I Unplugged for 10 Days: Part 2

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.

My Approach

I thought about unplugging from email about one week to 10 days before my official vacation.  The more I thought about unplugging, the more excited I got.  I not only wanted to make this a project that I blogged about (after the fact of course), I wanted to make this a movement!  I was REALLY serious about sticking to my decision to unplug. 

I knew I’d have to plan a bit before THE BIG UNPLUGGING occurred, so this is what I did:

The Date

Before all this crazy thinking began, months before I had booked a speaking gig in New Jersey on April 21^st, and had planned to visit my best friend Lori (yes, we have the same first name!) in the Philadelphia suburbs afterwards.  Because of this, I had already planned to take off the rest of my speaking day and the day after that which was Earth Day as well as Good Friday.  I would be watching my boyfriend John’s young sons during the middle of the following week while he was on a business trip, so I figured it would be easier to take those day’s off, too.  As a result, I just opted to take off from April 22 and not return to the office until May 1^st. 

My unplugging officially began on Friday morning April 22^nd, so my unplugging time ran over 2 weekends and I only lost 6 official work days. 

It helped that my time off was right after Easter/Passover, so I figured others might be on vacation and the demands on my time – and my email – might be a little less.  It also helped that I didn’t have an event coming up the following week. 

Other Actions

1.  I was worried that my email box would get overloaded, so I started unsubscribing to junk email I knew I would never read. 

2.  At least one week before my vacation, I alerted current clients as well as regular clients who didn’t currently have an event on the books about my vacation and plans to unplug.  Nobody was concerned and I think a few were envious.  They all supported my endeavor.    

3.  As I’m sure you suspect, I prepared an automatic out of office email and indicated that the office would be shut down for the week and that we would not be checking email until we returned.  I added that if it was a true emergency, people could call my mobile number.  Otherwise, they would have to wait until May 2^nd.  I did the same for office voice mail.   

My next post, which I'll make later today, will include a report from Day 1 of unplugging!

I Unplugged for 10 Days: Part 1

Below is an account of my attempt to unplug completely from email and the internet for 10 days while on a stay-cation. A stay-cation is a local vacation for those of you who haven’t heard the term.

Why I Did It

In the past, when I went on vacation – whether a true vacation or a stay-cation -- I still checked email and voice mail. You know what? I really resented it! This was probably because I remember a time when you took vacation, you truly unplugged because there was no other option. There was no such thing as checking email. Heck, email didn’t even exist! And you weren’t able to check your voice mail at work remotely because there wasn’t such a thing as voice mail. There was a receptionist who took a hard copy message for you. Yes, I know I’m dating myself. I turn 45 at the end of the month. In those days, you MIGHT call into the office to check in with your boss, but in my early days in the working world, there were no cell phones, so when you were on vacation, nobody contacted you and you didn’t contact anybody else. People respected this.

Why don’t we do this anymore? These days of being connected 24/7 are burning away our brain cells and burning us out! Am I the only one who feels this way? I’d love to hear your comments.

I can name SO MANY times when my vacation time came and there were still details up in the air for an upcoming event – or three. So I checked email daily and made myself available to clients who had to call. As a result of all of this staying plugged in, I can’t remember the last time I went on a vacation and truly unplugged. Perhaps it was during a trip to London in 2006. My mobile phone would not work across pond and I didn’t bring a laptop. Once – maybe twice – I checked email at an internet café. But other than that, I unplugged. Still though, I couldn’t go a week without checking email. And the last time before that probably some time in 2002. Pathetic.

So when I decided sort of last minute to take off from April 21st thru May 1st, I got excited. And I was DETERMINED to unplug. How did I do?

This week I’m going to share with you how things went. Tomorrow I will discuss my approach to making this work and then I’ll share with you just how I did and how I felt after the 10 days was up.