374 Holly Worton ~ How Outdoors Adventures + Travel Help With Digital Detox

Transcript

Holly:  Hello and welcome to the Into the Woods podcast, episode 374. This is your host Holly Worton and I am back with another solo episode.

Today I am going to talk about digital detox.

I am going to take about what it is, why you might want it. How to know when you really need a digital detox. Why is digital detox important? What do you do on a digital detox? Do digital detoxes actually work? How can you really disconnect digitally? I also talk about the difference between digital detox and digital declutter and finally how to create your digital detox/digital declutter plan. (Those words are really hard to say over and over again!)

So I hope you find this interesting and useful, I was really inspired to do this by, not only my recent experience walking the Ridgeway but also a documentary that I watched last night. So hope you find this useful and I am going to launch right into it.

So I just got back—two days ago—from walking the Ridgeway which is a 87-mile national trail in England and it was the second time I walked the trail and I did it again, for a couple of reasons, one because I want to update my book, Alone on the Ridgeway, and partly because I wanted to do it one less day. I crammed the walk into a slightly shorter time than I did the last time and I wanted to see how it would be walking longer days. If I could do it in a shorter time. I found that really interesting and useful because I realised that I could push myself harder than I thought I could.

Last year when I re-walked the South Downs Way, I ended up stretching it out into a slightly longer phase, I did it in eight days instead of seven – as the last time I did it in seven days instead of eight, and it is a much harder trail.

So I found it really useful to know that I can walk longer days, and it is do-able, I just need to take more rests and take more breaks and I can do it. So I found it useful to push myself a little bit harder and see if I enjoyed it and I did. I didn’t feel like I was rushing anytime, there were I think three days in a row where I walked 17 miles/18 miles and 18.5 miles not just trail miles but all of the walking I did, including walking to where I was staying, walking to dinner, that kind of thing.

Something that I didn’t take into account the first time I did both the South Downs Way and the Ridgeway—I didn’t have a Fitbit at the time, I wasn’t tracking total miles, I was just looking at: well, I walked from this point to this point on the trail so that’s ten miles, when really I walked so much more than that. So there were days when I was walking 10 miles on the trail, but it was really 18.5 miles because of all the other walking that I was doing. So that was also a learning experience, realising how much more I actually walked. Part of me knew that but I guess I didn’t realise how much that was.

But anyway it is totally do-able and I am so proud of myself because I think it is the very first trail that I have walked, long distance trail, and I didn’t get blisters, that was because I was really vigilant about taking my shoes and socks off at every break and swapping my socks every time I did, really trying to keep my feet and my socks dry. I talk about this a lot in my books because blisters are really important to me, in terms of avoiding blisters, and I really think that I have cracked the code to blisters, at least on my feet! So if you want to know more just ask, but it is basically that, just taking off my shoes and socks at every single break and then swapping between two pairs of socks. That is the secret, at least it is my secret.

So getting into this, I was walking my miles, I had no computer with me, and I was not checking emails. I had both my iPad and my iPhone. I was using my iPad only for typing up my book. So every evening when I got into where I was staying, either or before or after dinner, I would type up the chapter for that day based on my experiences and I would kind of do a walkthrough of everything that I was reflecting on and everything that I experienced and I do that every day at the end of my work, because if I don’t I will forget all the details. I mean even now if I tried to write that, having just gotten home two days ago, it wouldn’t be as rich of a write-up. In the past that has been good and bad. The first couple of times I walked a long-distance-trails it was really painful, and it was really challenging, and I think a lot of those challenges were reflected in my books and I have had some complaints from people saying it was too negative, but really it was the reality of what I was experiencing. So it is kind of raw, but it works for me.

So my iPad was only used for the typing up of the book, but I also have the kindle app on my iPad, but I was planning to read some books in the evenings, but I just didn’t have the brain space for it. So, wasn’t reading books. My iPhone I was mostly using just for photographs which I was taking—I took so many; I took over 1000 pictures when I was on my work both on the trail and both of me. Finally I got this little bendy tripod for my phone, I used to have one ages ago, but it fit my older model phone, so I had to get a new one. I finally now how have pictures of me walking which I have needed for a long time. That was fun also to play with. I was uploading the photos to Instagram, they were photos that are going to be used in the book, in the new edition and they are photos that are going to be used just for blog posts and things like that because I have several blog posts that I am writing about the Ridgeway.

