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

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:

• A Screen-Free Summer for Kidlet: How, Why, & If I'll Lose My Mind

• The 10-Day Update 

• 5 Week Update on Screen-Free Summer

• The End of Our Screen-Free Summer: Results and Moving Forward

• The After-Effects of Our Device-Free Summer

• Device-Free Summer 2.0: Why We’re Doing This Again

• 7 Things to Reduce Distractions and Increase Focus

• On Productivity and Distraction: Deep Work

• Revisiting Deep Work

• Stop Letting Your Inbox Distract You: Making Rules Work For You

• Training My Brain for Deep Work: 2.5 Years In

• Roni Recommends - Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less

• The Digital Declutter and Why I’m Taking a 30-Day Social Media Break

• After the 30-Day Social Media Ban: What Surprised Me and What I’m Changing
  

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

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

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:

• A Screen-Free Summer for Kidlet: How, Why, & If I'll Lose My Mind

• The 10-Day Update 

• 5 Week Update on Screen-Free Summer

• The End of Our Screen-Free Summer: Results and Moving Forward

• The After-Effects of Our Device-Free Summer

• Device-Free Summer 2.0: Why We’re Doing This Again

• 7 Things to Reduce Distractions and Increase Focus

• On Productivity and Distraction: Deep Work

• Revisiting Deep Work

• Stop Letting Your Inbox Distract You: Making Rules Work For You

7 Things to Reduce Distraction and Increase Focus

Happy Friday, everyone! In Wednesday's post about the book Essentialism by Greg McKeown, I mentioned that I would be implementing some things to use what I learned from both Essentialism and Deep Work by Cal Newport. So that's what today's post is about. And though this is my personal plan for what I think will help me, hopefully, you'll also find something things that might work for you.

That's what nice about the concepts in these books. They're not so specific that they can't be customized. We ALL feel too busy. We ALL would like to spend time doing things that are more meaningful and essential to our lives, job, family, etc. I would venture to say most of us feel overwhelmed by technology and the noise of modern life. And when you really take a hard look at it, you see the things you are giving up because you're glued to your computer or phone. And it's not just during work time. For me, it even leaks into my personal leisure time. If I'm focused on my phone, I end up with less reading time, less time to watch TV shows, less family time, etc. No bueno.

So here's my plan for the next month (a month in which I have a NaNoWriMo style goal of writing about 50k words.)

7 Things to Reduce Distraction and Increase Focus

 

1. Putting a leash on social media

It may be Facebook for you or YouTube or Instagram, but for me, Twitter is where the tempting coffee pot/watercooler is in my "workplace". I don't have co-workers to chat with in person, so it's where I go to catch up. It's what I often see first when I sit down at my desk--the big wide screen of Tweetdeck with all the columns and barrage of tweets. In some ways it makes sense that I go there. If I were working in an office, I would take a few minutes to ease into the day by catching up with people at work and drinking my coffee. However, the problem with Twitter is that it's never a five-minute conversation. It's links and today's drama and cat pictures and before I know it, thirty minutes have passed or longer. And now I have all these interesting articles to read. Plus, instead of easing into my day, it's like I've started standing in the middle of Times Square. SO. MUCH. NOISE. 

Action item: Pop in to twitter on my phone where I can only see who directly talked to me so I can respond, but don't look at the feed until my lunch break or after my writing is done for the day. 

2. Blocking off internet-free time with the Hey Focus app.

I've been using Hey Focus for a while, but I was just using the 1 hour timer it has built in. I didn't realize that I could set up a schedule for it to block social media/the web at set times each day automatically. This is a great feature because a) I don't have to remember to click for focus time b) it requires no willpower because it's automatic and c) will get me in the habit of knowing exactly when my "deep work" time is.

Note: you can whitelist certain apps and websites if you need them during your deep work time. But I'm not whitelisting anything but music. Even research can distract me (What kind of car should the heroine drive? What would have been on the radio in this flashback scene in 2005?) You click for research and then you fall into a web rabbit hole of something else. I can just make a note and look that up after deep work time.

Action item: Automatic internet blocking from noon to 3pm every day for deep work/writing time.

3. Meditate before going into the Deep Work zone.

Research has shown that our mind is like our muscles. If we don't use our ability to focus, we lose it. We have to actively work with concentration in order to improve it. I know without a doubt that my ability to focus has decreased over the last few years. Maybe it's all the technology, maybe it's age, maybe it's how my career has changed, maybe a little of all. But the girl who used to consider herself laser-focused to the point of obsession at times has started wondering if she has ADD. That's...concerning. 

So if our focus is like a muscle, then mine hasn't been to the gym in a while. And one of the proven ways to to strengthen that muscle is through mindful meditation. I have a little experience with this because I used to regularly do yoga (something I need to get back to), but it doesn't have to involve movement. Studies have shown that even 8 minutes of daily mediation can help. 

Now, that doesn't sound like much, but try it. I did a ten minute meditation with the Calm app this morning and it was HARD to sit still and be quiet and focus on breath for just a few minutes. Even with the lovely sound and view of crashing waves, I had to fight to keep focused--which tells me that I definitely need to keep doing it.

Action plan: Meditate for at least 10 minutes every week day with the Calm app.

4. Cocooning and setting limits

This goes along with the Deep Work and turning off the internet, but it's also important to set up expectations with others. You're not available during that deep work time unless it's an emergency. You are out of reach. The world can survive without you for a few hours. There's a great post over at Penelope Loves List about how to set up your Cocoon of Focus.

Action plan: Turn off my notifications except for kidlet's school and hubs and don't let others encroach on the cocoon of focus. 

5. Keeping my To Do list to the essentials

I talked about this on Wednesday, but I'm learning the art of saying no to things that aren't essential to my goals (both at work and home.) Busy work can be a sneaky time stealer. You feel like you're doing something so you're "working", but you're not actually getting the things done that are important. It's just another distraction. (Like when I inevitably decide that I MUST clean my office before writing that day, lol.) Y'all know I'm in love with my paper planners and this is the perfect way to make sure my To Do list is pared down to the essential bones. 

Action plan: Say no to the non-essential things that try to sneak on to my To Do list.

6. Tracking my time

And speaking of planners, I'm still using a two planner system, which I've talked about before. The Inkwell Press (photo above) is where my weekly and monthly plans live. It's what I ideally plan to do that week. Life isn't ideal. And plans are easily derailed. So I've used my Day Designer, which is a daily planner to not do future planning but to track my time as I go. That way, I can see what I planned to do (Inkwell Press) and what I actually did (Day Designer). This helps me see where I'm wasting time, how much time a task actually takes (because we all tend to underestimate that), and keeps me accountable.

Action plan: Use the Day Designer to track my time as I go so that I can see where all the time/energy is going.

7. Putting my phone away in the evenings

I have too many books to read, TV series I haven't seen, movies I haven't watched, games I haven't played to sit on the couch with my phone at night.

Action Plan: Put the phone out of reach at night because even if I am watching or reading something, the temptation to "just check" is too strong.

So those are my seven things for the month of October (though I've been implementing some already). I'll be sure to report back on how it goes. I know for sure it's not going to be easy. Breaking habits is incredibly hard and the internet's hold on us is legit. But I'm determined and nothing makes me more motivated then when I get mad about something. And I'm mad that things are stealing my time. ;)

So you tell me, am I the only one struggling with this? Have you tried anything to reduce distractions and increase focus? Anything work well for you?