Every now and then I go into a mode of detoxing my body – a simple discipline of drinking only plain water or lime mixed with water for an extended period. I pick the days when I do this randomly and stretch it from 24 hours to 48 hours. I do a detox for two main reasons: improve self-control and allow my internal body mechanisms to slow down a bit in their food processing.
I realized recently that I don’t practice the same level of discipline in detoxing my brain. With the constant inflow of digital food (information) into my brain, it does not get any rest.
I’ve become an inhabitant of an electronic jungle – a minimum of 10 hours on my laptop, cell phone always on, the beeps of instant messaging, random pics and jokes on what’s app, unsolicited emails flooding the inbox and the list goes on. In this interconnected jungle, my brain is in a turbocharged mode without a moment of rest.
Am I the only one or do you feel the same?
Overeating of digital food is harmful to the brain. We need Digital Detoxing – these are moments of time during the day when we disconnect our brain from the digital jungle. Body detoxing can be less frequent but digital detoxing has to be on a daily/weekly schedule. Here are 3 ways to digitally detox which I found useful:
1. Define blackout periods for your laptop and email: This could be as simple as no logging into the computer from Friday night to Sunday morning. You can practice the same for email, no emails will be checked on the laptop or mobile devices for those thirty-six hours.
2. Digital power naps: 15-minute digital power naps during the day – keep aside phones, tablets or any other electronic devices.
3. Declutter your home screen – Move the icons for Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram or any of the social media applications to its own separate page. They will not be readily available on your home screen and before you swipe to go to the next page, you can make a conscious choice “do I really need to check my facebook?”
Digital food in the right quantity and quality is good. Too much of that food is bad.
Your body at least has a physical mechanism built into eliminating excess, what mechanism are you providing for your brain to eliminate digital clutter?
Start with a digital detox. Start today.
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3 replies on “Digital Detox”
Wonderful Mahesh!
Infact we can give first preference to detox our body.
No doubt equally we need to detox our brain I mean NO GAD JET DAY.
This will help us to be a peaceful soul.
Keep posting All the best
Thanks Jayashree.
I tried this one day Maheshji and realized a day is really long enough to accomplish many things. Before to this digital generation, they had enough time for everything..unlike we feel we don’t have much time to do any work for passion saying ” I love to do that but I don’t have time.”