24/6 by Tiffany Shlain offers a very compelling model of not just why but how to give yourself freedom from 24/7 technology in an authentic, repeatable way.
I came upon this book via the podcast Design Matters with Debbie Millman – a good place to start if you’re curious about the ideas. Her thesis won’t be surprising to you: that nonstop technological access is not a feature of contemporary life, and that we need new rituals around unplugging.
Or, more to her point, we need old rituals. Shlain has adapted the millennia-old Shabbat traditions to technology, with amazing results. She’s practiced a “Tech Shabbat” for over a decade, and in the process she has created balance in her own life and raised kids who seem to have a healthy relationship to tech and to society.
I recommend reading the book for her details, and then adapting them to your own needs, but in a nutshell, the idea is to ceremonially celebrate the beginning of a tech-free day with a family dinner (even better with invited guests!). All tech gets put away from before dinner one day until after dinner the next.
After three of my own tech sabbaths this year, I’ve had many of the experiences she describes – a clearer mind, a twitchiness that relaxes over the first few hours each week, an “info-dump” onto paper of ideas and to-do lists, and a reluctance to turn back on at the end. My kids have had a complex but ultimately positive reaction, and I think they’ll lean into it even more as they get more familiar with it.
My family isn’t calling it a “Tech Shabbat” – we call it a “Singing Brook Day” after a favorite family retreat that happens to be utterly devoid of technology. I recommend doing the same – there is a lot of patina for our family in giving the experience a personal name. We’ve also adjusted rules from Shlain’s, and will continue to evolve the practice as the weeks and months go by.
The important message is this – for a long time I longed for a way to unplug consistently and completely for a portion of my week. 24/6 has offered me the scaffolding to build a practice that I really believe will work for me.
I highly recommend 24/6, and have added it to my Personal Bibliography.