The joys and occasional sorrows of disconnecting from a phone

By Sarah van Gelder

I left my phone at home when I went on a bike ride this morning.

I had stopped to rest at a point of land surrounded on three sides by salt water, with giant madrone trees offering partial shade from an already-intense sun.

I didn’t panic when I remembered that my phone was at home, plugged in to a charger on my desk. But I did reach for it more than once during my brief rest. That bird call — I wonder what species it is? No way to know. I could take a photo — no, I couldn’t. What if I fell, how would I call for help? I’d have to ask a human.

Like so many others, I am addicted to my phone and that addiction crowds out slower pleasures, like reading a long book, being fully present to my surroundings, being fully present to myself.

My brief break from my phone got me thinking about a chapter by Erika Kosina that we published at YES! in the book, “Sustainable Happiness.” It’s about taking a tech sabbath — a one-day-a-week practice of unplugging, shedding the stress and dopamine pull of the phone.

Instead of the constant stimulation, and the bombardment of clickbait, we can risk boredom, which, it turns out, can open us to deeper learning and creativity.

I'm especially drawn to the idea of tech-free community events, where we support each other in this quest for inner freedom, and can practice being present alongside others.

Erika’s piece is more than ten years old, and some things have changed. It was written before AI became a constant companion to many, and phones are even more woven into daily life than they were then. The hazards to children's developing brains and social lives have also become clearer.

The insights are more relevant than ever, though, so I thought I’d share it, along with a second piece from YES! on how to prepare yourself to be away from your phone.

By Erika Kosina, reprinted from “Sustainable Happiness: Live Simply, Live Wll, Make a Difference” edited by Sarah van Gelder and the staff of YES! Magazine (Berrett-Koehler 2014)

Dan Rollman recently noticed a disturbing trend in his social interactions: “I was starting to get more birthday wishes on my Facebook wall than phone calls and handwritten cards from family and friends.”

This inspired him to create the Sabbath Manifesto, which encourages people to enjoy time with loved ones, silence, the outdoors, and other pleasures they may remember from the time before the Internet took over every free moment.

“I just want to spark some dialogue about the pace of life and our relationship with technology,” he said.

Across the country, Americans are starting to think about how a constant stream of electronic communication affects the quality of our lives. Many of us are consciously unplugging every once in a while, and encouraging others to do the same.

Sal Bednarz made headlines in San Francisco when he asked customers in his café to turn off their laptops for a day. Bednarz first opened the Actual Café in his North Oakland neighborhood to increase social interaction among neighbors, but he found that the Internet got in the way.

“When you walk into a café where there are 20 people and they are all on laptops and nobody is talking to each other, it creates a certain experience,” he said. “Unless you experience a café environment where there are no laptops, you don’t know what you are missing.”

The Actual Café is now laptop-free every weekend. Bednarz isn’t anti-laptop per se, but he recognizes that people need real connection—not just on screens. “That’s where the name of the café came from: actual interaction,” he said.

One day, local businesses in San Francisco sponsored a Tech-Free Day, inviting participants to visit an unplugged café or attend a potluck picnic. Aubrey Harmon, a self-described “multitasking stay-at-home mom who also writes,” unplugged her TV, computer, and smart phone and went to the picnic—which banned technology but encouraged singing along with a band that played an acoustic set.

Harmon found she was more present at the picnic when not hiding behind a camera or phone and decided to make breaks from technology part of her family life: “I realized that it’s good for my son to balance TV and technology with face-to-face and outdoor time.”

The Sabbath Manifesto offers ten principles for observing a weekly day of rest from technology. Rollman developed it in collaboration with Reboot, a nonprofit organization working to make traditional Jewish rituals relevant in modern life (though, the creators say, you don’t have to be religious for a tech Sabbath to be relevant).

Tech-Free Day and related events like the National Day of Unplugging are resonating deeply across the United States. Bednarz is thrilled that his café’s laptop-free weekends are building actual community.

He remembers a neighborhood filmmaker who was working in his café during the week, but still being mindful of the unplugged philosophy. “She made a point of taking breaks and talking to people next to her,” he said. “She came up to me afterward and thanked me because she had made two new friends, and five new business contacts.”

“It goes back to Thoreau and living deliberately instead of mindlessly,” says Frank Bures, a Minneapolis-based travel writer who decided to make his Mondays Internet-free. “How do you want to spend your life? Staring at a screen and following link trails, or being in your own mind?”

Bures believes the ability to focus our attention on a single problem for a long time is endangered by the constant interruptions of electronic communications. To him, this is tragic: “Your attention is finite, and it is what defines your life. If you just give it away, your life adds up to nothing.”

By Sharon Samiento, published in YES! Magazine

If you want to implement your own secular sabbath, here are some guidelines:

A secular sabbath is a digital day of rest. It can be any day of the week, just whatever works for you. It can be more than 24 hours—you might end up extending it to an entire weekend sometimes.

That means you decide what you’ll give up. Some people forsake all technology, including phone and TV. Others use it as a “computer turnoff” day. It’s up to you what you give up, but if you find yourself dreading doing without a particular thing for 24 hours, that’s probably a good sign that you need a rest from it.

Remind yourself of the nontechnical things you like to do, and do those things. That may sound strange, but for those of us who live by technology, we sometimes forget the simpler pleasures in life—fishing, knitting, gardening, going to the dog park, having lunch with a friend. Before your secular sabbath, write down some things you want to do on that day so that when the withdrawal symptoms hit, you’ll have a backup plan.

If you’re experiencing an intense longing for your email or IM or whatever, you’re doing the right thing by taking a day away. The symptoms will fade each week that you do this, and you might actually find yourself looking forward to your day of rest.

A sense of inner calm. Being able to hear yourself think. Reconnecting with family, friends, and nature. Rediscovering a favorite hobby. All of these are benefits that go along with creating balance in your life.