Unplugged Saturday

I mentioned in my Friday list post that one of my New Year’s Absolutely-Not-A-Resolution (But-Kinda-Is) was to spend one day a week completely offline. Well, I tried it yesterday for the first time…

In a normal day, I spend hours checking and replying to emails, checking Facebook, scrolling through Twitter, refreshing news pages, looking at rugby scores… Even if I’m watching a film or a TV show with my boys, chances are I’m on my smartphone at the same time, giving each half of my attention. Sound familiar to anyone else?

Well, not yesterday.

I went completely cold turkey.

COMPLETELY.

Now, as a smartphone user, this meant pretty much hiding my phone away all day. I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist the little counter at the bottom of the screen telling me there were 15 or whatever new messages to check. I turned off automatic syncing, so the numbers stayed silent, and temptation wouldn’t flash before me.

Then, just to make sure, I turned the ringer volume up and left the phone in a different room.

(I contemplated hiding it under a cushion, but thought that might be going overboard.)

We had no big family things on yesterday – the youngest went a birthday party, the oldest to play with his friends down the road for a couple of hours, the usual weekend parental taxi-ing – but unusually I did get an hour at home to myself. Prime Facebook time…

But I decided to read instead.

Crazy, right?

I’m always complaining that I don’t have time to read, so I thought this was a golden opportunity to put my money where my mouth was.

I’d started Kwame Alexander’s The Crossover the night before… I finished it yesterday afternoon. I can’t remember the last time I got through a book so quickly. The book’s amazing, and a quick read… so there I was, on a Saturday afternoon, in an empty house, crying at the end of a book for the first time in … a very long time.

After tidying myself up, I picked Louis Sachar’s Holes from my reading pile, and started on that… another great choice. I’m halfway through it already, completely hooked.

Better than Facebook anyday.

The flip side of this day offline is (a) not having any phone to distract me while we watched an awful film for Film Night (The Little Vampire)… and (b) having 205 new emails to catch up with on Sunday morning… but an hour on the laptop to focus on those saw to that (and write this post into the bargain).

Batched living. It’s the way forward!

So, it may take me longer to reply to emails and messages, but you know what… it can wait…

Enjoy your Sunday. And whatever your doing, give it your full attention 🙂