Last year I read an article by Baratunde Thurston about how over the December and New Year holidays he unplugged from the Internet for 25 days.
I thought it was a neat idea. Then I put it away in the back of my mind for a while.
It wasn’t until I heard Eric J. Fisher interview Baratunde on Beyond the To Do List that I gave it more serious thought.
Then, cleaning up my home office right after Christmas, I found the issue of Fast Company that I had misplaced. Baratunde’s head was on the cover, kind of small and toward the bottom, with big letters floating above him: #UNPLUG.
So I re-read all the articles about unplugging. Baratunde had been living like he was running for President of Planet Earth, going from one speaking engagement to another, promoting his book and checking in all sorts of places online. By the end of the year, it had burned him out and made him cranky, and he needed a vacation.
He considered going to some remote island paradise, but that wasn’t what he wanted. What he needed was a vacation from the Internet.
He stayed in his adopted hometown of New York, but he completely disconnected from social media and email. He did a lot of socializing — offline.
This was the holiday season, so business slowed down anyway. Yet I’m sure he was tempted to check in on Foursquare and say he was at such and such a restaurant with these friends at a Chrismtas party, and post a picture of himself and said friends at said restaurant. Like anyone else with social media habit would do, right?
But after the first couple of days, he says the itch went away.
I did something similar last year for Lent.
And I’m thinking about it again this year. Last year, I gave up Facebook for Lent. However, I stayed on the other social media sites.But this year, I will be off social media from March 5 to April 20. That’s six weeks and four days. 40 days.
40 days of no Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Netflix.
I might check off books I read on Goodreads, but that may be it. I know Netflix isn’t really a social network but it sure eats up too much of my time.
A lot can happen in 40 days on the Internet. Then again, on the Internet, not much changes in 40 days. There’s always sensational news about this or that celebrity. The weather is too hot or too cold. People complain about the government. People share pictures of funny cats and their kids or grandkids.
But 40 days is a good time to set aside to focus on something important. To cut down on the noise and listen. To really form a new habit. It takes 21-30 days to form a new habit, depending on who you ask. It seems to me that 40 days would really cement it in place.
I’ll keep blogging and emailing. I still have to pay the bills so I’m not in a position to shut down completely, and I have no assistant to notify me if there is a fire I need to put out. So I’ll still be checking my email every day. But I won’t (and don’t) live in my email. (Never have, never will.)
I’m not Catholic. I grew in a household that’s about as evangelical as it gets. So the idea of Lent or fasting was never really brought up. But a few years ago, I started hearing of “tech fasts.” And I got it, seeing how things like email can overwhelm a person. And then social media got popular. And social media overwhelm became a thing. Slowly, the idea of tech fasting started to grow on me. Now that I’ve done it in smaller increments, I’m ready to do it more fully.
The whole point of the exercise is to take a break from all the noise that happens online, and focus on reading, writing, making art, and spending time with my family.
Do you have plans to give anything up for Lent? I’d love to hear about it.
PS: For those about to #Unplug, here’s a bonus freebie.
I’ll be changing my social media profile pictures to one of these just so people don’t think I’ve disappeared off the face of the Earth. If you want to use one, feel free. Just click on the image you want and you’ll be taken to the big version.
Photo Credits: Thomas Hawk via Compfight cc eflon via Compfight cc