Roni Recommends - 24/6 The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week by Tiffany Shlain

February 19, 2020 Roni Loren

If you’ve been following my blog for any amount of time, you know that I have a few close-to-my-heart topics that that I keep coming back to. One of those is the role of screens and social media in our lives (and our children’s lives.) Even though I’ve read a towering stack of books on the topic, I can’t resist a new book in that area. I like digging deeper and understanding different angles and perspectives—along with different solutions people have tried. So when I saw Tiffany Shlain’s book 24/6 The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week, I knew I had to read it.

The premise of this book is pretty obvious with the title, but basically, Shlain has, for the last ten years, taken a Tech Shabbat with her family every week. This means that they turn off their phones and all screens on Friday night and don’t turn them back on until Saturday night. Even though she’s using the term Shabbat and is Jewish, she states that she identifies as a cultural Jew and not a religious one, so she doesn’t follow all the other traditional rules of Shabbat like not driving on that day. She also says the day you choose is arbitrary. It’s what works for you and your family. So if Saturday night to Sunday night works better for you, no problem. The point is spending one full 24 hour period a week without screens/devices.

I was a little afraid that this was going to be one of those books that had a high concept idea that could’ve just been conveyed in a blog post and didn’t need to be stretched into a full book, but I’m happy to report that I really enjoyed the read. She lays out the benefits she’s seen from living 24/6, how her children have responded and thrived, how our brains react to tech, the science behind unplugging, and then a step-by-step guide to set you up for success if you decide to try your own Tech Shabbat. I also enjoyed the personal stories sprinkled in. It ended up being a very quick read that I gobbled up in a day.

And man, it left me really wanting to try this whole 24/6 idea. I haven’t done it yet because this will take some preparation. I also may have a hurdle getting my family on board, lol. But I think I can tweak and modify her system to fit us. For instance, Saturday night to Sunday night would be a better fit for my family. And I have mixed feelings about no TV at all because the only time we get to watch a movie or sporting event as a family is the weekend. So I may make the caveat of—no TV unless we’re all watching something together as a family. Also, my husband’s job won’t let him not be available by phone, so he’ll have to be able to take calls. BUT we don’t need to do anything else on our phone besides taking phone calls. So it wouldn’t be 100%, but even if we got to 90% on that one day a week, I think that’d be a big improvement.

As some of you know, we did device-free summer for kidlet two summers in a row, and it was LIFE CHANGING. Like, seriously. My son is now an accomplished guitarist and drummer because of that first device-free summer. And that iPad he used to be so attached to? I don’t even know where it is anymore. Packed in a box somewhere I think. (He does have a phone, though.) We don’t always get to claim a lot of parenting wins, but I’ll take credit for that one lol.

I’ve also personally done 30-Day social media bans and have gotten a lot out of that kind of reboot, too. So I think this Tech Shabbat idea is right up my alley. If we give it a try, I’ll be sure to report back!

As an additional recommendation, I also read Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. This is a small book with ten arguments about social media, including ones like “Social media is making you an a**hole.” I really got a lot out of this one, but I’m not giving it an across-the-board recommendation because it’s written in a very academic/cerebral tone, which won’t be for everybody, and also it’s more of an extreme take. So, your mileage may vary. If you’re nerdy and into this topic like I am, then take a look. :)

Interested in this topic?

Here’s a list of other posts I’ve done about devices and digital distractions:

What are your thoughts? Do you think you could give up tech for one day a week?

Training my Brain for Deep Work: Two and a Half Years In

February 26, 2019 Roni Loren

Two and a half years ago, I blogged about reading Cal Newport’s Deep Work for the first time. At the time, I was feeling so scattered and distracted that I was legitimately concerned that I was developing some sort of memory problem or attention disorder. Reading Deep Work made me realize that it wasn’t a medical problem, it was an environmental problem. I had set up my life (as most of us have these days) with a constant flow of distractions: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, email, and the endless pings of notifications.

My phone was always with me, demanding my attention with every notification ding or little red bubble. When I was working on my computer, little notification boxes appeared in the corner for every email or mention on social media. Now, I think about how things were set up, and it seems ludicrous—that I let myself be inundated like that. But at the time, it just seemed like the way of things. That state is the default these apps put me (and you) on.

Then I read Deep Work in August of 2016. That book shifted my view of the digital world dramatically, and it really sent me into a deep dive on the topic. I went on to read a stack of books about the internet, social media, video games, the brain and distraction. That eventually led to me doing things like Device-Free Summer with kidlet in the summer of 2017 (and 2018), which truly was and continues to be life-changing for my kiddo and our family. And it’s also led me down a path of dialing back my own distractions step by step.

