Back at the start of 2020, I was known in my social circles as a person who regularly took time away from technologies such as phones, computers, and the internet.
I used to take a weekend or maybe a whole week and spend it living in the moment. I would either go into the countryside to be together with nature or go on some hiking trail.
Either way, at that time, I completely abandoned any technology that I had. This is a very rare case in our society today, but one that is completely worth trying out.
What it does for me
At first, you feel uncomfortable, and in the first 10 hours, you would have to battle the urge to pick up the phone to get some quick dopamine fix. You could potentially find it even hard to concentrate on anything else. Your thoughts would be jumbled up, and you would worry if anyone important wrote to you or maybe you missed an important phone call. In reality, this is just your mind trying to find the excuse for you to get back to a comfortable position with technology in hand.
This would last, as I said, for at least the first 10 hours of the first day. After that, when the brain realises that you are resolute and you actually have decided to stay strong, it will stop this urges and try to adjust.
That is when the magic will start happening.
First of all, technology has completely killed the way that we think, feel and even interact with most of the objects. Some of the things completely disappeared because of technology. But once you don’t have your phone, you would be very different.
Every single detail would stand out for you. You are making coffee? It smells great. The sound of water pouring over the ground coffee and dropping into the cup seems as if a spring is pouring in the mountains, even the way the coffee rolls in your cup gives you a soothing feeling. That is what you would notice if you are not checking Instagram or Facebook.
The most important point of time would be when you would get inevitably bored throughout your experience with no technology. Bored out of your mind because technology has practically solved all of our entertainment issues by giving us easy to access things that we don’t appreciate and that ruin our lives.
So when you are bored, you must understand that this boredom is not bad; it is a good thing. Here is when all of the magic happens. The most important thing here is to resist the temptation again and power through. I usually pick up the book, any book, and start reading. That usually is good enough to keep me busy for a while until that initial effect of boredom goes away.
After that you will start to really feel the benefit of this, you would walk around your house if you decided to stay inside and you would find most of the things fascinating and even new to you. The view outside your window would be mesmerising and might even push you to draw or write.
The cup that has a picture of a deer on it and feels a little cold can be something that becomes your new favourite cup even though it was stashed in the cupboard for 5 years.
This is also the time when you start getting the most creative and amazing ideas. Your mind would be extremely productive and will most likely give you answers by itself to the most important question you wanted answers to.
Most likely, this would also exhaust you and considering that you have nothing much to do, you would go to sleep extremely early, and you will get the best sleep of your life.
Day one
This is what no technology can do. And that is only day one. Each additional day that you can stay strong like that will only multiply the benefits and the effect and, in the end, would give you the transformation that can even seem crazy to you at first.
Technological detox is highly underrated, and if you would like to read more about the effects and science behind this, you can read this paper.
Start now. Get perfect later.
Klim Y
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