This past Sunday I did a digital detox. For me this means no internet on my laptop, and my smartphone had only phone calls and texts enabled.
How did I do it, technically?
- I paused my laptop (as a device) on my home wifi. My guidelines allow using the laptop, but only to access/edit local files, nothing online. I could have just turned on airplane mode, but that's just a little too easy (one click) to turn off, if I "need" to. I could also have turned off wifi in the bios.
- I set up an app called Slim Launcher as the launcher app on my android phone. On it, I allowed only 2 apps, the phone and text message app. I've done a digital detox previously with absolutely NO phone usage, but it's tough to not be able to call or text people. And calling people wasn't something that I felt was a problem. It was everything else that keeps me chained to the phone.
- I regularly use an old kindle fire to listen to podcasts. This device was wrapped up in a towel and put in the closet.
- I regularly use another old kindle 4th gen for reading. It's not backlit, has no touchscreen, and the wifi is always turned off. I have lots of books on it, that I transfer using the Calibre app and a cable. Works great, and I don't consider it off limits during a digital detox.
- I have gotten almost all of my regularly used files off the cloud. I used to be a big user of apps like Google Docs, and Workflowy, and now have all that kind of app local. As a matter of fact, I'm using mostly just text files. They work just fine for most purposes. That way I can take notes, and look through my to-do list even during a digital detox, because all my files are local.
How it worked out:
It's truly amazing how different your outlook and attitude is, when you can't instantly "check" this or that. Weather. News. Price of bitcoin. It makes you realize how much of your attention is taken up with the next dopamine hit of "newness". A lot.
I really should do this once a week. It puts you in a different headspace, which is really valuable.
Preparing ahead of time is good. Maybe plan to meet up with people, take a bike ride, take a hike. Do some weeding, do projects, fix things around the house. You have a LOT more time. If you don't have an old style kindle to read from like I do, prep some books, or go the library. I'm glad I had music, downloaded to my laptop. Instead of listening to podcasts (I'm trying to do less of that) I was listening to music. I went through my to-do list the evening before the digital detox, and bumped up a lot of the little and not-so-little tasks that have been there for a long time, that I haven't been doing. Why haven't I been doing them? Because it's so darn easy to waste time online. And my phone is constantly constantly calling me - check this, check that, see if someone responded to something. Quieting that insistent voice is important, at least occasionally.
I really should do this once a week. It puts you in a different headspace, which is really valuable.
Preparing ahead of time is good. Maybe plan to meet up with people, take a bike ride, take a hike. Do some weeding, do projects, fix things around the house. You have a LOT more time. If you don't have an old style kindle to read from like I do, prep some books, or go the library. I'm glad I had music, downloaded to my laptop. Instead of listening to podcasts (I'm trying to do less of that) I was listening to music. I went through my to-do list the evening before the digital detox, and bumped up a lot of the little and not-so-little tasks that have been there for a long time, that I haven't been doing. Why haven't I been doing them? Because it's so darn easy to waste time online. And my phone is constantly constantly calling me - check this, check that, see if someone responded to something. Quieting that insistent voice is important, at least occasionally.
Things to improve:
The Slim Launcher app on my phone is better than just trying to use willpower to not click on the apps you normally use. However, it's somewhat easy to bypass. It's the best option I've found for limiting your apps, and still being able to use your smartphone as a phone. I researched and found it about a year ago, it may be that there's better options out there now.
My ideal would be some kind of launcher app that allows certain apps (like for me, phone calls and texts), but if you want to bring up another app, you have to do something inconvenient. Like a Captcha, but not quite that. I'm thinking - maybe just type in a very long, complicated password with lots of numbers and symbols.
I call this concept PIM - please inconvenience me. I would love to see some launcher apps like this, that allow you to use the addictive apps. But there's a "cost" - you have to do something annoying first. This could be extremely effective in preventing that reflexive "Oh, I gotta check..." Because checking anything entails doing some tedious work first.