My own journey from scattered distraction to deliberate focus has been a two and a half year process. One thing I love about blogging is that I can look back on old posts and see what I was thinking/going through in the past. Reading that 2016 post is like reading about another person. So much has changed since I wrote that initial post, but it definitely hasn’t been an overnight change.

I can’t quite remember the order of all the phases I went through, but here were some stops along the journey:

Turned off all sound notifications on both my phone and computer except for phone calls and texts.
Turned off all visual pop up notifications.
Turned off those red badge icons that tell you how many notifications you have.
Deleted Tweetdeck which used to stay open all the time.
Deleted Twitter from my phone.
Basically abandoned Twitter - I just post news and blog links and respond to people who comment to me or message me directly. I no longer read my feed.
Unsubscribed from social media emails that notify you that someone has commented or messaged you.
Put a message on my FB messenger letting people know that I don’t check it and to email me if you need me.
I downloaded the Hey Focus app, which blocks the internet/social media for a set amount of time.
Started making a conscious effort not to pick up my phone in every idle moment.
I bought a bigger purse and a Book Beau so that I’m always carrying a book or my Kindle with me so that when I do have idle moments, I pick up a book instead of my phone.
Moved my social media apps into a folder on my phone on the last page instead of having them quickly accessible on the first page. (Right now they’re deleted completely because of the social media break.)
Moved the apps I want to be using (Kindle, podcasts, New York Times) to my first phone page.
Stopped watching the news (and getting news from Twitter) and subscribed to a paid, vetted news app (New York Times for me) and subscribed to a physical copy of the local newspaper.
Made extensive email rules to farm out non-urgent, distracting emails/newsletters into folders so that I can choose when I go through them.
Most recently, I’m in the middle of a 30-Day Social Media break after reading Cal’s newest book Digital Minimalism. I’m a little over two weeks into no social media at all, and I’ll update at the end of the 30-days how that experiences has been.

So those are some of the things I’ve done. Each one has brought me a step closer to reclaiming my ability to focus. But the reason why I’m writing about this today is because I had a bit of an epiphany yesterday. Yesterday afternoon, I was hard at work on writing lectures for the online writing classes I’m about to launch. I had designated the afternoon for writing because that’s when I tend to do my best work. So after lunch, I put on my Focus @ Will music (that link will get you a 20 dollar credit to try it out if you’re interested) and got to work. Normal day. However, when I was done, I looked up and realized I’d written 5600 words and had been working for four hours straight with only a brief bathroom and coffee refill break. I’d been in a mental “flow” state for hours.

This has happened on occasion, of course. There are great writing days, good ones, and bad ones. However, lately, particularly during the two weeks of this social media fast, this is becoming the norm and not the anomaly. The week of the 11th, I wrote almost 18k words in four days. I am not a fast writer, y’all. A great week for me is 10k words. But that week, I basically wrote off the high word count as a quirk. Yesterday it finally hit me that—wait, it wasn’t a quirk. I’m doing it.

What is it? Well, in my initial post about Deep Work, I mentioned this point:

Deep focus can generally only be maintained for a certain amount of time - The author suggest that those just starting out, an hour a day of deep work might be all they can manage. But with practice, he said that people can do 3-4 hours of deep work in a day--which means that you're still going to have time to get the shallow stuff done.

At the time of that post, I was aiming for that one hour. I used to set my Hey Focus app for 25 minute bursts. Newport had suggested that 4 hours is about the limit for deep work before our brains are worn out, so I wasn’t even considering that amount of time. Focusing for four hours straight seemed a near impossible feat. But now, I’m doing it. Regularly. I’m not even using the Hey Focus app anymore. I don’t have to block the internet or my access to anything. My brain just knows once I start my Focus @ Will music, okay, now it’s time to work.

I think my last hurdle was the social media thing because even though I had turned off all notifications, I still would hop over to Facebook groups and such when I hit a snag in my writing or got stuck. While on this social media break, I don’t have that option, so there’s nowhere to go if I hit a snag. I either have to work through it or get up and walk around for a little while to think. Now, I don’t plan to quit social media for good, but after this experiment, I’m going to make some big changes, which I’ll discuss in a future post when I’m done with the 30-day fast/digital declutter.

