The Best Digital Detox Advice We’ve Ever Received

26 Feb The Best Digital Detox Advice We’ve Ever Received

We are living in a world drowning in too much information. Everywhere you turn there are experts who can advise on the minutiae of every decision you make, especially regarding your health and wellness. It is no wonder that so many articles have been written in the last year about being us being overwhelmed, by mental health, work issues, parenting concerns and more. Your digital health need not be another area where you are struggling to choose between conflicting advice, constantly worried that you are not doing the ‘right thing’. So, we have taken all of that stress away and condensed six seasons of our podcast down to give you the inside track on the best digital detox advice we have ever received.

Cal Newport

Cal Newport is a heavyweight in the world of digital detox advice. He is an associate Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University in Washington DC and the author of six books about work and productivity, including the bestselling ‘Deep Work’. He knows what he is talking about. He also walks the talk too, having no social media and maintaining most of his life offline. We were very excited to talk to him about his advice and it boiled down to:

• Take at least 30 days offline before you start to rebuild your digital life
• Start by figuring out what you care about and then, working backwards, choose which digital tools help you do that, and only use those.
• Divide your work and home life, e.g. do not do work or have work emails on your phone.

Thomas Brag

Thomas Brag on the other hand comes at this issue from a completely different perspective as a content creator on YouTube, one of the founder of the Yes Theory channel (over 6 million subscribers). Yet, he was influenced by the work of Cal Newport and took a 30 day sabbatical from social media. His advice was to:

• Take a period of digital detox and completely unplug.
• Make your time, on social media in particular more active. Engage, rather than sitting back.

Andrew Cotter

Our final piece of advice comes from our first episode of the new Season 6 where, if you listen to the end you might be able to hear some canine contributors too. Andrew Cotter is a sports broadcaster who shot to international fame during lockdown due to turning his skills to hilarious commentary on the antics of his two labradors: Olive and Mabel. The videos have been watched over 800 million times. However, he too is aware of the conflicting positives and negatives brought by social media fame as well as the digital world more generally. In speaking to Tanya Goodin, our founder, Andrew Cotter’s advice was to:

• Try to only focus on positive interactions online.
• When the negative outweighs the positive, log off.

Hopefully these top tips from our most esteemed guests (Olive and Mabel, we’re looking at you) will help you find a good balance in your digital life, but if not, or you are looking for more top tips, our podcast: It’s Complicated is always a good place to start.