The Sustainable Way to Digitally Detox
The average reading time for this post is 7 minutes. The potential time saved from applying digital mindfulness habits can be as much as 1-2 hours a day.
If you are reading this, you’ve likely made one important choice already: To make technology work for you, instead of the other way around. Maybe you have had a lingering feeling that your device use more often than not leaves you feeling anxious and agitated. Perhaps you have found yourself more often than not going online and doing something you didn’t intend to do, wasting valuable time you wanted to spend otherwise. Maybe you’ve just felt tired, and unable to focus properly.
Science is increasingly clear about the need to take regular breaks from our devices and the mental, physical and social benefits we can derive from these breaks. Digital Detox is a time where you remove yourself from technical devices, such as your phone, laptop, TV, or tablet. The goal: To get your mind & body back into equilibrium, to give your senses a break from our hyper-stimulated world, and to spend quality time in your analogue life with friends and family.
Digital detoxing is popular. If you trust Instagram search results, a whopping 227k-posts popular. But imagine our surprise when we found that the much more sustainable way of living with technology - digital mindfulness - only returned 1000 posts?
Digital Detoxing is about resetting and slowing down. It’s as much about relaxing properly as it is about increasing your sensitivity to the tiny, constant dopamine releases we experience when checking our phones. All in all, the effects can be quite powerful! But similarly to a juice fast is to a healthy diet, a digital detox is only one component of a sustainable, healthy (digital) lifestyle, as a lasting, and empowered relationship is about the things we do daily. Any detox - whether it's smoothies or devices - cannot predict how we will behave afterwards and without sustained, consistent habits, we are biologically hardwired to quickly move back into our original “autopilot” - the mode where our brain uses up the least energy.
Establishing a tech-life balance is about giving yourself back time and being fully present in this time. And as opposed to digital detox, digital mindfulness is about doing this a little bit, but consistently every day. A conscious relationship with our devices can help reduce stress, improve sleep quality, and enhance overall mental and physical wellbeing. It can improve relationships, increase work productivity, lift your mood, among many more.
To inspire you on your journey, we’ve put together a list of tech-life balance habits that you can adopt today! This list is not exhaustive, nor might every practice work for you. We hope it serves as an inspiration for you to give digital mindfulness a try and embark on a journey that puts your wellbeing first.
Invest in an old-school alarm
Our device’s effect on our physical and mental health is particularly strong around bedtimes, so buying an old-school alarm is a great way to get started on your digital mindfulness journey and tap into some of the most potent effects of the practice.
Just before falling asleep and after waking up, our brain is in a theta brainwave state, a state that is connected to creativity, daydreaming, and intuition. When we check our phone first thing in the morning or last thing before bed (and induce a dopamine release), we disturb the processes that this state promotes, such as synthesising information and processing emotions, which in turn help learning and memory.
In the evenings, our brain is also especially susceptible to blue light emitted from our devices, which delays the release of melatonin. According to Matthew Walker, avoiding devices before bed can be an easy yet powerful step towards improving your sleep quality.Having a device-free bedroom allows us to take advantage of this state without reaching for our phone first thing in the morning, as our environment plays an essential role in determining the actions we repeatedly do.
Allocating device-free rooms
One of the easiest ways to implement positive digital habits is to have your environment support these habits by establishing device-free zones in your home. Like New York Times bestselling author James Clear, habit-building experts know that our environment can make or break our path to success. “Environment is the invisible hand that shapes human behavior. We tend to believe our habits are a product of our motivation, talent, and effort. Certainly, these qualities matter. But the surprising thing is, especially over a long time period, your personal characteristics tend to get overpowered by your environment,” Clear tells us in his article on the importance of your surroundings.
The bedroom is a great space to make a “device-free” zone, as it is generally the place where we want to get into sleeping/relaxing mode. Where you eat could be another “device-free” zone, as this supports mindful, more present mealtimes, which in turn are good for our physical health, too.
Allocating device-free rooms is about more than habits. Because our devices “enable” us to take our personal, and professional lives everywhere, it is important to allocate spaces in our homes that can be a sanctuary away from the noise of technology and the bustle of everyday life. In this space, we can leave our work and commitments behind and get into being-mode.
Doing a digital declutter
Remember the last time you gave your home a thorough clean and got rid of things you no longer needed? What did you feel? Liberation, freedom, clarity? Similar to the effect of a clean home, decluttering our devices and creating an environment that fosters healthy digital habits is crucial in creating a more digitally mindful lifestyle.
