Since the start of quarantine, my friend Callie and I have been checking in with each other on an almost daily basis. From the trend of our recent check-ins, it became gradually evident to me that I have been making time for everything and everyone, except for myself. I am doing what I have to do (eat, sleep, stay employed), what I think I have to do (things like keeping up conditioning for training purposes), and what others want or expect me to do.
But I am not making time for what I genuinely want to do.
And to be honest, my mind feels so scattered that I am no longer certain of what I need. Callie and I discussed this, and since I plan on leaving the city for two weeks to spend the holiday season with family, it seems like a good time to simply drop off the grid. Since I still have to work during some of this time, here are some ground rules:
To help with what I anticipate to be severe withdrawal symptoms, I prepared myself with:
The intent is to try this for a week starting on December 18th, and if it goes well, continue into 2021. I will report back when it’s done.
Today is the last day of the cursed year of 2020, and for the past two weeks I’ve deloaded in the truest sense of the word: ate whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, slept in until I woke up naturally, not training unless I wanted to, and shut off my phone as well as ignored messages on all socials minus the select few people I wanted to talk to.
I finally feel bored instead of drained. I’m actually very, incredibly bored, and I can’t wait to get back to the city. But I will stop whining. Let’s talk about the 10 days that I spent off the grid.
In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport proposed a strictly binary approach to social media: you perform an honest cost/benefit analysis on the social media platforms in your life and quit all services that don’t provide substantially more benefits than costs with respect to things you truly value.
Going off the grid ended up being some version of this evaluation, for not only the social media platforms, but rather the entirety of my digital arsenal. My “arsenal” is actually relatively limited compared to most, but even then I found that the true essentials are few and far between. Most of the apps are there simply because there is a compulsion to check for new notifications or content out of boredom, rather than because there is a specific intent necessitated by a situation. Here’s what I mean:
With the extra few hours that I now have free (previously spent aimlessly browsing the likes of YouTube or Reddit), I found myself writing in my journal: “what do I actually want to do?”
More often than not, the answer was actually something I’d consider to be productive, like, listening to a podcast episode (quick plug), researching something I’m curious about, or reading another chapter of the book I was on. Occasionally the desire was to actually catch an episode or two of a show, and if that were the case, I gladly indulged myself. I found more enjoyment and more focus in the things I was doing, because I was sure that I wanted those things.
My point is this. Often we become so ingrained in our habits, good or bad, that we simply do without checking whether the action still align with our wants or needs. Stepping away from the digital world gave me time to rediscover and reaffirm the things I want. Moreover, it helped remind me that the company of certain people in my life is a necessary part of my happiness. So I broke the rules from time to time, just to chat with those people whom I missed.
Aside from a few people who’d likely be concerned at my sudden disappearance, I chose not to tell most people that I was going off the grid. I came back online to some messages from people, including birthday wishes, continuation of some previous conversations, and some general housekeeping items. Some of the messages went unread for the entirety of the experiment.
Well, I’m sad to report that I’m not the most important person in the world because nobody was particularly mad at my disappearance :)
Kidding, but it’s okay to not respond immediately on passive communication means (think email, where the expected response time is a few hours to a few days). Those who truly need you will find you somehow. Turning my phone off completely is an extreme measure that I likely will not repeat, but I will be removing some messaging apps from my phone.
In these ten days, there were countless little moments where my thoughts took me back to a particular memory, or made some jumps until I landed at a curious question. I had more vivid dreams, and it would seem, a better recall. I attribute this particular change to the lack of context switching that my brain regularly performed due to the steady stream of notifications. Without disturbance, my stream of consciousness led me to questions like these:
It would seem that my brain is perfectly capable of entertaining itself when left alone :)
That’s all I have. See you in 2021.
Written on December 31st , 2020 by JY