So that is what I was doing. I wasn’t checking emails again, so it was a total break from emails, and that was really, really, good. Messaging, I was just kind of messaging my husband and that was it. So it wasn’t a total digital detox but that is what I am going to talk about later here, you don’t need to do 100% digital detox, sometimes just reducing the time that you spend on your phone, or your tablet, or your computer and getting away from your computer entirely for a week, can be really, really, helpful.

Yesterday I came back to work, worked a normal day. Today I also worked a normal day, but I was also really, really, focussed, hard to jump back into things and I really felt that my brain had rested, which was really great because I was feeling a bit frazzled in the couple of days and week before I went away. My life suddenly got really, really, busy and I had to cram in all this work before I left, so I was working overtime and I was really stressed. And I am pleased to say that a week away from the computer, eight days, really, really, helped my stress levels, really helped my sense of anxiety, I feel so much better.

So digital detox what is it?

Digital detox can often refer to a period fo time when someone voluntarily refrains from using digital devices, their phone, their computer, their tablet, or could be used to describe a detox from social media. Again it doesn’t have to be a total detox, it could be a set of new boundaries around your use of technology, or it could be reducing time spent on these devices. There are so many different ways of doing it.

So if you are listening to this and you are thinking ‘I don’t think I can do this’, that’s fine. You can find the way that works for you and I think that any time that we reduce the times we spend on these devices, I think it is can really, really, help us.

Why might you want a digital detox?

It can improve productivity because it gives your brain a rest. It can prove focus, again, because your brain is rested. It can improve sleep, because as you know, the blue light from these devices and these screens can really mess up our sleep. It can also improve our fitness because it gives us more time to exercise because we are not staring at our phone all the time. For the same reason it can improve creativity because it gives you the creative time and space to do the creative things you like to do or do more creative things. It can help you improve your mood, a lot of people experience depression, and they feel bad about themselves from using social media, oftentimes because they are comparing themselves to other people. That can be a really toxic relationship.

It can also hep you to reconnect with the real world. I, on my walk I was out in the real world. I was connecting with new people on the trail. I had conversations with new people I hadn’t met before and I was going to new places I hadn’t seen before, and I was giving myself permission to make more detours off the trail to see some of the sights that I hadn’t seen the first time. I really, really, enjoyed it and I was reconnecting with the trail that I walked four years ago.

It can help you to reconnect with yourself, instead of connecting with others all the time. On social media you are constantly connecting with other people. On emails you are constantly connecting with other people. That’s good but sometimes it is important to reconnect with ourselves. And I find that when I get outdoors, and I walk a long distance trail,  on my own, one of the greatest things that I get from that is just reconnecting with myself.

As I have talked about so much on this show, reconnecting with myself has changed my life and that is why I highly recommend people do it. It helps you to get to know yourself which is why you will be making better decisions, because you know what you want and what you don’t want. I think that is really, really, important and one of the reasons why digital detox is so important is that reconnection with yourself, reconnection with your life, reconnection with real things, physical things, the physical world rather than abstract digital things.

So digital detox can be really, really, important, to help you, like I said, improve sleep, improve creativity, improve fitness, improve your mood, improve your focus. And all of these things are really, really, important.

If you ask the question: do digital detoxes actually work? Yes, I think they do.

I don’t know if there have been any formal studies on this but, from my experience, from the experience of people I have talked to who have done this, they will all say yes, I say yes as well. I feel it really helps to reduce stress, helps to reduce anxiety, helps me to slow down. It can help you change your habits and help you create new ones. I have done an episode before ‘How to create new habits’ so check that out, I will link to that in the show notes.

If you feel like you have unhealthy habits with any of your devices, or any of your social networks, a digital detox can really help you break those habits and then create ones that are kind of healthier and more useful for you. Also, break digital addictions, we really get addicted to these things. Especially to social networks. I was just watching a Netflix documentary last night called ‘the social dilemma’, and I will link to that in the show notes and it was really, really, interesting.

It was by a bunch of people from major tech companies, or who used to work for major tech companies, talking about how these social networks and apps and things are created to get us addicted so that we are using them, so they can make more money off of us from advertising. So digital addiction is a real thing and I think that it is important to know that these devices and these apps and these services are created with the intention of keeping people using them.

I think, one of the most interesting things that I learned at the end of this documentary was that they were talking about what rules they have for their own children. I now that digital addictions are really a big thing with children these days, I don’t have kids, so I don’t have to deal with this but a lot of parents do and they were saying that people in the tech industry are often the people that have the strongest boundaries for their kids as they know just how dangerous these are and how easy it is to get addicted to them.

