5 Things I Learned From Being Offline for a Week

Or, who knew there was such a thing as offline?

I had a great time with my mom for the past week or so and am now reluctantly getting back to business. While she was here, my online time was minimal; not only was I not on the computer, I also wasn’t constantly checking email, Twitter and Facebook on my iPhone while out and about. To my surprise, I rather enjoyed it and the world didn’t fall apart. Here are a few observations about my time offline.

1. Everyone was right, I really can only check stats once a day.

Or every other day or every third day even. Heck, maybe once a week, although I didn’t get that far. The crazy thing is, during the longest stretch I went without checking I had an unexpected surge in traffic and my numbers were well over double what is typical. Of course, I’m sure the two aren’t in any way connected, but it’s nice to know I don’t really need to watch that carefully.

2. If it’s urgent, they will call.

And if they can’t call because they don’t have my phone number, well then how urgent could it be, really? I mean it would suck if my site went down and nobody could get me for days, but it’s not likely to result in anyone dying or getting hurt. This is one of the benefits of being a blogger/forum administrator rather than a cardiologist. I suppose this is why they don’t pay me the big bucks, too.

3. I don’t feel like I missed anything.

You know, now that I’m approaching the middle of my expected lifespan, I’m coming to realize that it’s not so much the missing things that sucks, it’s the anticipation of missing out. Before you’ve missed it, oh man, it seems like a tragedy. Eek! Things will happen! And I won’t be there! But after you’ve missed it, life sort of goes on and well, it doesn’t seem like it was nearly as necessary as you thought it would be. It might have been nice, but whatever you did instead was either nice, too or more important and you survived without any vital part of you scathed.

I’m guessing that fully embracing this knowledge is one of the keys to becoming a mature adult. I’ll let you know when I get there.

4. My stress level plummeted.

Now part of this was undoubtedly my mom being there to help out and doing all my chores for me plus 3 dozen things I had no idea I should even be doing, but I don’t think you can discount the power of being fully tuned into what you’re doing without trying to check email or see if anyone replied to your post at the same time. When I was getting dressed, I was getting dressed. When I was in line, I was in line. When I had to pee, I went straight to the bathroom without doing the pee pee dance while reading just one more email.

5. The less I was online, the less I wanted to be online.

Sometimes in the evening while my mom was doing other things, I had some free time and hopped on the computer. After checking email and responding to the important ones and doing whatever online business like bill paying that needed to be done, there wasn’t a heck of a lot that really grabbed me. YouTube of guy teaching a poodle to rollerskate? Nah. 87th thread about health care reform? No thanks. Twitter and Facebook? I’ll catch up with them later.

Which is not to say that online is boring and there is nothing worthwhile; far from it, more that I think our brains know we could use a break from the information overload and when you give it a chance to relax, it’s taking it. Now that it’s time to get back online, I plan to be more selective in what I read/watch.

In Conclusion

It’s not practical for me to stay offline and even if it was, I don’t think I would. There is a lot of value to be found online if you know where to look and I do like many of the social aspects. I don’t like all the time I wasted with mindless clicking and reading things that didn’t interest me just because it was there and it was my habit, so I will cut that out. It was great to not feel so stressed and to enjoy my life more. My plan is to be online less during the day and not hop on and off constantly like I have been doing. Instead, I will plan my internet time and not try to cram some bit of work into every spare second. I will also take a couple of days a week off completely to recharge.

How does having time unplugged affect you? How do you make sure you aren’t a slave to the computer?

Edited to add: Right after posting this, I came across this article in Slate: Seeking: How the brain hard-wires us to love Google, Twitter, and texting. And why that’s dangerous. I can’t be the only one that read this line:

she spent days “refreshing my search like a drugged monkey.”

And thought oh, thank heavens I’m not the only one who has done that.

Tagged as: offline, self-improvement, stress