How to Make the Most of Your Digital Detox Time

18 Apr How to Make the Most of Your Digital Detox Time

If you are just starting your digital detox journey, or even if you’ve been at it for a while, it can be difficult to know how to make the most of your digital detox time. We know that even in 2019 adults were spending upwards of 3 hours a day online, which has jumped to over four hours since the pandemic began. If we are to take a digital detox therefore we have four more hours of the day open to us to use for whatever we would like.

Making the most of our digital detox time can be overwhelming with all the extra minutes in each day. What we choose to do instead of spending time online can also motivate us to log off more often and so it is important that, in order to maintain our preferred digital-life balance we enjoy find value in that time offline. Therefore we have put together some ideas to help you recognise what can be achieved in digital detox time and how you can make the most of it.

#1 Work

Inc showed that for larger corporations if every employee spent an hour ‘cyberloafing’ at work each day the company would annually lose $35 million. For this reason many companies ban social media during work hours and many of the people we work with take digital detoxes (or at least time off social media) in order to maximise their working capabilities. We know that refocusing on you work after a distraction (in the form of an email, social media message or even loo break) can take up to 23 minutes to refocus on the task. So it is no wonder that so many people are able to make the most of their digital detox time as they are cutting hours of distraction from each task.

#2 Get outside

However, when it comes to ‘making the most’ of your digital detox time this does not have to be a quantifiable metric (e.g. time it took to complete project) instead you can focus your time on other aspects of your life and witness great improvements. For example, we know that 20 mins outside per day has a massive impact on our physical and mental health, but who among us can reliably confirm that during this pandemic they have managed that? Why don’t you schedule in some time outside instead of your Facebook doom scroll and reap those benefits instead?

#3 Reconnect with loved ones

After months inside, only being able to feel human connection through shoddy video calls and slow wifi many of us have lost the zeal for community which was so omnipresent at the beginning of the pandemic. We are all getting tired. So why not make an effort with your digital detox time and refocus it on reconnecting with the loved ones with whom you have perhaps lost contact. If you live nearby you could meet in a park or go for a walk (even out to the pub if you live in the UK!). Alternatively you could write them a letter or make them a gift to be posted to show how much you care.

#4 Mindfulness

Our final suggestion of a way to make the most of your digital detox time is to practice mindfulness. It can be tempting, when we start on a digital detox journey, to feel the need to replace all that ‘wasted’ time online with more productive uses of our time, but that is not necessary. For the last decade there have been few moments in our lives when we did not have distractions in front of us, in the form of work, loves ones, TV, or the internet. So we recommend you allow your brain that time to think. Not only that, but a mindfulness practice has been linked to lower heart disease, reduced stress and more!