\r\nThis was written January 05, 2025<\/i>\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\nIntroduction<\/h2>\r\n
Hello everyone!<\/p>\r\n
\r\nAs I find myself writing this, it is roughly 5:30pm Sunday evening, local time.\r\nIt has now been a few weeks since I’ve start a new experiment, Disconnected Sundays, with\r\nvarying degrees of success.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\r\nWhat are Disconnected Sundays? Simply put, I’ve decided to spend` the\r\nentirety of my Sundays without access to internet. Thus, as I head to bed on\r\nSaturday night, I disable the internet from my laptop and phone. Then, I go about my\r\nSunday life as normal, albeit without access to internet.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\r\nBut why? Having realized I waste a significant amount of time on the internet, \r\n(and I do mean waste) and that it affects my mental health negatively, I set out\r\nto find a solution. There are two main culprits for this negative impact:\r\n
\r\nTherefore, I opted to investigate whether avoiding these for one day a week could negate\r\ntheir negative impact. Whatmore, this could also hopefully increase my productivity.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\r\nPart of the inspiration came from the Shabboth. For those unfamiliar with\r\nit, part of this Judaic custom involves not being able to actively\r\ninteract with electricity (for example, you can’t turn on or off a light). It’s been\r\nmy impression that for a lot of people, part of this custom also involves further\r\ndevotion to the scripture, resulting in impressive results. It also seems like\r\na lot of people generally use this as an opportunity to read, study or do what I’d\r\nconsider more productive activities (including close-knit social interactions).\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\r\nWhile I am not a practitioner of this faith, I still find it a rather inspiring one. And\r\nI couldn’t help but ponder over this custom and its benefits. I eventually concluded\r\nthat there were important take aways leading to an opportunity to better myself.\r\nAnd so, I landed on this notion of Disconnected Sundays.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\r\nWhy Sundays? It’s simple, it’s the only day of the week I neither work nor go to\r\nschool, so it seemed like the only valid option. In particular, on any workday, it seems\r\nlike I’m “duty-bound” to using my phone.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\r\nAs I’ve said, it’s already been a few weeks since I’ve started.So, how’s it going so\r\nfar? Well, it’s a mixed bag. For starters, I tend to stay up rather late on Saturdays.\r\nIndeed, it’s the only day of the week where I can afford to, and it sometimes is\r\nnecessary when I want to inteact with family or\r\nfriends in other time zones. With a 12-16h time difference, opportunities for longer calls\r\nor gaming sessions are definitely rarer. Accordingly, it’s not rare on Sundays for me\r\nto wake up around 12pm or 1pm, a huge chunk of my day already having elapsed.\r\nI’ve also had 1-2 days where I was fairly sick, and simply spent all day in bed reading\r\nand resting.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\r\nHowever, despite these “setbacks”, I still consider most of those days to have be fairly\r\nproductive. I find myself reading a lot more than on average days, I manage to make good\r\nprogress on homework and studies, I even find time to work on some projects (such as\r\nwriting this current post). So overall, I would label this a success. So much so I’m\r\nwondering whether I should try to implement this on Mondays as well, although it might\r\nbe a bit more complicated, and inconvenient for others.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\r\nWhile this covers productivity, there remains my tendency to stress over communications\r\nwith others. Well, I still find myself looking at my phone fairly regularly, or at the\r\nvery least thinking about it, and then realizing that I\r\ndon’t actually have access to this functionality. Still, as the day goes on,\r\nthis tendency gradually wanes, which is a positive tendency. It’s just a shame that\r\nbenefit does not carry on through the rest of the week, and nor to the next Sunday, but\r\nit is what it is. Better a temporary gain than no gain at all!\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\r\nOf course, this does not come without its lot of inconveniences. For isntance, I’ve had\r\na few instances where I went out and just couldn’t look up specific information online,\r\nnor use a map to find locations. But hey, that used to be the status quo just a few short\r\ndecades ago, so there’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to adapt to it, right?\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\r\nLastly, I must also admit that I unfortnately often lack in the discipline department.\r\nThere have been a few occurences of me re-enabling the internet around 9pmi and\r\ncommunicating with others or watching stuff online. Still, that does not invalidate any\r\nof the progress I make during the rest of the day, far from it. And it’s something I\r\nshould still be able to improve.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\r\nWell, there you are. Disconnected Sundays are a new habit I’ve formed, which I believe\r\nadds value to my weeks. And although it comes with some costs, the benefits definitely\r\noutway the negatives. Although keep in mind this is according to my own goals and\r\nmindset. Your mileage may vary.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\r\nStill, I do think it’s worth trying for yourselves, if you dare. If nothing, it’s at least\r\nan interesting experiment, and you could be find yourself pleasantly surprised\r\nby the results.\r\n<\/p>\r\n\r\n
\r\nOn that note, thanks for joining, and take care everyone!\r\n<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This was written January 05, 2025 Introduction Hello everyone! As I find myself writing this, it is roughly 5:30pm Sunday evening, local time. It has now been a few weeks since I’ve start a new experiment, Disconnected Sundays, with varying degrees of success. Disconnected Sundays What are Disconnected Sundays? Simply put, I’ve decided to spend` … Continue reading Disconnected Sundays<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"index","bgseo_robots_follow":"follow","footnotes":""},"categories":[10,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retrospective","category-self-improvement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2397"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2402,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2397\/revisions\/2402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shawnmeanders.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}