My main point is that, yes, you can retrain your distracted brain (that is, assuming you don’t have a legitimate attention disorder or medical condition.) This was not a quick fix, and it wasn’t easy because breaking habits/distraction addiction is serious business. (I definitely felt this the first week of this social media fast. The lack of regular dopamine hits is real.) This was a step by step journey over 2.5 years. And I don’t doubt that I still have more to do on this road. However, I find it super exciting and empowering that we can take our brains back. Focusing really can be a superpower, especially in our current world where we’re all battling unprecedented levels of distraction.

So if you’re feeling like I was back in 2016, make a plan to wrestle back your focus. You can use some of the techniques I’ve listed above. I also highly recommend you read Deep Work and/or Digital Minimalism.

The first step in this process is getting over the resistance that’s going to crop up in the form of arguments as to why you are different from all these other people dialing back their online/social media time and can’t possibly dial things back. Here are some things your “don’t take away my fix” reflex may argue:

I would do this, but I can’t not check my Facebook throughout the day because it’s part of my job. (It’s part of my job too, but I can corral it into a time slot. You have a job to do, and unless you’re a social media manager, you job is not “be available 24/7 on FB or Twitter.”)
If I’m not on Twitter, I won’t be up to date on the news. (Breaking news has caused a lot of trouble over the last few years. Find a news source you respect and trust and get the well thought-out take after the actual facts have been gathered, which means you don’t need to check it more than once a day.)
If I don’t get pop up notifications, I’ll miss something important. (Keep notifications on phone calls and texts from family and such. Those are where the emergencies will come in. Everything else can be checked on a schedule, including email. If you have a boss you have to respond to immediately on email, give them a notification sound but leave the others silent. Or make a schedule to check your email at the end of each work hour.)
If I’m not on every social platform, I’ll be behind. (Doing them all well is nearly impossible. Focus on the one or two that you like.)
If I don’t respond to someone within 5 seconds, they’ll be mad. (You teach people how to treat you. I have taught people that I’m not immediately available unless it’s an emergency or something truly urgent. If I respect my time, other people will too.)
If I don’t post on Instagram (or insert favorite social media) every day, people will wonder where I’m at. (None of us are that important. People will survive if we don’t post every day.)
Facebook is how I keep in touch my family and friends who I don’t see. (Totally cool. That doesn’t mean you have to be available to them 24 hours a day. Check it in the morning and in the evening in a time-limited way.)

My friend (and writing process guru), Becca Syme, has a saying she throws at us all the time: Question the premise. She usually means that in reference to writing advice people give you. However, it applies here as well. If those excuses above or others crop up, question the premise. Is that really true? Is there really no way around that distraction? Is there really no way to change that situation to where it benefits my focus? I promise that if you really want to make a change and improve things, you can. There’s a way.

I will step off my soapbox now, but I hope you’ve found some of this helpful. I’m only this passionate about this topic because I’ve seen it work—both for me and my kidlet. It’s life-changing stuff! : )

Let me know if you’re struggling with distractions or if you’ve tried anything to improve your focus. I’d love to hear! Leave your thoughts in the comments. (If you leave them on my social media, I won’t see them until the end of the fast, lol.)

The Digital Declutter & Why I'm Taking a 30-Day Social Media Break

February 8, 2019 Roni Loren

I'm taking a 30-day social media break.png

If you’ve followed me for any amount of time, you know that one of my favorite topics to explore and evaluate is our relationship with devices, the internet, and social media. For two summers, we’ve done device-free summer with kidlet and have had a lot of success with that (he even requested to have one last summer when I wasn’t planning on it.) It truly changed my kid. I realized today I don’t even know where his Ipad went. I haven’t seen it in almost a year. He used to be attached to that thing. And video games, which had hooked him hard, are now played as an afterthought and for hardly any time at all. He now complains to me that all the kids at school want to talk about is Fortnight—a game he’s never played and has no interest in playing. So I’m a believer in the digital detox or break, or in this case, declutter.

Unlike kidlet, I haven’t gone device-free, but I’ve done a number of things over the years to curtail my constant need to check my phone and other things on the internet so that I can focus and get my writing (aka deep work) done. I’m constantly refining my process. So when I heard Cal Newport, author of Deep Work, was coming out with a new book called Digital Minimalism, you know I was pre-ordering that thing as fast I could click. The book released this week, and I’m almost all the way through it. I’ll probably give a more thorough review once I’m done, but it’s already inspired me to try his method of a 30-Day Digital Declutter.

This isn’t a detox per se. It’s more of a swipe the slate clean of all your social media (and other digital distractions that may suck up your time like video games or too much TV streaming), see how you feel for 30 days. And then, after thirty days, scrutinize each app or service carefully to decide whether or not you want to add it back into your life.

