A few weeks ago, we went to a cabin in Maine.
The cabin had no internet and our cheap cell phone plan’s coverage didn’t extend up very far up the dirt road. It had electricity, gas for the stove, and a landline, but I felt disconnected. On the second afternoon, I found myself calling my Dad and my sister on the land line, just to maintain a connection to the outside world. They rolled their eyes.
Without the internet, my phone use dropped 84%; my laptop use dropped 100%. Combined, I typically am on a screen for 10+ hours a day. If you factor in sleep, that leaves precious little time to do anything non-virtual. That giant drop was very easy. I found myself with a bit of twitchiness every time we were in between things. Whether it was waiting for dinner, putting the kids to bed, wondering when the rain would stop, or drinking my morning coffee, I kept feeling the need to plow through some online information. For the first few days, I found it pretty hard to relax.
But aside from my own difficulty slowing down, I didn’t see any longterm costs. I was late in reading and replying to a giant pile of emails and my Dad did beat me in fantasy baseball, but being offline for a week didn’t really matter. By the end of the week, I finally found the calmer pace. My brain finally slowed down and the twitchiness at lack of stimuli backed off a bit. I thought about replacing a habit or too: maybe no phone before breakfast, or looking outside before diving into emails.
None of those habit replacements have actually happened, but I’m thinking about places or times to embrace a lack of novel stimuli. Too much of my life is bathing my brain in new information and not enough is considering any of its importance.
For the reading this week, I have a few pieces on what our information diet does to us. Enjoy!
Our cabin didn't have the internet; my phone didn't have service.
