Untethered: Overcome Distraction, Build Healthy Digital Habits, and Use Tech to Create a Life You Love

by Sini Ninkovic

"It is easy to blame tech for our troubles, but Untethered goes beyond the clichés and helps us do something about the problem of overuse." - Nir Eyal, Bestselling author of Hooked and Indistractable

The average person consumes over twelve hours of media per day. Eighty-eight percent of Americans feel uneasy leaving their phone at home. It is all too common to hear that our tech has taken over our lives. But what if the problem isn't our smartphone, but rather the way we’re using it?

After a lifelong struggle with digital dependency, Sini quit his job at Apple to live in a van and begin a long journey toward freedom from technology. But in the process, he learned that the key to inner peace was not found in removing technology from his life, but in rethinking his relationship with it. Along the way, he interviewed countless industry experts, attended intensive meditation retreats, and became a certified Digital Wellness Educator.

The tools he discovered were so transformative that sharing them with the world has become his personal mission.

In this groundbreaking and practical new guide to digital freedom and atomic habits, tech-guru-turned-wellness-instructor Sini Ninkovic argues that there are counterintuitive mindsets and methods for transforming our relationship with technology - and our life along with it.

Untethered will guide you along a journey to improve your relationships with your digital devices, the closest people in your life, and most importantly, yourself. It will teach you to:

1. Take control of your attention span and put an end to endless distractions
2. Defeat FOMO and stop social media from hijacking your emotions
3. Quit using your devices to procrastinate the important things in your life
4. Follow through with tiny habit changes to support healthy sleep
5. Establish healthy boundaries with your emails, apps, and notifications
6. Resist misinformation and manipulation from advertisers
7. Prevent online shopping, gaming, and gambling from depleting your time and savings
8. Discover dozens of digital tools to make you more productive
9. Pursue a path of self-realization that goes beyond the digital and into the spiritual
10. Create long lasting change that will drive you away from distraction

This book will help you redefine your routines, develop healthier digital habits, and live a more fulfilled life in control of your attention. It will show how your smartphone and the apps on it can captivate you, how you can “upgrade” your mind to move away from this dependency, and the novel tools that will help you regain control over your habitual smartphone usage to create a more fulfilled future

Genres: Nonfiction, Productivity, Self Help

228 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 7, 2021

About the author

Sini Ninkovic is a digital wellness educator based in Silicon Valley. He survived a civil war in former Yugoslavia, received an MBA from UC Berkeley, and worked for major companies including McKinsey, BMW, and Apple before walking away from it all to live in a van. Sini has seen firsthand how digital technologies, especially smartphones, can take over our lives and even destroy them. So today, he teaches and coaches people on how to build healthier relationships with their devices, create lives they love, and become better versions of themselves.

Reviews

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

What I appreciate about this book is how the author doesn't put much of a value judgment on technology, which, philosophically speaking is—like fire— neither good nor bad, but rather focuses on our relationship to it. How we relate to our technology is within our control. What we do with technology is within our control, and unlike a lot of these type of books that often just launch a bunch of complaints about technology, this book offers actionable insights and steps each of us can take to change our relationship with technology for the better.

There are staggering stats offered throughout the book interspersed with the author's personal experiences (some of them shockingly vulnerable) which makes this an informative and deeply relatable read. While I'm only half-way through the book, I can say that it's been worth every pretty penny as it's really helped me reframe the way I approach and think about technology and my relationship to it. My smartphone, my email, messages, etc... these are all just relationships to manage much like my relationship to money, sex, drugs/alcohol, or even my mom. Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries.

[Charlotte · Rating 2 out of 5]

I feel bad rating this book so low because there are so few ratings but I seem to be an outlier among the reviews so I don’t feel too bad. I think that if I had read this book by myself and when I was feeling inspired on my own to be untethered I might have responded better to it (as opposed to a book club) but that’s okay. Suni seems to be living his best life these days so happy for him. I think overall I felt like this book could’ve been a blog post. There was a lot of repetition and a lot of consolidating of other people’s ideas. He also was pretty unrelatable. He would be like “you know when you stay up for 3 days straight playing video games? Or remember when you lost $100,000 day trading because they gameified it?” Huh?? SORRY?! That being said, I do think what this book does well, and what is most important is it gets you just THINKING about the topic - thinking about your phone usage. At the end of the day there were a few points and exercises in the book that I resonated with and which helped me with my phone addiction and honestly that was enough.

[Ya-Ting Chang · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two things:

1. In Part 3, the author introduces the concept of 8 R’s but on page 140 lists 9 R’s??

2. Garbage trucks in Taiwan play Für Elise, not an ice cream truck song.
Source: the reviewer is from Taiwan and has done many garbage runs for her grandma.

I did give a bonus star cause the author likes tennis.

[Faris Sehovic · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a regular 5 am club member I woke up one morning really tired and depressed about all social interactions I would need to have that day. While having first-morning coffee I accidentally read an article about Sini and being amazed by his life story I thought - okay if this guy had the same problem as I did then he must have a solution for me.

