Choose Technology Like the Amish Do

I grew up in south central PA and got my undergrad degree from Penn State. It was not uncommon to see a horse and buggy driving along the side of the highway. Or to pass a furniture store run by the local Amish community. I always wondered how they could get by without using technology.

But in Cal Newport’s 2019 bestseller, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, he turns my understanding of how the Amish live technology-free on its head.

The Amish aren’t actually anti-technology.

For instance, they have websites to sell their products, but they generally hire someone outside the community to develop and host the site. Sometimes they also use electricity to manufacture their products… but they generate that electricity with solar power and other non-grid technologies.

The consensus of those who study the Amish is that their strategy with respect to technology is not abstention… it’s intentionality.

That is: they only allow new technology in after careful consideration of its impact on their goals and their lives and their community.

What we can learn from the Amish

Whether you’re a solopreneur or you manage and lead a larger organization, your most precious resource is always time.

Your goal should be to spend as much time on your $1,000/hour ($10,000/hour?) work as possible. And no time on $10/hour work. [If you’re unfamiliar with that concept, check out Perry Marshall and Rob Skrob’s Detox, Declutter, Dominate: How to Excel by Elimination.]

Your higher dollar work is the work only you can do… the work you’ve studied and learned and carefully honed your skills on.

Technology, tech stacks, can be super helpful in taking over that $10/hour work. But to Cal Newport’s point in his bestseller, if you’re not careful, your tech stack can actually cost you time and reduce your productivity and effectiveness.

You need technology to help you do your work: too little and you’re doing unnecessary $10/hour work. But too much, and you could be wasting time and effort on building interfaces, checking multiple systems, plugging holes that show up when you operate across multiple tools…

So, what can you do?

Take the Amish approach.

Look at the processes that drive your business or job. Is there technology or a tool available that can make them more efficient? More effective? Reduce errors? Improve quality? Let you focus on your higher value tasks?

What would the impact be to your work of adding that tool or piece of technology to your processes?

And then look at the flip side… what could be negatively impacted by that tool or piece of technology? Can you mitigate that negative impact? If not, is it something you can allow into your space?

Social media is a great example of a tool with positive impacts (the ability to reach a bigger audience) and negative (their algorithms are designed to hijack your attention and keep it there as long as possible, often costing you way too much lost time). One of the biggest time drains around social media is thinking you have to create content across a number of platforms… when most of those probably deliver little to no value to you.

My own personal lesson

I will share a recent issue I’ve been coming to terms with… and it isn’t pretty.

I’m a business and mindset coach and a copywriter. So, I’ve been using ChatGPT and other LLM type tools almost from the time they were introduced.

Over time, I leaned into them more and more.

But I’ll be honest. I forgot to examine what it made sense to turn over to them… and what shouldn’t be “outsourced” to AI. I got lazy when it came to my writing. I went from just having these LLMs help me with research and finding holes in my writing… to giving them the topic I wanted to write and letting them do most of the writing.

Of course, I edited and “fixed” the writing to make it sound more like me.

But… it really didn’t.

In fact, when I read one of the newsletters I published last year, I cringe. Even I could tell AI wrote a lot of it. What were my readers thinking?

Although I know nothing I shared with readers was incorrect, and the advice is solid, I’m embarrassed to have offloaded that specific task to a tool. Because writing is one of my core competencies. So is putting together advice that helps clients go from being stuck to flowing toward their goals.

Because I’ve been coaching and mentoring and writing for decades. I’ve spent thousands of hours with people, helping them understand what’s holding them back. I’ve built a solid personal knowledgebase of how to help, and I continue to add to that foundation by acquiring new skills every year.

I don’t offer cookie-cutter advice to my clients, but I was writing in a very “cookie-cutter” way when using the LLMs to do that work.

There are so many other places where I can use technology to save time and effort. Writing for my readers is not one of them.

Here’s how to think about technology in a beneficial way.

Your tech stack should enhance your work

 Before you buy into a new platform or piece of technology, dive a little deeper than its features and functions.

Look at the type of work it’s taking off your plate. Is that work you want to offload?

If that’s a yes, then look at the impact of that technology on your workflow, your processes, your team if you have one… is that technology going to enhance your ability to deliver your work? Could it also replace something else you’re using, so you’re getting additional benefit and lower costs?

What are the downsides of the tool? Can you add it to your tech stack while avoiding those downsides?

For my situation, for instance, I’m still happily using ChatGPT and Claude. I’m just no longer using them to write. They’re still extremely valuable tools, saving me lots of time in running my business.

Don’t just add technology to your life and your business because someone recommended it. Look deeper into its impact on you, and you’ll be both happier and more productive.

And as with technology or any business decisions, sometimes it’s easier to see the solution with “outside eyes.” That’s why I use coaches myself… when you’re “in it,” it can be so difficult to see the path out.

So if you’re struggling to make progress in your career or business…  or getting stuck somewhere because of a pattern or behavior you just can’t shake? Let’s talk.