-life friends and family, plus old friends from high school. I got down to 99.

Yes, I could have just deleted my account and started from scratch. But it would have taken me much more than 36 minutes to re-friend the 99 close friends, family & old high school friends again.

If you’re a reader or someone I know online, you didn’t make the cut. That doesn’t mean I don’t love you. It just means I had to find a more manageable way. I prefer communicating with you on Twitter, so feel free to @zen_habits me there if you want to send me a message. I prefer public messages over private DMs — it’s transparent and makes the most of the responses I type.

I really do love my readers. It’s just that Facebook wasn’t the way for me to connect with you.

Read more: How to Reclaim Your Attention

Twitter started with a brilliant idea of simplicity:

• Keep tweets to 140 characters or less, forcing people to be brief and to the point (unlike emails or blog posts).
• Have one stream to read, as opposed to multiple things to check on.
• Make it simple and easy to tweet or reply, from anywhere.

And people loved the simplicity, and 3rd-party developers used it well to make great apps. Twitter’s simplicity is one reason it’s a better user experience than Facebook or MySpace.

Now Twitter has added lists and the new Retweet feature, and it seems they might be looking to add more. Others are calling for them to remove the 140-character limit, allow more customizations to profile pages, and add a whole host of other features.

No. Please, Twitter, don’t give in to the feature requests, the tendency towards feature bloat. I will live with the lists and retweets, but please stop adding new features.

Instead, focus on making what you have better. Improve your infrastructure so you don’t have the Fail whale ever appear. Make your search better. Get rid of spam. Make it easier to unfollow people. Make the site even simpler.

Even better, move towards an open protocol — allow interconnectivity with Identi.ca and other services so we aren’t trapped into one service. People don’t like being trapped.

Keep it simple, Twitter.

The technique is “unfriending”, which was the New Oxford American Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2009 (actually it was “unfriend”).

Why is this important to a minimalist? Because some of us would like to participate in the emerging social web of Twitter, Facebook, blogging and the like, without being overwhelmed by the huge stream of information that’s almost inevitably consumed when you participate.

The trend seems to be to follow or “friend” thousands of people, regardless of whether you know them or not. I’m guilty of this: when I signed up for a Facebook account, I began to automatically add people who made friend requests, and ended up with well over 1,000 friends — most of whom I don’t know. On Twitter, I began to do the same thing, but recently began to unfollow people I don’t know, probably offending a few people in the process.

The trend of following lots of people has its pros and cons — one of the pros is that you get to know more people than you normally would have. You also spread your influence and have your content spread more widely, if that’s something you care about.

But the con is that it’s hard to keep up with so much social information. Another con is that the relationships you do form become necessarily thin and superficial, because you can’t form deep bonds with thousands and thousands of people.

And so, consider unfriending or unfollowing people you don’t know. Or at least know of — it’s fine to follow someone whose content interests you, if you keep that within reasonable limits.

Here’s what happens. When you unfollow or unfriend people, you might offend them. But you’ll also greatly simplify your incoming stream of information, and be able to actually closely follow the updates of the people you are friends with.

And even better, you’ll start to have some real conversations, and form real relationships.

I don’t know what a good number of friends would be, but I’d guess it would be in the dozens — definitely below 100. I’m not there yet, as I said, but it’s something I’ve been considering.

Unfriending might offend people, but it’s greatly liberating.

Comments? @zen_habits me.