Thoughts from a five-day digital detox

Part one because now I want to try it again.

Dear Reader,

In 2019 I read an excellent little book called How to Break Up With Your Phone. What is essentially a 30-day guide to using your phone less.

On its advice, I stripped back my apps to only the most important and bought an alarm clock; turning my phone off every night and not returning to it until well into the morning. I stubbornly made my way around the city without any kind of maps app. I’d ditched my social media accounts years ago, so that was one task done at least.

And on the book’s advice, I really wanted to take things to the next level.

That is, to put the smart phone in a drawer and start using a ‘dumb’ phone instead – one capable of only making phone calls and receiving texts. As the by-line of the book eagerly declared, I was more than ready to ‘take back my life’.

Then COVID-19 happened. And our phones went from being an inconvenience, to our very lifeline to the rest of the world. And then – especially if you were lucky enough to be living in Melbourne in 2020/2021 – our literal passport to everything, with the rise of QR codes and vaccine certificates, and all that nonsense that seems so farcical and long ago now, but is part of very recent history.

Well, so much for that, I thought glumly.

I spent much of Melbourne’s lockdowns alone, living in a house with a partner who was considered an essential worker. My phone ruled my life and I was shaken by how much I’d come to rely on it. So deep within the depths of 2021’s long, painful and thankfully final lockdown, I decided that every Sunday, I would turn my phone off from dawn to dusk.

A small thing, but what a difference it made. No diving for the phone every time the screen lit up, no reaching for it in an instance where I felt even a smidgen of boredom. Sunday became a day for reading, for listening to records, for long (one hour) walks around the neighbourhood, for playing with the dog and for cooking elaborate meals in the kitchen.

These are some of my favourite days of lockdown, if such a thing exists. My boyfriend would return home from work and I’d actually have stories to tell him about my day. It was hard to ‘take back your life’ in a situation where you have very little control, but it felt like something to at least take back a few hours.

Sunrise one morning from the top of a nearby ridge.

I’m undergoing some personal development in the form of a ten-month course this year. Not for work, not to further ‘optimise’ myself; but for, quite simply, my head and my heart.

This program, which is deep-rooted in nature, began with a five-day retreat where we were encouraged to switch off. Well. Switch off our devices at least, and switch on our minds.

Such opportunities in life are so very rare, that I decided to take complete advantage of this one. Once I arrived at the camp, I switched my phone off and buried it deep into my backpack. I may have even thought good riddance, at the time.

Alongside communication, I use my phone as a note taker, camera and as a mirror. You know what suffices for taking notes? A pen and paper. I’d brought my point-and-shoot camera along, but took very few photos. And as for what I looked like? Well, we were living in the bush, swimming in a creek to get clean, eating around campfires, trekking up mountains. To how I looked, I really didn’t give a damn.

Looking out onto a neighbour from my temporary home.

At this retreat, we talked a lot about ‘wide-angle vision’ – a skill that is essential to tracking and nature awareness. This is where you use your peripheral vision to take in the world, rather than the narrow tunnel vision we largely use in day-to-day life, thanks to phones, computers and the way our cities and towns are designed, with straight paths and ‘clear’ direction.

And although I am very new to tracking and move through the bush with all the grace of Godzilla, or perhaps the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man, I could indeed feel something beginning to shift in how I encounter the world.

I’d sit down at the end of a very full day with a book and find myself unable to focus on the words. Throughout the day, glimmers of movement would flick at the corners of my eye – birds flitting from tree to tree, butterflies fluttering past. A prickling of the mind, something changing. An awareness forming – five days not quite enough to cultivate it fully, but enough to experience the birth of something, at least.

Turns out all you need to experience this is no distractions, to have nothing fighting for your attention. Easy! Right?!

Indeed, you must disconnect to reconnect to the world around you.

There was one moment where I felt a need to switch on my phone, to check in with my partner. I didn’t want to ‘spoil the magic’ or ‘ruin my quest’, but the gut feeling was too strong to ignore. I climbed to the top of a hill, where we reportedly received reception and turned it on. Ignoring the WhatsApp notifications, not going anywhere near my emails, I checked my messages to my boyfriend, to find the one I’d sent announcing my arrival to camp had bounced back. I sent it off again, out into the world, with a follow up message. Not dead. Having the time of my life. And so very eagerly, switched the phone off again.

An acknowledgement. It is very easy to digitally detox when you’re at a retreat, in dense bush, surrounded by the glory of nature with no reception whatsoever. This is the start of something and now, I want to take it further. Is it possible to disengage from a phone for five days in the city? It will take a bit of prior organisation and a lot of follow-through, but I’m curious to see how it goes, and whether wide-angled vision, indeed this feeling of wildness is transferable into an urban setting.

Thanks for reading. See you next week with our regular fortnightly edition.

‘Til then, stay well and well-fed.

-Celine

PS. Read part two of this no-phone experiment.

I’m now trying to live my life without a smartphone. Read my reflections one month in:

On life without a smartphone

If you enjoyed this, then these too might be right up your alley:

The ethics of urban foraging

Do you have rituals in your life?