How to Properly Prepare for Cleaning With Technology
From time to time, it is helpful to pause and assess how you are using technology in your daily life. One way to do this is to do a “cleanup”: get off the network, at least for a short time, and see how it affects you. But don’t just ditch the cold turkey. Here’s how to prepare for your digital detox.
This post originally appeared on Inc .
What made me think about the types of preparation required to temporarily abandon technology was Great Lent. If you are unfamiliar with Lent, this is a period of about six weeks during which Christians of many denominations and other observers traditionally fast or give up luxury.
Last year, serial entrepreneur Andrew Weirich tried to ditch several forms of email contact: Google chat, text messaging, Facebook, and email. When I spoke to him about this not so long ago, he frankly said how difficult it was. “I admit that later, during 40 days of Lent, I violated texting,” he says. “It was too difficult. People thought I was gone. “
Weirich’s outspokenness highlights what can be the most difficult part of a cleanup process. Even if you feel like you’re ready to step away from your smartphone, you need to make sure that all people who are used to you are not caught off guard by your sudden absence.
This was one thing I recently learned while trying to cleanse myself with technology. It was late January. I was on vacation at a yoga retreat abroad for one week. This is the third year in a row that I have taken a vacation. Although I have tried technical cleansing in each of the previous years, this was the first year that I really felt relaxed and not stressful.
Back home, I made a list of the reasons the 2015 Purification was the most successful. There were seven reasons, all of which were preparatory:
1. Let everyone in your world know that you are offline
As Weirich points out, your friends and family will worry about you if you stop responding or communicating with your usual sequence, so you need to inform your most frequent contacts that you will be unavailable for a while. This may seem like a lot of extra work, but it’s actually easy to do because you will still be calling, texting, or texting these contacts a few weeks before you disappear.
This means you don’t have to make any additional calls or send additional emails or text messages. You just have to remember when you say goodbye or go out to warn these frequent contacts that you will be away for a while. This is the perfect checklist task.
2. Create a system “In the event of an accident – break the glass”.
When you’re cleaning up with technology, one of the main things you worry about is how your family and loved ones can reach you in the event of an emergency.
What you need to do is make an honest list of emergencies that bother you. Then talk to those who can reach you. Let them know how they can get to you, even during cleansing.
For example, if you are staying at a particular hotel, give them the hotel’s phone number. That way they can contact you, but you can still keep it clean.
3. Practice partial cleansing before cooling in the turkey.
If you are addicted to your smartphone, you will not like giving up on it. While cleansing sounds good in principle, you might be lucky if you follow it if you try the partial measures first.
For example, Sloan Davidson, a speaker, activist and brand ambassador, launched a movement called #DinnerMode .
Davidson’s move name is a verbal interpretation of the “flight mode” that you can turn on your phone to during flight. This is how it works. Set a timer on your phone for 15, 30 or 60 minutes. Challenge whoever you’re dining with to do the same. Make sure your phone screen is out of your line of sight. Put it on the table or put it away.
Enjoy a short rest period.
Davidson is not the first entrepreneur to extol the health, creative, and creative virtues of unplugging. But her method is a great first step towards a complete cleansing. This can help you rehearse what your broken emergency thoughts might be.
4. Unsubscribe from emails and notifications.
The first two years I tried to cleanse myself, and all the stress I left behind quickly returned when I returned to my desk a week later. In addition to the annoyance of unpacking, literally hundreds of emails had to be parsed.
Worst of all, most of them were unimportant notifications, unnecessarily inflating the total inbox. So this year, a few weeks before I left, I made it a habit to unsubscribe from these emails as soon as they arrive.
Result? When I returned, I had less than 100 letters to parse. It took me one hour compared to several hours in previous years.
5. Separate the load from the device from its comfort.
For the first two years I tried to clean it, leaving my phone behind. I thought this would be the easiest way to cleanse. Call this the “throw away the cigarettes” approach.
But without a phone, I was worried about what I would do if an emergency came up and I needed to get in touch with someone. I also missed the phone for reasons that had nothing to do with email, text messaging, and social media. I missed the songs and photos I keep on it. Vacation wasn’t so much fun without them.
So this year I took my phone with me and kept it in airplane mode . I likedEric B. and Rakim when I needed to; When I wanted to, I liked the pictures of friends and family. As a result, I had a better time on vacation. And I still adhered to – and relished – the principle of non-fellowship purification.
6. Make sure it’s time
Cleansing will stress you out if you try it while you’re at your limit, whether for personal or professional reasons.
The first two years I tried to clean, I was on the verge. My novel, which has been written for 10 years, was due to be released (2013); the next year I was in the midst of his marketing campaign (2014). I mistakenly thought that this pressure would help me appreciate the communication opportunities that cleansing can provide.
Instead, I was just worried about not missing important book-related messages.
This year I passed by the release of the book – and much more relaxed. The bottom line is simple: You will feel more at ease during the cleansing if you start with it easier.
7. Rehearse what you will do or think when you start to get nervous.
One of the hardest parts of technological cleaning is that wherever you go, you will see how other people interact with their devices.
You will inevitably hear them talking about extreme weather in your hometown or scary news. Hearing about these topics, you might be tempted to reach for your phone for one convenience or another.
To maintain the cleansing, you need to fight these temptations. You can remind yourself that you have nothing to worry about with the “break glass” precautions you have taken. You can listen to a soothing song or remind yourself to stay in the present. Whatever you do, do it before cleansing. Develop a list of positive thoughts to help you change the direction of your worries.
Above all, respect your commitment to cleansing. But don’t be too hard on yourself if you need to break a commitment. The idea is to benefit from the discipline of nursing, and such a discipline rarely develops without a break or two along the way.
Here’s Your 7 Step Guide To Clean Up Technology Before Lent | Inc.