When was the last time you had a tech free day?
Perhaps a more pertinent question is to ask how you respond to the very idea of a tech free day?
That probably depends on your age. For those who are technology natives – born after the 1980s and brought up in the age of the internet – the idea of having a WHOLE DAY without their phone glued to their hand and constantly buzzing with updates and notifications probably brings the average teenager out in hives.
For those of us of a certain age, we might think we are more amenable to switching off our phones.
But consider how often you have checked your phone TODAY, in the time you have been awake prior to reading this?
What was the first thing you did this morning? Chances are that it was to check your phone – WhatsApp, Twitter or your news feed of choice perhaps?
I have been musing here in recent weeks about burnout, and it’s particularly nasty variant, Covid Burnout. Last week I was talking about the importance of rest, and the fact that we do need to be quite intentional about planning in time to rest.
One aspect of rest that is especially pertinent is this whole idea of a tech free day.
The internet is a good thing, don’t get me wrong. And the power we have in our hands via our phones to connect, investigate, navigate, plan is truly astounding.
But it can also suck the life and energy out of our brains all too easily.
I came across the book The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains by Nicholas G. Carr recently.
He writes:
The distractions in our lives have been proliferating for a long time, but never has there been a medium that, like the Net, has been programmed to so widely scatter our attention and to do it so insistently.”
….to so widely scatter our attention….
Hhmmmmm. Think with me about the last time you sat at your computer to write a piece of work, but found yourself distracted and drawn into the world of mindless internet scrawling. The effect of this seems often not to enhance your work and concentration, but to suck the focus and clarity out of your mind leaving you feeling scattered, disjointed, discouraged and befuddled.
Or consider a conversation with a friend recently where one of you was distracted by their phone and not fully present to the other. We are left feeling robbed, second rate, unseen and unknown.
A friend shared this photo from Silversurfers recently on Facebook and it made me laugh:
A tech free day also gives us space and energy to day dream.
Day dreaming is an important aspect of creativity. We often find that it is when our minds are engaged in something else that we have our best creative thoughts.
I wrote about the idea of switching off technology back in 2016 – a life time ago and most definitely BC, Before Covid. How much has changed since then.
But the principles and idea of a tech free day remain as important, if not more so in our now-almost-constantly-connected-world.
Switching off tech for a day and unplugging is an idea that has a whole movement behind it. The National Day of Unplugging campaign has been running for over 10 years. Their next day is in March 2022 – have a look here at some inspiring ideas of how to use all that tech free time!
Advantages of a tech free day, according to research done by students at the University of Maryland include greater concentration on work, improved connection with relationships, increased productivity and enhanced enjoyment of one’s surroundings.
None of this really serves as much of a surprise; we know this in theory.
And yet we remain so resistant to putting down our phones and taking action that shows we can live without them for 24 hours.
So this week, ask yourself how you respond to the idea of a tech free day. Where do you notice resistance and why? What are you telling yourself about how practical/realistic/achievable it is?
And next week, we look at some practical ways to make it happen.