One week without LinkedIn, one week without Instagram, one week without email or messaging, one week without Claude, Gemini and WhisperFlow.
Instead: books (mostly physical), Sudokus, Trails of Tucana, journaling, pain de chocolat for breakfast, conversations over barbecue and at the swimming pool side, diamond painting on the porch, my brother’s pancake tower high enough to feed 5 adults and 9 preadolescent kids.
The result: the week was refreshing, invigorating, at times slightly boring, and felt both a lot shorter and a lot longer than a week.
The downside: I have exactly one picture of the small shop selling baked goods on the campground.
Croissants, baguettes, pain au chocolat. That’s it. Oh, and salt, soap, coffee and toilet paper.
How to disconnect (and what I’d do differently next time)
The decision to disconnect was a bit of an ad-hoc decision after my brother told me they’d left all devices at home on their caravan trip through France. We (as in: I) decided to follow his lead, and stored all devices (Switch, tablet, phones) in the safe box in our bungalow, only to be retrieved for the drive back.
The only exception were our Kindles, and I used the phone twice to not get lost on my running excursions.
These were the books I ended up reading:
With one caveat: I did not finish rereading “How not to Use AI”. It is basically an exercise book, so I am working my way through the exercises only now that I am back in the internet world.
The kids had their own books, a diamond painting, their manual scooters, and (thanks to their cousins) access to body boards to enjoy the beach.
That means that I missed my phone for things that had little to do with the internet, and everything to do with creating and accessing memories. So here are the things that I’ve added to my camping packing list:
A camera. Nothing fancy, just something we can snap a couple of pics with when at the beach, at the pool, barbecuing etc. We did have our little thermal paper camera, but a bit of colour would actually be helpful.
A radio/loudspeakers with mp3 player. We usually have some kind of music in the background, and my daughter loves to dance, so we did miss the option to ramp up the volume on some kind of music device.
More card games. They don’t take up a lot of space, and having alternatives to UNO and Phase 10 is actually quite nice. We did end up playing Trails of Tucana at my brother’s caravan an incredible number of times. If you have any recommendations for fun card games (or games that do not occupy a lot of space) for kids around 10, do share!
HOW to disconnect (like, really)
One of the things that surprised me is how often I reach for my phone, just because. Physically locking the phone away (and having my kids monitor compliance) was the best solution for this week - though obviously this is not something I recommend for everyday life.
So how DO you reduce your reliance on your phone for instant relief? How do you (re)learn to sit with your thoughts, your emotions, the occasional boredom that might arise without the easy dopamine hits provided by Social Media?
After all, it’s your tired brain at the end of the day against an app that has been developed with an entire department of the best cognitive and behavioural psychologists - working on making the experience as addictive as possible.
If willpower isn’t enough, physical restraint will do.
We now have some rules in this house that I am experimenting with (I have yet to decide whether to also enforce them with visitors 👿 ). Kindle and ebook readers are exempt, because they function as books.
No digital devices in the bathroom. You may read your book, but don’t get lost in your Instagram feed.
No digital devices in my bedroom. I have a sunrise alarm clock, so the phone can stay in the living room.
No digital devices in the kids’ bedrooms after 8 pm. Alexa can do their music and wake them up in the morning.
Board games have moved to an easier accessible and VISIBLE part of the living room.
And the paper books I plan to read are now also a lot more visible, reminding me to choose paper over social media. I may have to add googly eyes to them like I did to my plants.
And that’s it for now.
Time to do some paper book reading.
