30 Sep 5 Steps to Give Yourself a Digital Detox Day

Before Covid, I was at the Random House Book Fair in Westminster, Maryland doing my favorite thing…looking at books and talking to authors.

I picked up the book, How to Break Up With Your Phone, and showed it to my 84 year old father and jokingly said, “I’m getting this for my kids.” And by “kids” I mean, 3 adult children in their 30’s.

I guess the joke was on me because I brought the book home and as I started reading it, I quickly realized, I was addicted to my phone! Turns out it wasn’t my kids who needed this book, it was me.

I’m old enough to know what life was like before technology and before iPhones; I’ve lived through daily boredom and having to figure out creative ways to entertain myself.

I remember back in 2010 when my kids tried to get me to give up my flip phone in exchange for an iPhone. I told them I was never giving up the flip phone, but somehow they convinced me to do it. One day they all got brand new iPhones and told me there was a buy one get one free deal and I could get a new phone for practically nothing. I gave in under the pressure of a good deal. Intuitively, I think I knew the iPhone would one day take over my life and that’s why I hesitated for so long. That iPhone may have cost me little money at the time, but the price I’ve paid for having an iPhone is high as it cost me my most valuable asset — “time”.

In her book, How to Break Up With Your Phone, author Catherine Price says:

“Breaking up with your phone means giving yourself a chance to stop and think.
It means noticing which parts of your relationship are working and which parts
are not. It means setting boundaries between your online and offline lives.”

Slowly and stealthily, the iPhone sucked more and more of my precious time until I was spending over 10 hours a day on my phone. Of course, my excuse was that I love learning and a lot of that time was watching YouTube videos and listening to podcasts or my excuse for being on social media was that it was the only way I could connect with my family and friends to stay updated, but the truth is there were no boundaries. It was out of control and I knew it as soon as I read that book.

I’ve quit a lot of things in my life – smoking, alcohol, sugar, toxic men – so I figured I would easily kick this addiction. After I read Catherine’s book, I made the decision I was going to set boundaries with technology and break my phone addiction. I confess…it wasn’t easy. It was two steps forward and three steps back because technology has infiltrated every area of my life. There was little separation between my business life as an entrepreneur and my personal life.

I am a writer and in 2020, I decided to write a book a month. Yes, 12 consecutive books! I am happy to tell you that I wrote those 12 books, but in order to write, edit, publish a launch a book a month, I had to get even stricter with my boundaries around technology.

Neal Stephenson, author of dozens of books, explains it this way:

“If I organize my life in such a way that I get lots of long consecutive, uninterrupted time-chunks, I can write novels. If I instead get interrupted a lot, what replaces it. Instead of a novel that will be around for a long time, there is a bunch of email messages that I have sent out to individual persons.”

If you think you might be addicted to your phone, technology or social media, here are 5 ways to give yourself a digital detox day (weekly).

1. Understand The Problem In A Deeper Way

Awareness is the first step to fixing any problem and reading books on the topic helped me tremendously. Here are my top 5 picks of books that will help you implement your digital detox day:

• Deep Work with Cal Newport
• A World without Email by Cal NewportEssentialism by Greg McKeown
• How to Break up with your Phone by Catherine Price
• Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron
  Lanier

2. What Gets Managed Get Measured

I had a coach years ago that told me I should track all of my time on paper to see where my time was going. Turns out I was doing tasks that I could hire a virtual assistant to do and get back my time. You may think you have a handle on technology, but I promise you unless you measure how much time you spend on technology for an extended time, you are guessing and most people will greatly underestimate their time on technology. Your phone has a setting to turn on the tracker or you can download an app to do it for you so you can see where your time is going. You will be shocked to see the numbers! Measure your time on your phone for at least a week.

3. Pick One and Put Strict Boundaries Around It

Once you have the numbers, pick the one app or technology that is the biggest time suck and put strict boundaries around it.  For me, Facebook, was the biggest time suck so I decided to delete it from my phone
and only check it once per day on my desktop computer. I had 100 reasons why I needed Facebook and they were all part of the addiction. I can live without Facebook. Reading Cal Newport’s books inspired me because he is a millennial, successful author, podcaster and full time professor who has NEVER been on social media. If he can do it, I can do it too!

4. Organize and Delete Apps

I followed Catherine Price’s system for breaking the phone addiction and part of it was deleting apps I never or rarely used as well as organizing the apps so that only the apps that were non-time sucks were on my home page.  Right now my home page on my phone has apps like:  maps, Zillow, my bank, PayPal, pacer, notes, calculator, settings, camera, calendar, clock, weather, Pandora, meditation app, parking app, holy bible and kindle.  I do have my phone, text messages and the internet browser, duck duck go as well.  The apps that sucked my time away were mainly Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and podcasts.  I’m not saying there isn’t some value to these apps, especially for my business, but I had no boundaries around them and was spending inordinate amounts of time on them.  I still listen to podcasts and give myself two podcasts a day. As a writer, it’s important for me to balance consumption with creation.  It’s easy to consume other people’s ideas and content, but not create my own.  The more I consume other people’s ideas, the less I create my own.  Can you relate?

5. Decide On One Technology Free Day Per Week and Stick To It

I recommend writing it on your calendar to remind yourself that this is your technology-free day.  My technology-free day is Sunday and sometimes Fridays as well. I used to teach classes based on Julia Cameron’s book, The Artists Way, and one of her tool to help you reclaim your creativity is called the Artist Date.  It is a 2-hour date with yourself (no guests) where you venture out to play and have fun.  Cal Newport always says that when you remove technology from your life, you must replace it with something else or you might fall back into your old habits.  Consider doing an artist date with yourself on your technology-free day and filling your new found time with things that add more joy, fun and fulfillment to your life.

I think it’s important for our mental health to have  technology-free days, especially if you spend a lot of time at the computer for your job or your business. After years of offering done-for-you services for my bestselling author program, I felt like my brain had gone to mush. I was burnt out and exhausted. I had to strictly limit my time at the computer. It forced me to re-evaluate the services I offered, the price points and ways I could spend less time at the
computer.

It’s good to have passive income in your business I decided I needed to create a DIY program that could run without me and that’s how my online course, 28 Books to $100K was born! I’ve sold over $20K of this course
and the best part is it operates without me. I love passive income!

Be creative and write down 10 ways you can spend less time at the computer. Sometimes you don’t realize how bad something is until you remove it from your life and take a break from it.
Kind of like a bad relationship. Have you ever taken a break from one and then realized you needed to end it because it was unhealthy or not fulfilling?

Technology can be that way; especially social media. Cheryl Richardson, Life Coach and author of many books says “A high quality life has more to do with what you remove from it, than what
you add to it.”

Keep removing what doesn’t matter and what matters will take its place.