When Was the Last Time You Truly Took a Day off from Everything?

Was it sometime before mobile phones existed?

Jun 03, 2022

Simple + Straightforward is a weekly letter filled with essays, tips, and ideas to live life more simply and intentionally. This is a public post so feel free to share with friends and family you think would enjoy a dose of simplicity every Friday.

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Yesterday’s excursion. Primošten, Croatia

For many, this week has been vacation week. Memorial Day in the US, the Queen’s Jubilee in the UK. Even Croatia - my temporary home - had Statehood day this Monday just gone.

Plenty of opportunities to take time out, relax, speak to your spouse about something other than chores, play with your kids, or whatever it is you like to fill your leisure time with.

Me? I worked through it all. Not because I’m a martyr but because I’d forgotten the Jubilee was happening (I’m not Queenie’s biggest fan anyway) and because I didn’t realize it was a Croatian holiday until I went into town and realized half of it was closed.

That and I’m lucky enough to adore my job. I get jittery if I don’t write something every day so I’m constantly bashing at the keyboard, even at weekends.

In lieu of last weekend’s work marathon, yesterday my husband and I decided to take a little bit of time out for a Peka Pilgrimage. Peka is an ancient dish from Croatia’s Dalmatia region. Piles of meat and potatoes are placed in a metal dish with a domed lid. Ash and hot stones cover the top and it’s placed in a fire for hours on end until the meat breaks down and the potatoes are confited.

It’s as awesome as it sounds.

Once our bellies were uncomfortably full, we ambled down the hill to the beach and set up camp for a couple of hours, diving into impossibly clear waters filled with schools of tiny fish and reading on the water’s edge.

It all sounds pretty idyllic, and it kind of was.

But throughout lunch and on the beach, I kept checking my emails. I was constantly refreshing my Medium stats. I spoke at length to my husband about my future writing plans, and we talked through his new project too.

On my day off, the cogs were still whirring.

Maybe it sounds familiar to you. Taking time off from everything is imperative to our well-being and yet, even when we get the opportunity to do so, it’s damn near impossible to do.

Of course, none of this is news to anyone. We all know we’re slaves to our phones. Anyone can get hold of us anytime, including our bosses.

What’s surprising is that we have not yet, as a society, thrown our collective hands up and said ENOUGH.

There are pockets of light in some countries. Portugal recently passed a law banning bosses from emailing and texting employees out of hours. But places like the US or UK? Forget it.

It’s not just your boss. It’s the Whatsapp groups filled with grandma’s newfound obsession for emojis. It’s “doing it for the ‘gram”, the chaos that is TikTok, the odd poke on Facebook (OK maybe not, but remember them??)

To stop - or at least reduce - our phone time, we don’t need a quick fix. We need sustainable, long-lasting habits that stick.

That’s no mean feat.

Digital minimalism may be a thing, but it’s a thing I’m resistant to

I’ve always found minimizing my life pretty easy. Since 2014 I’ve lived with increasingly less stuff and as long-time readers will know, right now I live with around 100 items aka as much as will fit into a suitcase.

But tell me to step away from electronic devices for a couple of days and I’ll tell you where to stick your bright idea.

And yet, I had no problem doing this back in the day. Cellphones only became a thing when I was about 16 and even then, all you could do was call, text, and play snake.

In my early twenties when my now husband and I went on holiday, we would put our cells in those little hotel safety deposit boxes, only turning them on for a quick (very expensive) call home every few days.

But the world has changed since 2004 - you’re expected to be online all your waking hours. Just the other day, Whatsapp told me my brother hadn’t been seen for 24 hours and I assumed the only explanation was that he was either dead or in hospital.

Even if you’re taking a break from your phone, that doesn’t mean everyone else who wants your attention is doing the same.

If you’re anything like me, that will weigh on your mind and keep you from turning the damn device off every so often.

How to digitally minimize when you really don’t want to

If you’re also not wild about going phone-cold-turkey - but are tired of being beholden to it - here are some tricks I’ve used in the past that have proven to be useful (make no bones about it, I used to be MUCH worse than I am now).

Focus on your weak spot

For me, that’s email.

In early 2020, I had a nervous breakdown and a lot of it boiled down to my inbox obsession (my breaking point came halfway up a Welsh mountain when I stupidly checked the bloody thing).

Deleting the Gmail app was the best thing I could have possibly done for my mental health at that point. It broke the habit.

Whatever your weakness is - Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, Twitter, LinkedIn - focus on it. Can you promise yourself to not photograph the next 5 pretty things you see for purposes of the ‘gram? Can you limit your daily Tweets, rewarding yourself if you manage it?

Social media blackouts

A few years back, my husband and I took a very last-minute weekend to Amsterdam, booking the tickets less than 12 hours before the flight was due to take off.

We decided to experiment with a social media blackout. For the whole weekend, we were neither allowed to post nor look on social media.

For the sake of safety, we told a couple of family members where we were going, but that was it - to this day no one knows we took that trip. There is no social media enshrined documentation of it at all.

For 48 hours, we focused on each other, not on our phones. We took some pictures for sure, but because none of them were ever going to see the light of day we didn’t spend an age perfecting them. It was glorious. So much so that we instigated a social media blackout policy for all future weekend breaks.

Mini detoxes work. Give it a go next time you do something lovely or go somewhere pretty. It’s amazing what it can do.

Tell people you’re not going to be online

If your addictions run along the email or Whatsapp line, a quick way to give yourself permission to switch off is to tell people when you will, and will not be available.

My clients know they can’t contact me on Saturdays and Sundays. I try to stay off Whatsapp past 9 pm and my family knows it.

Boundaries man, they’re a wonderful thing.

Create friction

Most of my social media apps are housed in a folder called ARE YOU SURE which is kept well away from my phone’s home screen. I have to swipe and then click twice to get into Instagram.

Human brains hate friction. The more friction you create, the easier it is to break the habit of scrolling for scrolling’s sake.

Simple and Straightforward

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