Digital detox: 5 strategies to try

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Feeling exhausted, sad, depressed, frustrated, in a hurry, and anxious are only some of the side effects of electronic devices and social media on me. 

I'm a very busy mom after 40, with two kids of 6 and 4 and at the end of the day I usually feel exhausted, that's normal. What's not normal is sleeping badly, waking up in a horrible mood, and feeling even more tired than the night before, hoping for the day to pass quickly to go to bed again. Being unable to enjoy time with my children, crying, feeling depressed with the feeling of being constantly in a hurry and late for something, and hearing a non-stop ticking clock in my mind: this is not normal at all and I started to be seriously worried lately. 

I also tried to analyze my lifestyle, to see if I was doing something wrong and saw that many of my problems originated from the time I wasted just scrolling my social profiles and reading the news. Scrolling can become a habit without you even realizing it. I had canceled my Facebook app but I kept scrolling by browser. I thought I was using Instagram just to find interesting ideas for my blog and my second novel but in fact, I was only wasting precious time. The other poisoning habit is reading the news on Google all the time, especially bad news and gossip. All these bad habits were sucking my energy and putting my health in danger.

Long story short, I couldn't go on like this anymore, with my mind in a constant fog, and I decided to take action to feel more energetic, happy, motivated, and satisfied with my life.

Here are 5 things that I've changed:

Do you remember when we had traditional telephones, attached to the walls? We just used them to make and receive phone calls. Now our smartphones are part of our bodies and we are constantly lost in this virtual life, that only steals energy. A solution could be simply to attach the smartphone to the wall.

On the list, there is, of course, the old good "disable endless meaningless notifications from apps" and, better, "cancel useless apps from your devices". We live surrounded by meaningless notifications that obstruct our daily activities and contribute to our lack of concentration.

Like many addictions, when we decide to stop with a bad habit, we constantly feel the need for it, for example, the urge to check emails, and messages and share content on social media. A good solution could be to take note every time we think we have to do those things and make a list for later, in the morning or evening. Most of the time, the majority of things we think are urgent, are not.

Photo from Picjumbo

We used to wear a watch to see what time is it. Now many of us check the time on the phone: this leads to scrolling social media, the news, and emails and it's a complete waste of time. So, wearing a watch again could be another simple solution.

Put a traditional wall clock at home and an alarm clock in the bedroom. I don't know about you, but not only I wasn't wearing a watch anymore, but I also wasn't using a wall clock at home! That's why I kept using my phone all the time, for endless reasons: as a clock and an alarm clock. Sometimes I also forget to put it on silent mode at night, that is another way to sleep terribly bad.

The list of good habits for a real digital detox will continue in the next posts, stay tuned!