Andra Watkins wrote about her recent digital detox.
She realised how much she uses the Internet to procrastinate:
Almost like a drug. I waste hours and hours on it a week, keeping up with useless things that absolutely Do. Not Matter.
I actually don’t think I need to go on a digital detox to work this one out – I know I waste a lot of time just idly gazing at things that absolutely do not matter.
Because I know how prone to distraction and time wasting I am, I have LeechBlock installed on my browser at work. The sites it blocks: Twitter, Flickr, Etsy.
If I do want some time out for idle browsing during a workday, I do have my iPad but because it takes me away from my main work machine, I can snap myself out of the slump and get back to it. This works quite well, actually.
Although I would be the first person to argue that Twitter is a superb professional development/learning tool, I still limit my access to it during work time because it can be too easy to start reading interesting articles, and following various links and leads, and before I know it, I’m lost.
If I really want to minimise my time wasting opportunities I really ought NOT to leave the iPad on my bedside table. Lately, in the cold winter mornings, when I wake up instead of getting out of bed, I just lie there window shopping.
I have tried a social media detox, but like Andra I found being cut off from my communities really uncomfortable and not fun. That cut off feeling made me question why I was doing it and if I remember correctly it meant that I quit that experiment earlier than I’d planned.
A full digital detox, though, I haven’t tried. I would have to do it while on leave from work, because I don’t know how I could avoid online anything and still do my job. It would possibly let me figure out exactly how much time I waste. I’m not sure I want to know… (I do have a bit of time off coming up, in September…)