Digital Detox

I've often run into the term "digital detox," but I hadn't experienced the meaning of it until a camping trip last week. The trip lasted only three days, but it was substantially more rejuvenating than even a 2- or 3-week vacation. The reasons now seem obvious.

Normally, when I'm out of the office, I remain tethered to the virtual world in all sorts of ways. I continue to monitor my inbox traffic, even though colleagues understand I won't be actively participating. I keep in touch with friends and family. I consume a wide range of content on current affairs. In other words, the digital hive keeps buzzing.

This trip was different. I didn't even bother to take my phone because I understood no signal would be available in the backcountry. We were truly shut off from everything but the open, afforested expanse of Northern Ontario. All eight of us had a simple span of control: paddling and portaging all day, then preparing for meals and fireside chats in the evening.

There was a noticeable shift in group energy over the course of the three days. I remember the faces around the fire on the first night. There was very little talking, just a circle of vacant expressions as each of us metabolized the residual traces of digital glycogen in our systems.

By the second night, our dynamic was dramatically different. Each of us felt a deep awakening as the blood and oxygen returned to long-neglected social muscles. We slowly gravitated toward more primal modes of connection: singing songs, inventing games, telling stories. The laughter was deep, contagious, and restorative.?

Over three nights in the wild I slept very little because I'm not used to the sensation of roots and pinecones in the small of my back. I was easily disturbed by nocturnal rustling outside the tent. Nonetheless, when I returned to work, my brain felt exquisitely refreshed. Thoughts had somehow been synthesized and consolidated. I came to see the distinction between rest and sleep.?

It's amazing that something so apparently simple as 'taking a break' requires such intentionality. But we live at a time when we're forced to mind our minds as never before. At no point in history have we been subject to such a relentless barrage of stress-inducing information. At no point have we had to be such scrupulous caretakers of our own sanity.

The macro theme is not new. Buddha said: "We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts." Marcus Aurelius saw the same thing: "The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts."

Yet our current condition seems profoundly more serious than what these ancients observed. Our constant connectivity guarantees a kind of attentional bankruptcy. It requires tremendous effort and discipline to manage and control the destabilizing effects of our inbound volume.

True rest and recovery don't seem possible without more radical forms of periodic disconnection.