And some of the rules that they shared at the end of the documentary about when their kids were allowed to get a phone, when their kids were allowed on social media, it is a lot stricter than a lot of people I know. I find it interesting that a lot of people that are from the inside of the tech industry are so strict about their kids using or not using social media and mobile phones. So I think that is a really interesting watch for you if you have kids and even if you don’t have kids, you have these devices, probably, so it is worth watching that documentary to see what goes on behind the scenes.

So, when to know when you really need a digital detox?

You might be feeling stressed, you might be feeling a lot of anxiety, you might even feel separation anxiety from your phone if you try to sit away from it for a while or have attempted to not use it during a meal, for example. You might feel that fear of missing out if you are not constantly connected and looking and seeing what is going on. You might sense that it has become an obsession or an addiction. You might sense that you are comparing yourself to others and using that to feel bad about yourself.

Or you might have noticed that you really feel uncomfortable being alone with yourself. I was just talking to someone the other day about my Ridgeway walk and she said, ‘oh I could never do that, I could never be alone with myself for that amount of time’. And I think a lot of people are probably like that and I think that is really shocking. If you can’t be alone with yourself and be comfortable with it and enjoy your own company, there is something going on there that maybe you want to look at because I think that is really sad, if you can’t be alone with yourself and enjoy your own company. I think that is one for the reasons that I find distance-walking to be so useful and healing, is because I am alone with myself the entire time, I am not with other people. I am alone with me and I am alone with my thoughts and there is nothing there to distract me when uncomfortable things come up, so I think it has forced me to work through things and reflect on things that I might not otherwise, if I was constantly thinking about things and focussed on social media and engaging my mind with these digital things.

So what do you do on a digital detox?

I think it is more about what you don’t do. Like I said at the beginning of this, you do not have to swear off all devices, or all social networks, you can pick and choose. You can make your digital detox work for you, don’t expect to go cold turkey and in fact that is probably not practical because a lot of you will use social media or digital devices for work. You don’t want to maybe quit all devices for a week if you need to get work done, obviously that is not practical, so figure out what works for you and I am going to talk more about what you can consider later on in this episode.

Again, it is more about what you don’t do than what you do do. However you are going to think about what you want instead.

So how can you determine what you want to do? What you want to achieve with a digital detox? Do you want to break your old habits? Do you want to improve your sleep? Do you want to have more time for fitness and creativity? Do you want to improve your productivity and focus? Your why is important.

Knowing why you want to do a digital detox will help you determine what kind of detox you will create for yourself. Knowing what you want to achieve will help you know how you want to achieve this and what you want to do to achieve this. For example, if you want to improve sleep, that is probably going to mean getting off devices after sundown. Or a couple or hours before bed, or four hours before bed, or whatever. If your sleep is great and that is not a problem for you then maybe that is not something you really want to implement and that is not a priority for you.

If you want to improve your fitness and have more time for exercise and creativity and art then maybe your digital detox is going to about reducing the time you spend on your phone. If you want to improve productivity and focus, maybe you do want to have digital free weekends for example where you get off all devices on the weekends and do other things so that when you come back to work on Monday you will feel fresh and refreshed mentally and be ready to get back on these devices and really use them in a more mindful and efficient way when you do the work that you need to do, Monday through Friday.

So knowing what you want to do, will help you know how you want to achieve it.

To me, a digital detox has a lot to do with setting boundaries, with your devices and with your apps and with your social networks.

So how do you set new boundaries?

There are two main types of boundaries that you can set when creating your digital detox.

So one is a space boundary, so maybe it is no devices in the bedroom, or no phones at meals. No phones or devices in certain spaces in your life. So certain rooms in your life or certain activities, at the dining table or when you are eating.

I, for example, usually keep all of my digital devices in my office, so for example my phone sits on a dock, iPad, my kindle, they are all in my office. That doesn’t mean that I don’t take them out of my office if I am reading a book on my kindle yes sometimes I will take it downstairs but basically those things live in my office. I might bring the phone downstairs if I need to make some notes or if I need to use a specific app, or like this morning I went for a run and obviously had to take it with me on my run for music. So that kind of thing, I always take them out of the office, but they always come back.

All my digital devices they live in my office and they are allowed to come out of my office, but they always go back home there {laughing}. I don’t have them just sitting around the house. So that is one of the things I do in terms of space boundaries. I rarely take any of them into the bedroom. If I am not well for some reason, I might do some work from my bed, if I absolutely need to get some stuff done, but otherwise the computer doesn’t come in my bedroom, I rarely read in bed and I rarely take my phone into the bedroom. Really that stuff lives in my office and only comes out of my office for specific purposes. So that is one example, that is space boundaries.