I don’t anticipate that I will give up all social media after this. For one, it’s part of my job. However, I am looking forward to breaking my cycle of check, check, checking my phone in the bored moments or when I first wake up. I had already deleted Twitter off of my phone a few months ago and haven’t felt the need to add it back. For this thirty day stretch, I’m deleting Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest off my phone as well. I also won’t be checking these sites on my desktop. No social media. Period.

My plan is to post the graphic at the top of this post on all my social media channels, letting people know why I’m not responding, and then will step fully away for the month. During this time, I plan to continue to blog and send out my newsletter, so I’m not going off the grid, just social media.

I’m interested to see how my attention shifts during the month and how this will all make me feel. Will I have the itch to check? Will I feel calmer because I don’t have to check? Will I feel out of the loop? Will I get more work done? Will I fill that time with something better or something equally as distracting? I love an experiment, so I’m looking forward to finding out!

As always, I’ll report how things went after the month is up (or maybe even along the way). And if anyone is interested in doing something similar, you can check out the details of the Digital Declutter in Digital Minimalism.

UPDATE: After the 30-Day Social Media Ban: What Surprised Me and What I’m Changing and also Training My Brain For Deep Work: Two and Half Years In

Interested in this topic?

Here’s a list of other posts I’ve done about devices and digital distractions:

Device-Free Summer 2.0: Why We're Doing This Again (AKA How Kidlet Shocked Me)

June 9, 2018 Roni Loren

First, before we get to today's post, I wanted to let y'all know that THE ONE YOU CAN'T FORGET, book two in The Ones Who Got Away series, is now available! Thank you to all of you who have already bought it, grabbed it from your library, and/or reviewed it. I really appreciate it! And if you haven't gotten your copy yet, here's you're chance. :)

DEVICE-FREE SUMMER 2.0

Okay, on to the post. So if you've followed me for a while, you may remember that last year I embarked on an experiment with kidlet: a device-free summer. No iPad, no video games, no computers at all. The only screen allowed was TV watched as a family. Not gonna lie, I was pretty nervous going into last summer because kidlet was VERY attached to his iPad and Xbox, and I was used to having that to help occupy him. But I felt in my gut it was what was best for him.

Turns out, it was way easier than I had expected and was a resounding success. I think it was truly one of the best things we could've done for all of us. It really did make a lasting impact. Not just with his level of calmness and creativity but also in very specific ways. For one, because kidlet didn't have devices, he took to his brand new guitar/rock band lessons with gusto. It became his new go-to thing to spend his time, and a year later, he's wowing me with his musical skills and his deep interest and love of music. The other day he sent me this audio file. He decided to try to learn Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" by ear. I know I'm his mom and am easily impressed by my kid, but he's 10 and doing this? That seems pretty darn cool to me.

And though we brought devices back during the school year, with limits (100 minutes a week), being on devices never took hold again. The iPad became dusty and mostly stayed in a drawer. He usually used his 100 minutes on the weekend to play NASCAR on Xbox or to watch YouTube videos about music. Devices became a small thing in his life. Honestly, this felt like a miracle compared to where we were. And the only negative side I observed was now he noticed how often most of the other kids are on devices or are overly focused on video games. It annoyed him and sometimes left him out of conversations about Pokemon, Minecraft, and the like. When I asked if it bothered him to not be able to follow those conversations, he just shrugged and said, I wish they could talk about other things, too. But it didn't bother him enough for him to use his device time minutes to delve into those games the kids were talking about. And he still has friends, so it wasn't a dealbreaker for friendships.

So this year, I really wasn't planning on a device-free summer because I felt like the device use was under control. But kidlet came to me mid-May and asked if we were doing device-free summer again. When I said that I wasn't sure, he said, "Can we?"

That shocked me. I asked him why he wanted to do it again. He told me that last summer was "fun" and he liked the activities we did. So he wanted the movie nights and board game playing and cooking with me and playing outside. There are so few parenting moments where you feel like you're getting something right, usually we're just hoping we're not totally screwing up, lol, but this was one of those mom pride moments that I'm going to hold onto. The whole experiment had worked. Devices had lost their hold on him, but more than that, he'd come to enjoy that old-fashioned family time. During the school year, things are so busy, that a lot of those activities fall off, and now summer feels like a special time to do those things with us.

Of course I couldn't say no to his request even though it hadn't been in my plan, so he's going device-free again. But he did have some caveats: he wants to be able to Facetime his grandparents and to use his Ipod to listen to music. Deal!

