The joy of tech shabbats
I’ve been doing weekly “tech shabbats” since December 2021. Here’s how going device-free for one day a week has impacted my energy, creativity and productivity.
Tech shabbats, or digital sabbaths, are becoming increasingly popular in my circles. It appears they’ve been around for years (10 already!). But I live in France, and the joke here is it takes a decade for new practices and products to cross the ocean from America. Ah, la France …
For those who are new to the concept, let me explain.
What is a tech shabbat?
One day a week, for a full twenty-four hours, you unplug all screens and go device free. During that time, you socialize, play, create, rest, cook, and generally use the time however you’d like — just without the twitchy fingers and the mindless scrolling that usually accompanies us throughout our day. Tiffany Shlain, author of 24/6, calls this a tech shabbat, a practice she and her family (including kids — a family-friendly solution!) have been doing for ten years. According to Shlain, after each week’s tech shabbat, she and her family feel more refreshed, creative, productive, and at ease — which sounded pretty good to me. Though “shabbat” is in the title of this practice, you don’t have to be religious (or even Jewish) to try this. It’s really about reconnecting with what’s most meaningful to you, and about choosing to prioritize those things over random pings and notifications. — Ximena Vengoechea, of the Rest Trials
I’ve taken “unplug all screens” to mean televisions, computers, iPads and laptops in addition to phones and digital watches.
As a Make Time coach and trainer, I am not new to limiting distractions from digital devices. I’m rather fond, in fact, of Jake Knapp’s “distraction-free” phone and since 2018, I regularly remove and hide apps that grab my attention (I also disable notifications). “What?!?!? Are you crazy??! Doesn’t that defeat the purpose of having a WMD (weapon of mass destruction, oops, sorry, wireless mobile device) in your back pocket?” you ask. Hmmm. You might like to read Jake’s piece and try it for a week — at the very least, it will be an interesting experiment, and at most, a life-changing one.
Removing and hiding apps and turning off notifications has meant that my phone is much less of an attention thief for me. But … it still has some apps, and I still do ask it questions (“What is the population of Marseille? Do I need a coat today?”).
So when I received the suggestion from Ximena Vengoechea to run a rest trial called the tech shabbat, my interest was piqued.
How my tech shabbat worked
I decided I would do my tech shabbats from 10 pm on Fridays to 10 am on Sundays — this would effectively knock out all of Saturday. Others run them from, say, 5 pm Friday to 5 pm Saturday. But I wanted to give myself a more extended break (36 hours instead of 24).
I tend to work seven days a week — because I also world school and work with my son in the mornings during the week, which means that I need weekends and evenings to catch up. But doing a tech shabbat would mean no working on Saturday (nearly all of my work is conducted via a device) — which turned out to be one of the more significant shifts for me. This meant I needed to inform clients, friends and family of my going offline.
And as I mentioned above, I nixed all types of screens, which meant turning to paper and pen when I had ideas or wanted to remember to schedule or do something — again, a first for me in many years. I had not written a list by hand since the 1990s. I also chose not to listen to guided meditations, audiobooks, podcasts or music I would need to access from my phone (I do play records and turn on jazz radio, however). I also did not take calls.
How going device-free freed me
I have to say I did not expect all the beautiful things that came of, and are still coming from, doing weekly tech shabbats.
The first tech shabbat blew my mind. Time slowed down as I found myself staring at the wall when all of my family members were staring at their screens. I recall this happening at the end of the day. My, it was a beautiful moment. Sitting there, noticing the wall, and not noticing it, “just” being there, quiet, still. The whole day, I felt like I’d gotten time back because, well, I felt more present in the time I had.
The second tech shabbat blew my mind. During this one, I noticed how little I used my hands for things other than typing or cooking. So I began to use my hands to interact manually with the world, to touch, manipulate and hold objects. I began to feel the soft fabric of the shirt I was folding. I traced the paint on a hand-painted object. I held my son’s hand on a walk.
The third tech shabbat blew my mind. On this one, I noticed how calm my thoughts grew. I realised that the constant stimulation of the screens had me thinking and processing and storing and reflecting and pinging a lot of the time during my normal day. Without the stimulation, the buzzing between my ears began to quieten. During each of my shabbats, I spend my evenings reading books while my family watches TV. In the third shabbat, my brain was so quiet I no longer had a second simultaneous conversation running in my head as I read.
The fourth tech shabbat blew my mind. It seemed as if my body and mind were adapting to this shabbat, this pause. My brain stopped straining to anticipate something I might forget; it stopped focussing on the details. In the fourth shabbat, new ideas started surfacing, scratching at the inside of my skull. I wrote them down, but I wasn’t feeling the familiar fear of losing or not being able to capture them. I knew they’d come back somehow.
The fifth one blew my mind. This one was spent with more family members. By this time, my closest family members were used to my shabbats and looked forward to them. When I asked my son if he had noticed anything about the shabbats, he said, “You’re less stressed. You’re fully present.” That day, I spent an hour, which felt like a full day, carrying my grandson on my body as we walked through the town, and that was the day I started practising delight.
All of this to say, I’ve noticed that freeing myself of screens has, in turn, freed me. I am present. I experience clarity. I have more time. I am creative. I interact physically in the world again. I am even more joyful.
And the next day? I feel refreshed, settled, ready, nourished, energised.
I am convinced. And so, I will keep doing tech shabbats. For me, they are now like a run or writing. I can’t imagine not doing them, and I look forward to them each time.
What did I do without devices?
Here are some of the things I did, and still do during my tech shabbats, in case you’d like to experiment with a tech shabbat, too:
- Sat quietly in the mornings with a cup of coffee
- Enjoyed three long meals with my family during each shabbat
- Started sorting through clothes and books and memory boxes
- Found and read my application to UC Berkeley and rolled on the floor laughing with my teenage son
- Hand-wrote my Annual Review
- Finished reading books and started new ones
- Went for long walks with my family
- Hand-wrote cards to my sponsor children
- Cooked and baked
- Played the piano and sang out loud
- Played poker
- Watched the birds flit from limb to limb on our apple tree
- Had friends over for dinner and conversation
- Stared at walls
- Listened to music
- Breathed
If you’d like to learn more about how to run a tech shabbat, check out 24/6 The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week by Tiffany Shlain. And if you try one, I’d love to hear how it goes.
Feel free to share this article, or give a “clap” if you enjoyed it. For more information on my experimentation with rest and pause, Hit Pause, Then Play.
