If you search for ‘digital detox’ on Google, you’ll get about 78,700,000 results, a fair number of which are advertising ‘Digital Detox’ breaks. Which just goes to show what a big thing disconnecting from your devices is at the moment. But this is hardly surprising when research suggests that the longer you spend in front of a screen and away from nature, the more likely you are to be depressed and lacking in altruism and empathy, ie the more likely you are to be socially isolated. We live in a world where not using technology isn’t an option for most of us, so we have to find a way to balance technology use and ‘real life’. Outside of my job, which involves using a computer for 4-6 hours a day, I’m not a big user of digital devices (and I certainly don’t check my phone 200 times a day!) However, I have noticed that I have been spending rather a lot of time in front of screens recently, so I thought I’d do a mini digital detox and go digital device free for a day and see what happened.

The rules I set myself were fairly simple – go cold turkey and don’t turn on my computer or phone and therefore, don’t look at any digital stuff for the day. I allowed myself to take my phone out of the house when I went out on the off-chance that the car broke down and then I could turn my mobile on and phone the breakdown service.

So first thing to say is that I had intended to do this last weekend, but my parents were on holiday for the weekend, so I wanted to be contactable if I needed to be. In retrospect, I could have just relied on the landline (yes, we still have one!), as it probably wouldn’t have made much difference if I’d not been contactable for an hour or two – but equally, I didn’t want them to worry that they couldn’t contact me. So I earmarked this weekend for my mini-digital detox.

I did it on Saturday rather than Sunday, because my long run is on a Sunday at the moment and I wanted to be able to work out how far I’d been and to listen to music to spur me on – so my multitasking phone was a necessity, though obviously I don’t look at my screen whilst running.

So how did I fare? Well, the first issue I found was that I had to rely on clocks to tell the time. I don’t bother with a watch anymore, because I have a phone… This wasn’t a problem at home as there are clocks in every room except the bathroom. But what I did notice is that there are few working clocks in public places anymore. I guess when they get to the end of their useful lives they’re either removed or just left, frozen in time forever…

I had no problems with the planning of my shopping for the week in terms of what to eat – I have a collection of recipes books and recipes that I have torn out of newspapers and magazines, so inspiration for using up the stuff I had left in the fridge and the pantry wasn’t a problem. There were two complications, however. Knowing what was in the veg box for the coming week (and therefore planning the second half of the week) was the first, whilst being able to compare prices between supermarkets was the other. The veg box problem was easily solved because when I realised last week that I was going to be computer free this Saturday, I took a note of what was due in the box (let’s hope the contents haven’t changed!). I didn’t find a solution to the other problem – which supermarket is cheapest for red lentils and pumpkin seeds… I could have physically gone to several different supermarkets, but as some are in town and others out of town, but that would have taken up a considerable amount of time on Saturday that I didn’t have, so I just had to guess.

One of the things that I needed to do this weekend was to get some bias binding for a quilt that has seen better days, which I’m going to turn into toppers for some wicker storage crates that I have under the bed. I had considered donating the quilt to a charity shop but the quilt top is faded, the material is quite thin and the filling is bunched in places, so it’s being re-purposed at home (check back later for a post about the finished item). So when measuring up the crate to work out how much bias binding I needed to go around the edge of the quilt, I had to calculate the amount on paper. And check it twice, just in case. And then add on another 20cm. A minor frustration, but using my phone would have been quicker.

I like to listen to music when I’m doing other things. That was more complicated than normal because I was limited to either a) being in the same room as the radio or b) being in the same room as the record player. With option a), I obviously had no control over what I was listening to and with option b) I was limited to my physical music collection. I don’t often buy physical releases of music anymore (although I did buy a CD of OMD’s Navigation a couple of months back because it was cheaper to buy the CD and get the digital download free than it was to buy the digital download on its own. Go figure.) so I have less choice than if I am listening on my phone. Having said that, I do enjoy listening to records because it forces me to be more mindful about what I am doing – one side of a 12″ album doesn’t last very long and you have to physically turn the record over.

What else did I discover? Well, just ‘Googling that’ was clearly impossible. So all those questions my curious nature wants to ask had to wait until today to for an answer – and by that time I’d forgotten what I’d wanted to know. In terms of mental clutter, it clearly wasn’t that important to know!

I’m not a big user of social media, nor do I have those annoying push notification things on my phone, but I do use it. When I did turn my phone on this morning, I discovered rather more notifications than I thought I’d get and lots of stuff in my feeds. So whilst it wasn’t overwhelming, sifting through for relevant stuff took more time than I wanted it to. The same held true for email as well and was doubly frustrating because I’d let it slip for the last week and so had lots of stuff to deal with.

So what did I learn about myself from my mini-detox and did it have any positive effects?

First thing I learnt was that I need to be organised if I am going to make this a regular thing. I need to sort out my shopping list the day before which will allow me to both check my veg box contents and compare prices if necessary.

I don’t have to use a multi-tasking product when I have other bits of technology that single-task around the house which I could use rather than use my phone and then get distracted from my original purpose – I do have a calculator from my school days somewhere, so I should try to find that. If I had a wrist watch, I’d have much less reason to look at my phone, so I’ll look into that (it has to be waterproof because I have lost count of the number of watches I have ruined by leaving them on my wrist when doing the washing up or getting in the shower).

The instantly connected culture we live in isn’t that great for me in terms of cluttering up my life with information that is of variable relevance. Turns out that the questions that I’d normally rely on Google to answer were of such fleeting importance that I can’t even remember what they were today! And as for social media and email, it did illustrate the need to prune the accounts that I am following and the things that I am subscribed to – that’ll be this week’s challenge. Music wasn’t really an issue – I’m just used to being able to listen to whatever I want, whenever I want. I don’t really need to listen to music in the bath – I could read a book instead – and I could re-acquaint myself with some of the neglected tunes in my physical music collection. Playing those songs again will bring back many happy memories, so I’m looking forward to that already!

So would I do it again? I can’t say as I noticed any difference in my sleep quality (not having been exposed to blue light all day), but I did notice that I was forced to slow down and be more mindful about what I was going to do, how and when, so yes, I am going to be tech free for at least one day every fortnight… I’m off to ferret out my much-loved copy of Pulp’s Different Class!