Digitally detoxing (ish)

So on day 7 of being on hols I'm penning a quick blog to share my thoughts, feelings and observations around my attempts to Digitally Detox!

Firstly (and a woman's prerogative) I changed my mind before I left about a full digital detox, for a few reasons;

1. My step daughter is still in and out of hospital (kidney failure) and I need to be in regular touch
2. The COVID situ and laws changing for travel etc make it impossible to bury my head in the sand and pretend a pandemic isn't still raging
3. Being honest I genuinely think I would have a serious problem actually managing it!

When I took a step back from it and asked myself what I was really looking for, I was after a break from work, from the constant pull of email and slack. So that's where I started! I did a pretty thorough handover docco to my Senior Management team (full of pics of Barbados that went down like a lead balloon :)) and to honest fast forwarding 3.5 years after starting Difrent my SMT now are a level or two above the initial incarnation, thats common I think for many startups that move into scaleup's. The team are experienced, capable, mature, empowered and keen to crack on and make it happen in my absence. On the basis I havn't heard from any of them in the last 7 days I'm assuming everything is tickety boo!

Typically I am my own worst enemy and I took the opportunity on the plane journey to draft the bones of two proposals that came in at the eleventh hour and I needed to contribute to but then handed them back over on the flight and glanced at that very briefly before submission in the last 7 days (thanks to Jam for doing the real work!) So I can sum this part up as me wanting to stay engaged and then a weaned myself off the second we landed in Barbados............

In the last 7 days I reckon I've been online 15% of my usual time on the net in some way, shape or form. This is a HUGE decrease for me and I'm sure co-incides with no headaches all week, sleeping 8+ hours every night and genuinely feeling pretty dam chipper! Now of course 30 degrees and a healthy dose of Vitamin D is helping with that too. I've more than doubled my daily steps and can feel a level of creativity and bounce coming back in that I havn't felt for a while! I'm onto my second book and wrapping up my first audio book, I've meditated every other day, trained a lot and done some amazing things like swimming with turtles, snorkelling, jet bikes and lazing around!

I knew my batteries were empty when I arrived and I feel incredibly grateful that we could get away and have a break, especially somewhere so exotic and especially after the last 18 months.

My advice; don't let your mental health suffer for anything or anyone, get the breaks in, rest up, recharge and get back to feeling that bounce in your step, I know I am :)))

SMT tags David, Rhys, Larcs, Holly, Zoe, Nic and Nikki ??