So that's where we are, we're doing it again. I've also decided to make an effort to slow down our summer some. We are typically overscheduled with camps and lessons and such. I'm feeling the stress of that and want to slow it down for all of us. But I'll need another post for that because this one is already long enough. ;) More to come!

In the meantime, if you missed last year's device-free summer posts, here are the details of what we did, how we did it, and how it all went.

What plans do you have for this summer?

The Aftereffects of Device-Free Summer

November 3, 2017 Roni Loren

If you've been following my blog for a while, you know that this summer we embarked on a device-free summer for our nine-year old son. A number of things prompted that decision, and you can read about that in the initial post (I'll link to all the posts from the experiment below.) And in August, I wrote about ending the summer and how we planned to move forward. A few people have asked me how things are going now that devices are back in play in limited form again, so I thought I'd do a quick update post.

First, in order to limit how devices were brought back in, we set up some parameters. After shifting around a little bit that first week back and trying out different things, we settled on kidlet getting 100 minutes per week to use on devices (Ipad and video games.) Schoolwork on the laptop does not count. Television with the family does not count. What's nice about 100 minutes is that it sounds like a lot to him, but over the course of seven days, that means only a little over an hour and a half is spent on devices.

Now, every kid is different, but mine loves a system. So he has a little dry erase board on the fridge, he writes his 100 minutes at the top at the beginning of the week, and then deducts as necessary. He's also taken to planning his minutes upfront, which surprised me. "This week, I'm going to use 30 minutes on Saturday morning and this much on Sunday afternoon." He thinks about his schedule and decides where his minutes will fit best. He also is able to delay gratification and not use up minutes as soon as he gets them (because they reset on Monday and he often doesn't use them until the weekend.) But beyond the logistics...

How has it been going?

1. The iPad is basically dead to him.

This was kind of a shock to me. The thing he used to carry around everywhere has lost its shine for him. It's rarely even charged anymore. The few times he's used it, it was to film movies of his toy cars or watch a YouTube video on a topic he was interested in. He doesn't play the games anymore.

2. He'd rather use his allotted minutes in two big chunks so it naturally ends up being weekend time.

Since he's using the time for video games, it makes sense to spend bigger chunks of time instead of breaking it up into little bits of time. So usually he just plays for about an hour on a Saturday morning and then uses the rest of the time on Sunday. School days end up being device-free by his choice.

3. The limits let us all relax.

He knows what to expect. He has a timer that he uses, so it's not a fight to get off the game when it's time because we all know the rule. (I do let him finish a race or whatever if his timer goes off during his NASCAR game as long as it's not going to be some epically long time.)

4. He's self-monitoring.

I don't know if it's just because of the way my kiddo is, but he handles his own timer and turns off the game. Unlike before where it was a fight to turn things off and a bad mood afterward, he turns it off without my intervention. It's SO nice.

5. The obsession has been broken.

He's not itching to play on the devices. He doesn't complain about wanting more time. It's just this thing he occasionally plays now, not the center of his entertainment. He'd rather play his guitar, play a board game with us, or play with his cars most of the time.

6. His mood is so much happier.

I can't convey how big this change has been. Not that he doesn't still have grumpy days like anyone else, but he was getting angry a lot before--usually when it was time to get off devices (which was part of what prompted the summer experiment.) He's back to his fun-loving self again.

7. We're spending more time all together as a family (not just all together in the same room but doing our own thing.)

His device-free summer had inspired my husband and I to dial back a lot of our online time and social media as well. So we're all more engaged when we spend time together at night and on weekends. Our screen time is watching shows together as a family--something we hardly ever did before.

So y'all know I'm already a believer in doing this. The change has been pretty miraculous in our little household, but I continue to be surprised by the longer term effects of it. Now I just wish I had done this a long time ago. So many hours lost to that iPad...sigh. But we can't change the past, so onward!

And if you'd like to catch up on what the experiment was and how it went, here are all the posts:

Interested in this topic?

Interested in this topic?

DEVICE-FREE SUMMER 2.0

How has it been going?

1. The iPad is basically dead to him.

2. He'd rather use his allotted minutes in two big chunks so it naturally ends up being weekend time.

3. The limits let us all relax.

4. He's self-monitoring.

5. The obsession has been broken.

6. His mood is so much happier.

7. We're spending more time all together as a family (not just all together in the same room but doing our own thing.)

Previous posts on the Screen-Free Summer:

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