Hello there.
It’s been a while.
The week offline was eye opening. I’m still gathering my thoughts, and an action plan, but here are a few things that surfaced from my week offline.
No evening screen time equals plentiful and quality sleep.
Most evenings I put my son down for bed and then read for an hour or two and then went to bed too. I’ve been getting more sleep and falling asleep easier without any evening television or computer time. I’m going to try really hard to eliminate any screen time in the two hours before I go to bed. Good sleep and enough sleep are so important for my health and mood.
Traveling and not having a cell phone can be a pain.
I did end up borrowing a cell phone to make a phone call twice and had others contact me on my husband’s cell phone a few times. This was due to the logistics of travel and meeting up with family. Oh, and my mom and I got lost and even after asking for directions from a gas station attendant we couldn’t find our destination.
The no cell phone experiment actually just proved to me that I have cut way down on how much I use a cell phone since moving to the Isle of Man. It’s not a big part of how I communicate. And concurrently, it’s also not a big bill. My husband has just spent more on a week of cell phone usage while traveling than he has in the ten months we’ve lived in the Isle of Man.
Television can be hard to avoid.
We’ve been staying with family and I have either missed out on some evening conversations or inadvertently watched some television so I could socialize. It’s only been a few hours at most and it was usually a hockey game that was on. I’m a fair weather hockey fan as it is so my eyes weren’t glued to the screen.
Taking a break from the Internet feels good.
In a good way, I didn’t think about email or social media or blog maintenance while on my break. My laptop was shut, my iPod was without power and I was too busy visiting family, getting great sleep and reading to think about the state of my Gmail account. I also spent more time on myself. I got more workouts in, took a longer than usual shower and kept my legs shaved (a rare occurrence) and even wore more make-up (still not much).
One thing I did miss was Skype. While I don’t use a cell phone much I do use Skype to talk to family and friends. Katy and I usually email or Skype every other day so I’m itching for some twin communication.
I’ll have more thoughts on this experiment in a few weeks along with my plan to limit and create more productive online time for myself.
Anyone else take some time offline? How did you find it?
I’m still not quite prepared to live technology free. The better sleep result is almost persuading me to try it but not quite. Congratulations on a successful week though.
I am working on my post from the unplug right now 🙂 For me it was really just internet. I have no TV and I couldn’t turn off the phone (because my cell is our business phone). I do look forward to taking vacation sometime and turning off the phone for a while.
Thanks so much for the idea and reminder. I want to do this a few times a year just to take a step back and re-evaluate electronics in my life.
I did not unplug this time, but there were a few things I did. I inactivated my FB account. I only started on FB about a year ago and de-activated after 3 months, I was back this January and de-activated again… still figuring this out as back-home friends are easier to be found on FB. I also had a couple of days where I did not check my emails and 25 emails in my Junk folder made me think that maybe I can clean up my subscriptions. I agree with the mindless reading, surfing comments. I think sometimes it is OK, when your mind needs entertainment or a break… but honestly, a good shower/book/coffee/cuddle/insertyourownfavething is better!
Right now the idea of limiting my time online and aiming to unplug for 1-2 days a week seem doable and I think in the long run it can be maintained better. It is like diet vs. lifestyle. Going on a diet for a few weeks is good, but doing something better for yourself “for life” is great.
We, too, were on vacation; and I managed to avoid email for 2 days in a row. Ok, it wasn’t much, but it did teach me that I don’t actually need to check it that often. The world goes on without me, and that’s ok. I did turn my cell phone off becuase we had no service, and we didn’t watch any movies or TV for a week. I think what I would rather do is continue my limit of logging onto facebook only one time per day, and recommit myself to ZERO screen time while my daughter is awake; so somedays that will mean I have zero screen time, too, since I usually nap while she naps.
Thank you so much for initiating this. I actually had put a “internet free week” on my list of goals for 2012 but wasn’t sure how to structure it. I modified it for my needs: I don’t have a landline, so I used my cellphone for all normal phone needs, including texting. For me, this was about eliminating mindless media consumption, not about disconnecting with the world. So I checked my email once a day, and even used skype to talk to my family and friends. But i cut out all blogs, facebook and television/ movie watching on the computer.
It was great. I read books, went to the movies, tried new restaurants, went to the Museum of Fine Arts free day, had a picknick on the park, planted my herb “garden” for the spring and saw about a dozen people that I love. Of course, now I’m going to spend the next week laying in bed catching up on House and blogs. No, really, it was awesome.
Next up, figuring out what I want to keep in my life and what to take out. Thank you again!
