There is a problem gripping our planet, it’s taking our time, neutering our neurons and pilfering our productivity.
Do you while away the hours watching pandas sneeze, biting babies gnashing fingers and grown men with their majestic double rainbows?
Is the first half hour of your day spent sifting through a relentless mountain of email with nothing but offers for herculean sexual prowess and enticing embezzlement schemes from an endless stream of Nigerian princes?
Has Instagram turned your world into a slightly blurred beige, super saturated world with a magnetic blue tint, containing pinkish overtones and a dash of sepia effect?
If you find your answer to any of the above is yes then welcome to my world. Just about everyone in the developed world is almost totally dependent on an array of technologies that can do everything for us with a simple swipe of a retina display keypad. It doesn’t have to be that way and I hope to take the power back, as I my friends, shall become Disconnected.
I’m taking back one day of my life per week. No longer shall I be constrained by the shackles of continuously beeping gadgetry, no longer will the internet beat me down with its depressing tales and doomsday prophecies and no longer will I be micro managed by a continuous barrage of pointless emails.
Wednesday has now become Disconnected Day.
Each and every Wednesday I shall live by this mantra:
- I will turn my phone off from the moment I go to sleep on Tuesday till the moment I wake on Thursday.
- I will not watch any TV regardless if it is the season finale of Master Chef or Big Fat Gypsy Weddings
- I will not touch a computer except when I am away at work, this will allow me to not get sacked, however I will not read e-mails or access the internet.
- I will not use any other gizmo which connects to the internet or has the ability to numb my brain even if that means the sacrifice of my beloved tamagotchi Bert .
- If I wish to listen to music it must be from my record player no walking into lampposts as I skip the a capella version of Gangnam Style.
- I will not read a newspaper or magazine, regardless if the world is in the midst of a zombie invasion or if they finally reveal what is in the suitcase in Pulp Fiction.
- I will also ban myself from the Kindle, if I want to read then it is back to books for me, fiction only though.
- I will also not read any mail; generally no good news comes in mail form.
- If for some uncontrollable reason I cannot do this on Wednesday then the honour will be passed to the next day until I can complete a full day disconnected.
- One exception though: if I embark on any life threatening adventures I will take my phone with me in case of emergency.
So there it is; my Disconnected Wednesday mantra. You may be wondering to yourself what this has to do with anything we bang on about here at Inspirez. Well our main aim with all this blog and other stuff is to inspire people to achieve things, may it be their wildest dreams or something far simpler. There are numerous reasons why we aren’t all we can be or can’t achieve everything we would like to, one of those is a lack of time and another is that there are too many distractions in our lives.
My belief is that if I take one day a week to completely disconnect myself from a world of mindless distraction, then I can start focusing on achieving things that I have not been able to find the time or concentration to pursue. I will add that in no way is this my attempt to form a part-time Amish community free from the shackles of technology, we love technology here at Inspirez but we also love experiments, new ideas and ways to improve yourself and we hope our little idea might have a big effect on anyone who adopts it.
This is by no means a new idea, many have pursued such enlightenment, I’ve not found out how they fared. I think it could only have had a positive effect on them, let’s hope the absent heart doesn’t grow fonder this time.
I have no plans for what I will do on my Wednesdays of freedom; maybe I’ll learn to juggle or maybe I’ll simply take it easy and enjoy some long-awaited uninterrupted bliss.
If anyone else is up to the challenge then let us know, tell us if it had a positive effect on your life and freed up some vital time and brain capacity, allowing you to go and achieve something you’ve always wanted to.
This post was inspired by- http://myzencity.com/2012/12/04/fun-times/
Image from: ericclapp.org
Inspirez 