Internet free week

I’m doing 1 week with no online entertainment.

The goal is to not get stuck in consumer mode, the internet monkeymind, and rather do stuff I actually like, as well putting time into school work. I hope this will make space for more creativity and peacefulness by slowing down.

Table of contents

Rules:

• Offline entertainment is fine for now…
• Movies (streaming) have been fine as well…
• Playing music is fine
• I can read max one article from my rss feed a day
• Max three news stories in my news app a day
• I can use the internet for schoolwork and project related stuff (like googling a problem)
• But NOT for entertainment
• Messaging is ok (I don’t do it alot)
• Checking my email minimally is ok

I can still publish to the blog.

Results

3 days in

• After three days it’s not really much of a difference. I’ve not been that strict but I haven’t been watching youtube or anything. When I’m using online services I try to not spend too long using them – like im not looking up artists on spotify but just quickly favouriting the song. I also try to avoid my phone as much as possible.

  I would like to actually slow down more and for instance take time to read or draw during the day. Projects like adding backlinks are an easy draw of my time, and I’m thinking of restraining more of my technological use. However, I will keep these rules for 1 week and then evaluate.

1 week in

• After a week, I can safely say I enjoyed it. I have still not been very strict and for instance remember scrolling a bit on instagram yesterday, but overall I’ve stayed away from loosing myself in content. I’ve had some small slip ups but have not excessively binged anything.

  What I wanted has kind of happened – I’ve slowed down and become a bit more bored, a bit more ok with being bored and in effect a bit more present. Of course the week may just have coincided with a low workload from uni, and as we have it: spring time and better weather, but I think the lowered internet usage have had its benefits.

  Still, a lot of my “free” time, I gladly spend by my computer, but this week I’ve done it more for writing and working on projects of mine. The next step will be to actually pick up a pencil or book when I have some spare time, which I rarely do during the day. I think I would benefit from actually scheduling some activities for myself. Like when to spend time drawing or when to write at my notes. That would also open up some room for portion sized internet usage, like reading a few blogs for a bit of inspiration once in a while.

Continuation

I will continue the experiment for another week. To increase activities not involving technology, I will add a rule of at least one hour of non-technological activities per day. I am hoping to use this time when at home to indulge in the plastic arts, reading or some physical outdoors activity. I am not counting for instance going climbing as a non-technology hour since I don’t have access to technology in the climbing gym anyways. It is supposed to be one hour of a conscious decision not to use technology. I am prepared to find it quite difficult actually. A main concern is also timing it and deciding what counts as a non-technology hour. I don’t want to just loophole it.

Updated rules:

Updated rules marked in bold cursive:

• Offline entertainment is fine.

• Movies (even streaming) & playing (streaming) music is fine.

• Internet for schoolwork and project related stuff is ok. (like googling a problem)

• Checking my email minimally is ok.

• Messaging is ok. (I don’t do it a lot anyways)

• Max seven online blog articles a week. And preferably not more than three a day.

• Max three news stories in my news app a day.

• At least one continuous hour a day of technology-free activity, when I’m also not preoccupied with anything else.

• No unnecessary phone usage. And do what has to be done on the phone mindfully.

• NO internet for entertainment.

I can still still publish to the blog. Let’s see how this goes!

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