Digital mindfulness is a lifestyle powered by daily habits, and these habits can be more easily maintained if our environment supports them. Luckily, turning your phone into a space that supports the lifestyle you want to live is an easy step: you can start by deleting all the apps you don’t need and switch to their browser version if necessary—looking for more inspiration? Download our Digital Mindfulness Worksheet and turn your phone into a space that promotes clarity, focus, and calm.
Turning off on-screen notifications
If you've ever had your phone by your side while completing an important work task, you will know the temptation of grabbing your phone when a notification pops up. We've all been there: "Who knows? It could be important." One hour later, you find yourself purchasing a course on Instagram marketing for small business owners, watching cute animal videos, or reading up about the benefits of the paleo diet.
Science is increasingly clear about the distractive nature of our phones. Research suggests that even just having your phone in the same room can prevent you from focusing on the task in front of you. As we anticipate potential messages coming in, this breaks our focus, our attention and consequently reduces our ability to learn and assimilate new information.
Turning off on-screen notifications and having your phone on "Do not disturb" for parts of the day is essential to taking back your focus. Doing this creates an environment that enables you to stay present for what is in front of you - whether that is a work project, time with your child, friend, or partner.
For ultimate focus, calm (and productivity) set specific times to check your phone - your emails for work as well as your personal messages. You can also adjust your settings in a way that only lets essential calls come through during your device-free periods, rather than being notified about new posts and messages every few minutes.
Scheduling device-free time
In a digital age, taking regular breaks from your devices is an essential form of mental and physical self-care. Device-free time is the active decision to spend time away from your devices, to give your senses a break from our hyper-stimulated online world, and, instead, to focus on the calm and peace that comes from uninterrupted you-time. And whilst going phone-free during work hours is an effective way of increasing your productivity and getting things done more quickly, going device-free in your me-time is where things get truly magical.
The mornings and evenings - just after waking up and just before going to bed - are ideal times to get started. Just before sleep, our brain is especially susceptible to blue light emitted from our devices, and the release of melatonin is delayed. Avoiding devices before bed can be a powerful aid to good sleep.
The mornings are also an important time to spend device-free. Every time we check our phones, dopamine is released. Dopamine is a hormone that makes us feel good. It is also a hormone that has frequently been linked to addiction, but especially in the early morning hours, it interrupts an important process going on in the brain - the theta brainwave we discussed earlier. By not checking our phone first thing, we can make a conscious decision to begin the day, with our brain also ready and refreshed.Have days to totally unplug (digital detox)
Taking a day to fully unplug from our devices and social media can be a great way to reset and recharge your batteries. At Quiet Social Club, we organise these home retreats monthly in the form of our “My Day Away” program. This is not a digital detox, because the focus is not on removing things from your life (the typical detox pitch), but rather putting the focus back on the things that actually bring value to you and doing them more.
There are no specific rules - you can spend your time in solitude, or with a friend or partner. Your schedule, equally can be very flexible. The only prerequisite is that you stay away from devices that connect you to the internet for at least 12 hours, ideally longer.
The sense of replenishment that comes from a day of unplugging, can hardly be explained, so we hope you join us for our next Digital Mindfulness retreat. Just sign up here and we’ll keep you posted.
Spending device-free time with friends
In her book Reclaiming Conversation, Sherry Turkle tells us about the phone’s distractive powers in conversations: “If we think we might be interrupted, we keep conversations light, on topics of little controversy or consequence”, citing research by Andrew Przybyliski and Netta Weinstein published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships to elaborate that “The very sight of a phone on the landscape leaves us feeling less connected to each other, less invested in each other.”
Have you ever wanted to share something very important with someone when their phone went off and they went to check it? Remember how this changed the course of the conversation, yes perhaps even the relationship.
We invite you to give it a try: To make space for more device-free quality time with friends and watch how the relationships evolves when no devices (no other more important things to do) are in the room, when you are fully present for each other, and can truly listen.
Other ways to improve your tech-life balance are:
Become mindful of the way you spend your time online by asking questions like: “Am I using this in a way that nourishes me?”, or “Am I using this in a way that benefits me?”, “Is my use of this preventing me from spending my time in a way that’s more meaningful to me?” These are questions that you can ask at any time to support a mindful relationship with your devices.
Use a habit-building tool like our Offline Pouch.
We hope you enjoyed finding out about these tech-life balance habits, and share this list with friends and family. Have fun trying them out and exploring this new lifestyle!
Want to join a community of like-minded people? Get weekly inspiration and ideas on how to make mindfulness part of your everyday life? Make sure to subscribe to our Newsletter and follow us on @quietsocialclub. (P.S. We post only quality stuff very occasionally)