So time boundaries is another type of boundary you can set, for example, no devices before work. Or no devices after sundown or on weekends, or no social media for x amount of time. So no social media for a day or a week or a month. Or no social media in the evenings, it is about determining what times you are going to use these devices and these apps and what times you are not going to use these devices and these apps.

You could do a total digital fast and not use any devices for a day, a week, a weekend, a month, whatever. I think that is worth experimenting with as well. You could try reading print instead of ebooks or tablets. And, I really love reading print, but I just have such a small house and my bookshelf is full and I have stacks of books all over the place and boxes of books under the stairs and it is really hard to fit physical books into my life, into my house. Clearly I need a new house to fit all of our books! But this is where we are, so I try to read the vast majority of my books as ebooks but sometimes I just don’t feel like reading, I don’t feel like being on a screen and sometimes it really helps to have print books as a backup and read because it gives me that break from being on a screen and still lets me read, so I don’t know, find what works for you.

The difference between a digital detox and a digital declutter

I think it is also important differentiate the difference between a digital detox and a digital declutter and I think both are super useful. Perhaps you might want to do the declutter before you go into a detox. I think these are things that are really useful to do over and over again on a regular basis and perhaps slot them into your calendar on a regular basis as a recurring activity.

So one thing you might want to do is remove notifications. I do not have notifications for just about anything on my phone of my iPad. I do not like notifications they stress me out, they cause a lot of anxiety, most things do not have notifications and in addition to that I enable ‘do not disturb’ mode almost all of the time, so if you call me I am not going to hear it because my phone is going to be on its dock as I am working and I am not going to see or hear the call come in. I will probably see the voicemail later at some point in the afternoon, either when I am taking a break or I am done for the day, and then I will listen to it and return any calls, but my phone is almost always in ‘do not disturb’ mode. Unless I am expecting a call that I absolutely need to get, so if I have an appointment with someone to have a call at a certain time, then I disable the do not disturb other than that it is pretty much always on. So that is another way that you can remove these annoying interruptions and notifications.

Next, you can declutter. Newsletters, newsletters that you don’t read. If you ever find yourself going through your inbox and thinking: urgh this thing again and delete and delete. Instead of deleting it just take a second, it will take a few more seconds than it will to delete it, but in the long run it is an investment to unsubscribe before you delete it. When I came back from my Ridgeway walk I had a bunch of newsletters and thought, you know what? I don’t want to be reading this stuff, I never read it, I just delete it and so I just unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe. I unsubscribed from a lot of things when I came back from the Ridgeway the other day.

Social media, I went through a huge social media declutter earlier this year and decluttered a lot of business stuff that I was following and started following more author stuff and more nature stuff, because that was the experience that I wanted to have on social media. You could unfollow people on Facebook without unfollowing them, you can mute people on Twitter, without blocking them and I actually just muted someone today that I am very, very, pleased to have muted so I won’t be seeing them in my timeline but I’d didn’t want to block them because I didn’t want them to see that I had blocked them. So there are all kinds of things that you can do to get people out of your timelines without them knowing, because of course if you ‘unfriend’ someone they will notice.

So, declutter your social media, unfollow, mute, unblock, block, people that you don’t want to hear from or don’t want to see. Unfollow stuff that is no longer part of what you want to be experiencing. Like all the business stuff, I know the business stuff, I am sick of following that. I really want to focus on the author stuff and the nature stuff, so that is why I did that earlier this year.

Apps, I regularly go through apps on my phone and I declutter them. There are a couple of ways that I do that. I try to keep all the apps on my phone to, and this is probably going to be a lot, to three pages. I actually have five apps that I have recently downloaded onto a fourth page, not page but screen. You know when you scroll through your screen it has different pages of apps. There is one kind of what’s it called a folder of apps on my phone where I have got extras and that’s where I dump all the apps I haven’t been using but I am not sure I want to delete them. Then I go into that folder every once in a while and I delete the stuff I haven’t been using, which is great.

So that is how I keep my apps to a minimum so that I know that if I am downloading new apps I really want to keep them to those three screens of apps and not add new things. Like I said I have now got three new things and things on that fourth screen, so I am going to need to, it is time to declutter, that’s what I know. So that’s that.

