brief reflection on my first tech sabbath

for years, my friend casper has had in this in his email signature:

I am offline from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday, when I observe a ‘tech sabbath.’

i’ve asked him about it several times and while it was something i always wanted to do, i never felt like i could. it just felt too hard.

well, this weekend i finally did it! i had a bunch of things get cancelled last minute because of thursday’s snowstorm and thought that now would be as good of a time as any!

not only was it not as hard as i expected, it was pretty great. it wasn’t a perfectly clean sabbath cause i used my phone a few times and my computer once. having done it this way though has let me see how i can totally go without digital technology from sunset friday to sunset saturday.

some things i noticed:

1. it was really helpful to have a special todo list for things that i needed digital tech for that i would have to do later. this made it easier to let things go and focus on other stuff.

2. if i’m going to meet up with someone during the 24h period, i should (a) let them know i’m sabbathing so that (b) we can make plans so that i don’t need to use my phone to meet up or do whatever.

3. having a plan for what to do during the sabbath was a good idea. the things can be specific (like clean off my desk) or general (like spend time resting in my room).

4. the 24h went by faster than i expected. as i got near the end of it i was like… wait… it’s over?!?!

5. i should find out the time of sunset before starting, heh.

i really appreciated disconnecting from my devices and, though it was short, it was a really nice reset. now that i’ve had my first experience, i think i’ll probably try to do two per month and see how that goes.

i love experimenting with parts of my personal system. such a nerd, heh.