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#ElvisEnergyExperiment: Digital detox

June 7, 2019

In 2019, we’re exploring energy. How it affects us physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. We’ve hooked up with a series of experts who will set an experiment every month to help us discover a new way of managing our energy.

In June we’re ditching the digital screens and exploring the impact a Digital Detox has on our mental and emotional Energy. We’re exploring digital detoxing with the super knowledgeable Tanya Goodin, an award-winning digital entrepreneur, digital detox evangelist, tech ethicist, and author.

For 20+ years she was founder and CEO of one of the UK’s first digital marketing agencies, now she’s a digital consultant to brands and schools and founder of digital detox movement Time To Log Off.

Research shows us that UK adults spend an average of 8 hours 41 minutes a day on screens (that’s more time than they we spend asleep!). An in total we now spend an average of a day a week online. It’s no surprise then that 66% of UK smartphone owners in a study self reported

suffering from ‘nomophobia’, the fear of losing or being without their phones at any given time – obsessively checking to make sure they have their phone with them, and constantly worrying about losing it somewhere.

And when it comes to taking a break, 60% of people say a traditional vacation/holiday does not relieve their stress with many admitting to checking emails and taking phone calls while away, sometimes multiple times a day. Sound familiar? Well a digital detox deals with these stresses by removing all work-related communications meaning we can take a proper break from our tech.

So, our challenge for this month has two parts to it… First up are the five core rules we’re going to follow for the whole Month:

  1. Delete all social media apps from your phone, only check these from a desktop computer.
  2. Turn all app banner style/pop-up/sound notifications off all other apps (keep the ‘badge’ type notifications where you have to visually check the app).
  3. ‘No screens when 1-2-1’. Keep your phone in your pocket/leave on your desk and totally out of sight for meetings/get-togethers/conversations/meals involving other people.
  4. Keep your phone out of sight during your commute - daydream or read a book.
  5. Leave your phone behind you for your bathroom and loo breaks!

And then we’ve got a series of challenges to try out as and when the time is right for us each to introduce these into our lives, this month:

  • Challenge 1. - Leave your phone outside your bedroom overnight, get an alarm clock or turn your phone volume up so you can hear its alarm easily from your bed through the door. Try for a week. Carry this on all month if it works for you.
  • Challenge 2 - Put your phone in a central place when you return home and go to the location of the phone (rather than carrying it around with you) if you need to check it. Try this for a week.
  • Challenge 3 - Take work email off your phone (notify everyone in advance that you’re doing this!). Only check email at a desktop. Experiment trying this out for a week.
  • Challenge 4 - Go out to dinner, lunch or to an evening event/gym sessions and leave your phone completely behind you. Try 3/4 evenings throughout the month - perhaps one a week.
  • Challenge 5 - Keep your phone on airplane mode as default all day, only toggle airplane off when you need to use your phone. Try once, see how it works for you.
  • Challenge 6 - Your complete digital detox. Keep your phone switched off and put away one weekend in the month, from 7pm Friday to 8am Monday.

A huge thanks to @tanyagoodin for putting this plan together for us this month. We’re super excited to see the impact it has for us. You can find out more about Digital Detoxing in Tanya’s awesome book ‘Off’ or on her “It’s Complicated” podcast.

We’ll be sharing updates throughout the month, but only at times that work around the detox we’ll be having from our screens. So follow our progress and let us know how you get on @UppingYourElvis.

But don’t follow us every day. Have some time off from your tech and screens yourselves too!

Big Love

The Upping Your Elvis Team,