Below is an account of my attempt to unplug completely from email and the internet for 10 days while on a stay-cation. For those of you who haven’t heard the term, a stay-cation is a local vacation.
The Aftermath and the First Day Back
After Tuesday, I never got back on email or the Internet. It felt great! It helped that I no longer had a really good reason to get online. I stayed busy and made a point to spend a lot of time outside.
So how did I feel after my 10 days of unplugging? I felt great! On Sunday, I was actually looking forward to going back to work. I didn’t have that dread and anxiousness that I so very often have on Sunday nights. Surprisingly, I was actually looking forward to reading all those emails. I was curious about what had happened while I was offline. On Monday, when I got on my PC for the first time over 10 days, my mouse felt funny in my hand. That seemed like a good sign.
To combat the anticipated anxiety I thought I might feel after unplugging for 10 days and coming back to a mound of work, I purposely made a point to not schedule anything big for my first day back other than to check email and to check the 125 messages I made on my digital recorder, a device I use to remember all things work related and tasks to accomplish in my personal life. Some people are addicted to their mobile phones and go to bed with it by their bed side. I go to bed with my digital recorder in my hand or place it on the pillow next to me so that if I have a work related idea or task or grocery item to pick up, I just talk into the recorder instead of turning on the light and writing it down on a bedside tablet. Perhaps I need to unplug from my digital recorder… But it helps me sleep and keeps me sane to get ideas and tasks off my brain so that I can move on to the next matter at hand.
I know I was extremely lucky that I could just concentrate on email and recorder work on the first day back in the office. I realize not everyone could pull that off. A strategy for those folks might be to publicly announce that you are back in the office the day AFTER you actually return and use that real first day to hole up in your office and catch up on email and other tasks.
I definitely did not want to overwhelm myself and in addition to NOT scheduling a lot for myself on the first day back, I made a point not to schedule any meetings the first 2 days. I also told my interns to not come into the office on the first 2 days. I just needed to catch up with life and work and figure out what was up and what was down.
Another way in which I was lucky was that I had no pressing details for any upcoming events. Those details could wait a day or two. The 10 days I took to unplug proved to be an ideal time to unplug. I realize this might not always work for every vacation.
By the way, I had 439 emails and it took me only 3 hours to schlog through all of them and respond. Most were junk since I warned clients and colleagues that I’d be out of the office. To keep the amount of emails I received down to a bare minimum, I made a point before my unplugging to unsubscribe from lots of e-newsletters and advertisements that I regularly receive and never read.
SO WHAT DID I LEARN? While I didn’t succeed in unplugging for the full 10 days, I DID unplug completely for 6 days, 5 of them consecutive days. And I pretty much DID unplug from email for 10 days since I didn’t respond to any emails and sent just one. I realized that taking regular vacations is important (even if you just stay home and plant posies) AND unplugging WHILE on vacation is extremely important. We need to give our brains a rest. To read more about this, view this New York Times article on the subject.
I also made a resolution in honor of Earth Day: respect my weekends by unplugging from email and work related calls (unless I have an event of course!). Our works days have gone from 8 hours a day, 5 days a week to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and it is taking quite a toll on our health, happiness and, quite frankly, sanity. If we just went back to the way things were before we because such a plugged in society, I think we’d all be a bit happier.
How is unplugging on the weekends green you ask? I’m not using electricity and I plan to use that time to spend outside in nature and being a steward to Mother Earth. What does it have to do with sustainability? I’m going to sustain my sanity!
I hope this blog inspired you to try to unplug more and honor your vacations. I’d love to hear back from you. Feel free to share comments here or on Face Book.
Thanks for reading.
Lori
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