Untethered is not a regular book where an author will start with explaining methodology that "has" to improve your life. Sini's approach here is totally different. In the first two chapters you will find out a lot about the general facts in the 21st century that you were always thinking about but most likely you didn't comment with anyone as your thoughts that you must be weird. However, Sini is very open to sharing his conversations with different people, statistics, professional experience, talking about his failures and challenges. During the first chapters, you will have a feeling like you have a conversation with yourself. Even though Sini will always say that these are just his thoughts somehow you will have a need to tell him that you are happy that finally, you are not alone.

Smoothly, talking about life and every day's thing in a different way, you will reach chapter number 3 where the crucial truth is based. Using the simple methodology, based on concrete activities, Sini engages reader to use the book actively. And if you really follow his inputs, you can definitely reduce the usage of the mobile device and actually figure out where do you want to be in the future.

Not to reveal, I highly recommend reading this unique masterpiece. An engaging book that can really improve your life in many ways following an honest story written by Sini.

One of the rarest books that helped me and I am really looking forward to seeing what next Sini will bring to us.

Kudos!

[Matthew Clements · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an in-depth and interesting read about the effects of our "always-on" relationship with digital devices and how the author has created routines, habits and rules to reduce his screen time and digital distraction. However, I feel he missed an opportunity.

Sini Ninkovic comes to similar conclusions as Cal Newport (in his book 'Digital Minimalism') about how to tackle the problems. The strategies he suggests are primarily habit/routine based and psychological. They are all valid and useful, but I don't think they are enough to address the huge problem of digital overwhelm and distraction suffered by millions of people.

The frustrating part of reading Ninkovic and Newport's books is that they both mention that there are technological tools which can help you combat digital distraction and overwhelm, but they only spend one or two paragraphs on them. These tools and restrictive technologies should be the core of their strategy, not something to be mentioned in passing.

In both books I kept hoping for a chapter on how to restrict your phone and the different ways to do it. I was hoping that someone with Ninkovic's background would give a real insight into how technological tools and restrictions can be used to tackle the problems he and Newport highlight. But references to programs such as Freedom are limited to a couple of paragraphs.

I'm not against the use of psychological strategies and habits; they are an important tool. However, from what I've seen the majority of people need almost-unbreakable restrictions and tools to create a healthier relationship with our digital devices and content.

[Devika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full Disclosure: I’ve reviewed the book basis the manuscript that was shared with me as a beta reviewer. I’ve not yet had a chance to read the final version. I believe the author has made some valuable updates to the manuscript.

—
From what I've noticed, it seems that either one has to be quite famous already in order for others to pick up his/her book; or one needs to be an exceptional writer (eg: JK Rowling, Malcolm Gladwell) in order to entice a reader through the sheer quality of one's writing. At a glance, the pull towards this book would be the author’s experience with tech companies making him somewhat of a credible authority on the subject. But I felt he didn't dive deeply enough into his work experience at Apple or BMW. Wondering if that was due to confidentiality?

The strength of the writing seemed to be the way he set up the problem and its context, touching on:

- lack of metrics for excess usage of a smartphone

- complex systems (decentralized, self-evolving, inherent nature of the system to add complexity due to a higher need for connection, and small changes leading to large events)

- dealing with abundance of choice by building a routine and reducing the cognitive load

- Gen Z's reduced attention span possibly being a coping mechanism to the abundance of content

However, for me, the beta manuscript fell short on the solutions. The Rs are definitely important, but I couldn't figure out what's being offered here that is new. This could also largely be due to my having read most of the cited books and topics prior to reading the manuscript, so I wouldn't expect you to completely take my word for it.

Someone new to the topic may find it a great checklist, especially owing to the simplicity of the writing.

[Abhishek Damle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actually I should've finished reading this book last year, but due to me being constantly focus shifter...unfortunately it got dragged on..:-(
Finally i completed it and must say that this book is definitely worthy!! Before this book,i didn't realize how much my cellphone and this digital world controls me rather than me who should be incharge of my life!
It was fucking eyeopener and gave hopes to switch off that autopilot mode of mine. The tools mentioned in this book by author are surely worth the try...\m/

[SuspectPizza · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely a useful book, especially the first part explaining how we voluntarily and unknowingly give more and more time to tech companies through our devices. The second and third part offer a lot of advice, most of it good, it just seemed to me that there was too much of it to realistically implement in a short time span. And while the author acknowledges that and tells us to take our time, it still doesn't change the fact that - in my opinion - the book would have been better with fewer pieces of more in-depth advice.

[Peteris Erins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sini's personal story is deeply moving. But this book goes beyond with a look at the history, psychology, economics and other aspects influencing our digital addiction. Sini captures a moment in time, a tipping point where we can decide to restore the balance between humanity and technology...

Couldn't put it down.