Originally posted 22 Augut 2017.
Since I was old enough to be relatively observant and 'with it', I've described an aspect of myself as having addictive tendencies.
Case one: Food.
I love food. What's not to love? Except maybe grapefruit. Get it away from me because it tastes like ear wax. Yes, I've tasted ear wax. It tastes like grapefruit. Yuck.
Case two: Movies, TV and Netflix in general.
Hours and hours of my school holidays as a kid were spent having movie marathons. Why not? Case three (and maybe the most amusing): I would go fangirl crazy for specific celebrities. For a while, I had a serious obsession with Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Posters all over the place. The books, The DVD's, the dolls, the make-up and pretty much their general merchandising. Thirteen year old Emily would black and white photocopy pictures of them from magazines and make them into contact to cover her journals and school books.
All this leads me to case four: my phone.
I was starting to get to a point where I became pretty aware that I was feeling glued to my phone. This was less of a joking matter. Those typical FOMO symptoms were showing up: Feeling like I needed to check my phone if it had been 20 minutes or so since I had, checking my phone as soon as I'd leave a family event, checking my phone as soon as I'd wake up and then proceed to spend the next 30-45 minutes in bed scrolling through my feeds. URGH.
I wanted to put some distance between me and these urges, so once I'd done a little pinterest scrolling I decided to lock in number forty eight... complete a digital detox.
I'd done a fair bit of looking around at different digital detox's on pinterest but some of them didn't really apply to me or didn't really work with my situation or schedule. After some careful research I put together my own. If you're going to do something for yourself you may as well make it work for you! Here's how I faired.
MONDAY - RESIST LOOKING AT YOUR PHONE UNTIL 10AM
Felt SUPER productive this day. Normally I get bogged down during breakfast, stuck between planning my shopping list, checking specials and Facebook notifications and getting distracted by multiple other random things. But I didn't look at my phone until 10:45am once all the shopping and washing was done, and even after some play time with Jimmy (my fur baby). But to be totally honest, I did miss my phone during my shop. With my phone as a digital wallet, I had to go without using a coupon for 5% off my veggies (Harris Farm is the bomb!), skip on transferring money across my bank accounts and then needed to go old school for my mathematical calculating needs. We have become soooo reliant on technology being accessible in one place!
TUESDAY - TURN OFF ALL PUSH NOTIFICATIONS FOR THE DAY
Tricky one! Mega tricky! I hardly looked at my phone for this one because I had house work to get done before I was off to babysit early morning. I did have small pangs of anxiety about missing call or text notifications about the goings on in my day, until I physically went and checked my phone. Thankfully I wasn't checking it every 5 minutes, but more like every few hours. I spent a lot less time on social media all round. Without that little red notification, half the time I'd forget to check in.
WEDNESDAY - PUT PHONE TO 'BED' 90 MINUTES BEFORE HEADING TO SLEEP
I'd seen this one is various pins. Isn't pinterest a project persons heaven? The problem is that most of the time it would involve putting the phone in a room other than the bedroom. Right now that wouldn't be a serious problem, but back in the old shoe-box house, the only room separate from the bedroom was the bathroom. The outside bathroom. So instead I opted for the 'tucking my phone in bed early' and leaving it for the rest of the night. This a tad difficult as I was in the middle of coordinating plans for the next morning and I hadn't heard back just yet. I also decided to keep all my push notifications off from the day before, except for email, phone, text messages and messenger.
THURSDAY - SPEND THE DAY SOCIAL MEDIA FREE
This day would have been a whole lot harder if I'd been at home by myself but I'd organised earlier to chill with my baby sister (who is now married! Eeeeeek!) This made things a whole lot easier to not have those 'missing out' feels. Why? Because I was too busy not missing out on the hangs with Charlotte and getting a live social fix in my actual world.
FRIDAY - SPEND THE DAY NETFLIX AND YOUTUBE FREE
To some this would seem like a cinch of a day, but honestly I have gotten into the very happening habit of doing housework and projects with something playing in the background. I'm not alone, right? This day could have been a serious walk down struggle street, but I had a lot to get done. I had two different appointments that kept me out of house until 1pm, with a small window for house cleaning before needing to leave for Sydney at 4pm. Normally during lunch I'll pop on an episode of whatever I'm currently following but I decided to swap it out for eating lunch outside basking in the sun. It was fab. Definitely need to do that more often.
SATURDAY - DECLUTTER YOUR FACEBOOK FEED AND EMAIL SUBSCRIPTIONS
I didn't get to cleaning out my email subscriptions this day, but I have since, and please tell me I'm not the only one suffering from the horridness of not actually being able to unsubscribe!
Firstly, Jetstar. Why, oh, even, why? I haven't flown since before I was even married, but they won't let me unsubscribe because I can't remember my account details. Seriously? Why can't you just be able to say, "Excuse me, dear service, I'm not a fan of your emails, so kindly take me off your stupid list." and then you never receive another email from them.
Lastly, I won't even name names because there's a dang few of them who ask me to follow whatever their specific instructions are to unsubscribe (follow the link and press the right button) but still send me emails. RUDE.
It was actually pretty funny cleaning up my Facebook feed. I had liked 43 pages and some of them were totally random. Cue, the page called 'People who like to sleep rugged up but with the air conditioner on'. Emily of the past - why even? There were about 3 of them that I genuinely DO NOT remember liking at all. Now after the declutter my feed mostly looks like food, recipes, food, cats, education-teacher-stuff, food and good vibes. And food.
SUNDAY - SWITCH YOUR PHONE OFF FOR THE ENTIRE DAY
Whoa, this one is pretty scary when you're facing it head on. Forget the social media, but goodbye alarm clock, calendar, calculator, reading materials, notebook and a mass of other things. If I wanted to check my emails I'd actually have to get my laptop out. Who even does that these days? Yeah, actually, I know heaps of people do it. I just migrated to my phone years ago.
Truth be told I actually didn't pull through completely successful on this one. I ended up switching my phone on because I had a friend coming to church that day and I was super anxious about her calling if she'd got lost or was running late. So, I did have it switched on for an hour in the morning, but that was it. Phone free for the rest of the day. However, I did have my iPad. Is that kind of bending the rules?
I think it's actually a pretty tough kind of thing to do these days. We don't have a landline, so if I went 100% media free for a day or a week no one would really have anyway to contact me. But then again, people in the older days seemed to manage fine enough.
The challenge was refreshing and since I completed it several months ago I've actually stuck with a few of the ideas. I've kept my notifications for Facebook and Instagram switched off, and each night at 8:15, an alarm alerts me that its wind down time on the media front. That last one doesn't always stick, but I'm more aware of it than I was before.
So, is anyone else game to go cold turkey on the phone front for a whole day? I will give you a little teaser and say that an upcoming adventure on the list days involve going several days 100% technology free. And, I'm actually super excited for it all. Intrigued? You'll just have to keep reading.