Computer files, it really stresses me out to have stuff on my desktop screen, so I am constantly cleaning that up. I have a half-hour in my calendar every Monday, to organise my photos that I have uploaded, to organise my downloads, to organise my desktop and to organise physical stuff on my desk. Most of that is a digital detox and reorganisation and I find that really useful. So that’s the difference between digital detox and digital declutter and I think both are really useful and sometimes having a digital declutter will help you go into a detox. So maybe there is something that you want to do on a monthly basis. Block out some time on your calendar every week or month to declutter your digital stuff and then go into a detox.

How to create your digital detox or declutter plan

You need to make it right for you. Within that documentary that I was mentioning, the social dilemma, they have this fictional story of this family with this kid, the mum challenges him to go a week without social media and he can’t do it and she tried to take all the kids phone for dinner and that went horribly wrong. Like this family had a really toxic relationships with social media and digital stuff! So anyway, you have to do something that works for you. It is like with fasting, don’t jump, if you have never fasted before, into a week long fast. Start with something easier, same with your detox. Don’t go straight into something crazy.

Several years ago I watched this documentary on juice fasting, which of course isn’t really fasting, it was juicing. I got so excited by juicing, I had never juiced before, I wanted to juice, it sounded amazing and so I got this book by this guy, the same guy who did the documentary and he said, ‘start easy, start with three days, don’t go into something long, work your way up’, and of course and I was so jazzed by the documentary, I was like, ‘hell no, I am doing a three-week juicing thing’. It was awful, I hated vegetables by the end of it. I should have followed the instructions and started with three days and worked my way up to three weeks or not, I don’t know, it was awful. So anyway, start small and work your way up, you don’t have to go into a week of full digital detox.

Like I said, I got massive benefits from going on this walk and like I said I had no computer, one specific use for the tablet, the iPad, and limited use for the phone. Like it was super, super, useful to me.

So first of all know why you want to detox and what you want to get out of it. Next, when are you going to detox? Is it going to be certain hours, certain times of the days, certain spaces, what are the time boundaries and what are the space boundaries that are going to be a part of your digital detox. So that’s the how.

What is the plan? How are you going to detox, what are your boundaries going to be?

And then what are you going to do instead? What are you going to do instead of these digital activities, you need to replace them with something else, something exciting, something juicy, otherwise you are just going to be sitting there staring at the wall, instead of staring at your phone. So how do you want to spend your time instead? Do you want to go for a walk? Do you want to go for a run? Do you want to do some other kind of exercise? Do you want to do something creative like art, or writing, or spending some time with your kids? I don’t know! What do you want to do instead of your digital activities? And this is super, super, important, because if you don’t plan that into your digital detox decluttering plan, you probably setting yourself up for failure because you don’t know what you are going to do instead.

And a lot of new phones can tell you how much screen time you are spending each week. I think that is really useful and it tells you a comparison of how much time you are spending compared to the previous week. And that, when they first started doing that, that was a huge eyeopener for me, because I didn’t realise I was spending that much time on the phone, I was spending more than I thought. So that is something that can help with seeing how much time you are spending and how much time you can reduce. It is like with my Ridgeway walk I was actually walking 18 and a half miles a day and not the 14 miles that I thought I was.

So bringing it back to outdoor adventures, how is that outdoors adventures, how can travel help with digital detox? I think it can help because it gives us that thing to do instead of the digital stuff. When you find our thing that you love in terms of travel or outdoors adventures, that is such a juicy, joyful, happy thing to do instead of staring at your phone, or your tablet, or whatever. So I think engaging in that activity can really help you go into that digital detox in a joyful way. So I really encourage you to find your thing in the outdoors and use that as the ultimate activity you are going to do when you have your digital detox.

So I would love to hear from you, are you addicted to social media? Are you abdicated to your phone? What is your relationship to digital stuff and technology like? Drop me a line and let me know, you can email me at: [email protected] or find me online and get in touch there. I would love to hear from you!

Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode please leave a quick review on Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Also, I can’t believe I didn’t mention this at the beginning I was recently a guest on Joanna Penn’s books and travel podcast, we talked about solo long distance walking in England and I just really enjoyed this conversation, it is one of the greatest interviews that I have done in a long time. It was such a great conversation talking about something I love. I will link to that in the show notes as well but it is basically at: https://www.booksandtravel.page/solo-walking-england/ and it went live on September 17^th, so a couple of days ago as I am recording this.

So that is all for now, remember to visit: http://HollyWorton.com/374 for the show notes on this episode. Thank you so much for listening.