I did… Terribly. Even at my own modified version. But I learned a lot through it. I’ve moved 4 times in the last 3 years and we are about to move a 5th time in July (big moves, California -> Arizona -> Pennsylvania -> Connecticut -> Mississippi… Next up is Wisconsin), all for my husbands job. As a result we are in a town where we know no one and I’ve been a SAHM since nov when we welcomed baby 2 (our first is 3). I did great for 48 hour then my husband called me. There was a tornado warning and I needed to watch the computer like a hawk, hiding in our closet with our girls. Texting and updating FB that we were ok, because people were concerned. We were fine. Then Easter weekends came and for the first time we had no family around. We don’t own a tv so no mindless watching here.
We stopped paying for cable service quite a while ago, because the cost wasn’t worth the benefit of watching the, maybe, three or four TV shows we enjoyed. We by no means “unplugged” though – our TV time is now replaced by nightly video game sessions with friends, which I’m perfectly fine with.
We are considering a Netflix subscription, though, because there are some TV series we both enjoy, and we like watching movies together. A Netflix subscription is a far better deal than cable!
Not having TV makes it a nice treat when we go somewhere that does have TV, but I definitely notice that we get left out of small talk and conversations with family. You don’t realize how much of people’s conversation revolves around TV until you stop watching it.
I am itching to talk to you too! It is 10pm here and I am heading to bed and have been online since I got home at 7. Boo. My excuse is trip planning but I know I need to ditch this habit. My Rescue time software has me clocking in at being online over 15 hours a week. That is not good when you consider how many hours I’m at the PC when I’m at work.
Chat to you soon!
I didn’t end up unplugging completely even in private time but I still had an eye opening experience to say the least. The internet is my time-waster so I focused on that. I found time for sleep and your “Taking a break from the internet feels good” about sums up the many things I found time for. My take home message was that the internet is a tool but I don’t use it that way. I just dive in and become consumed by it; yet the benefits I can get from it lie in the sidelines. I am so glad that you proposed this challenge! Changes are taking place since this experience. I’ve considered deleting Facebook completely for several months now. I’ve decided to keep it with considerable revision so that it is useful to me. Pinterest is a wonderful idea but is a shockingly (embarrassingly) huge consumer of my time. I find it very useful but have placed huge restrictions on surf time. I so needed this challenge for me to see the reality of my screen time and feel like I just found a treasure to help my life…TIME!
http://lessismoreihope.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/unplug-verdict.html – my experience of the Unplugged week…
Last year I tried one new thing a month for the entire year. One of my months was spent focusing on my sleep, namely getting to be by 10:00 and up by 6:00 (or maybe it was 10:30-6:30). Cutting screen time an hour or so before bed was a HUGE help in better sleep. I can only imagine how it would affect not only my sleep but my overall productivity if I cut off the screen altogether…
I ended up doing horribly at unplugging. At the last minute my husband decided to take an extra day off of work so we had a 4 day weekend. We decided to take the kids up North to visit family because 4 of my 7 siblings were to be in the town where we grew up. I used the computer to look up activities for us to do with the kids that were outdoors. Then while we were staying at my sister’s house we watched two movies with her and the kids. The kids played video games with their cousins. I used my cell phone to text with various family members to set up meetings. Then the last night we stayed in a hotel and ended up watching a show on cable for about an hour since we haven’t had cable in our home for 2 years.
We did spend a lot more time with family though, our family just uses a lot of screen time so we got sucked into it with them. There were a couple of times when I was left with the nieces and nephews where I told them they had to go outside and play in the dirt. They did, one whined but ended up loving it.
If NHL playoffs are the reason you want cable you can watch games online. I’m not sure if any of them are free, but paying a fee to watch just what you want sounds better to me than paying $80 a month for something you don’t want to use.
http://www.penguinsexperience.com/2012/02/places-to-watch-nhl-hockey-games-online.html
I just posted about my week. I didn’t unplug perfectly, but what I did made a huge difference in how I spend my time. I generally don’t connect with family and friends very well even with phone calls, so I used my break from internet time to catch up and make some extra calls. I also met 3 new friends at a coffee shop for some real face time – and visited with three of our neighbors.
Thank you for hosting this – the timing was perfect for me!
I was just thinking about this yesterday. I was remembering a time when I had just moved to a new town, and didn’t have a TV, a computer, or a cell phone with a data plan (since they didn’t exist back then!). I thought ‘What did I do with my time?’ then I realized – I cleaned my house, I worked out, I cooked real meals, I saw the sights in my new town. I even ironed my work clothes! I’m not sure that I have gained much having TV and Internet access all the time… I’m making an effort to cut back on all ‘screen’ time. I hope it makes a difference!
Sounds like a good experiment. I’m wondering how and if the results would differ if you hadn’t been traveling and with family. I know for me, I think a lot less about email, TV, etc. when on vacation, so I would think the impact of such a project would hit harder without the distractions. Interested to see what comes next!