3 Ways to REALLY Unplug

in Best Practices Newsletter on

This month I had to reschedule my monthly Personal Retreat Day for the best of reasons: my husband suggested we go away for a long weekend to the beach over Labor Day! I happily rescheduled my retreat day for the following week. I chose Monday 9/9 because I had nothing on the calendar, but as Aristotle quipped, “Nature abhors a vacuum.”  Inevitably, options to fill that empty space on my calendar cropped up:  A producer wanted me to start work on a free-lance job. A friend invited me for lunch. I had some errands to run. What to do?This is an all-too-common scenario, and one I hear over and over (and experience myself). We’re trying our best to protect time for personal development, yet we lose it to circumstances seemingly beyond our control.

Are they really beyond our control?

I’ve been thinking about how things creep up on boundaries we set around our personal time this week as I’ve been reading Cal Newport’s book Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. As the name implies, he suggests that the digital tools we implement to “maximize efficiency” have unwittingly hijacked our attention. The instant access that helps us stay connected steals our downtime. Because we can be on call 24/7, often we feel like we should always be accessible. (We have a saying in our house “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” — a loose paraphrase of Ian Malcolm’s warning in Jurassic Park).So, how can we better protect our Personal Retreat Days? Here are three ideas that have worked for me:

1) Prepare

  • Alert your friends and family ahead of time that you have a prior commitment and you won’t be available from 9am-4pm (or whatever time you set for your PRD.) Notice I said “prior commitment” and not “Personal Retreat Day.” I find that wording to be helpful to use with people who aren’t familiar with the concept of a Personal Retreat Day because it takes the pressure off you trying to explain why you need this time for yourself.
  • Set “do not disturb” notifications on your phone, and “out of office” automatic email replies. As a freelancer, I’ve found this to be extremely helpful because colleagues will just assume I’m on another job and are usually willing to wait a day for a response.
  • Mentally prepare for the guilt that seems to go hand-in-hand with taking time to invest in yourself. Gentle reminder: the most important relationship you have is the one with the person in the mirror! You will return from your Personal Retreat Day a more refreshed, energized, and better version of yourself, so ditch the guilt.

2) Eliminate, Delegate, and Outsource

I borrowed (ahem, stole) these terms from a book called Anti-Time Management by Richie Norton. This is a helpful tool when you have that nagging feeling that you should be doing “something else” with your time instead of focusing on your personal development and resting. Here are the steps:

  • Write down everything you feel you “should” be doing.
  • Ask yourself, which of these tasks can I eliminate today? Most things can be put off until tomorrow.
  • If a task MUST be done today, ask yourself, who can I delegate this task to? For example, you feel you must pick up your kids from soccer practice. But really, do YOU have to be the one to pick them up? Can your spouse or partner do it? Can you trade pickup days with a neighbor? That’s delegating the task to someone else for free.
  • If you can’t delegate, can you outsource the necessary task? That’s paying someone to do it. For example, you could book an Uber for your teens to get them to & from soccer practice.

3) Leave Tech Behind

This is so important, and so hard to do. Our phones have become our constant companions, and we know it’s not good for us. We have been programmed to respond to every notification immediately. We think we have to be on call 24/7. If you’re addicted to your phone, it’s not comfortable at first. You’ll have itchy fingers. It’s a habit hard to break, but allow yourself the luxury of being unavailable. You may be wondering: did I protect my Personal Retreat Day on 9/9? I’m happy to say that YES I managed to protect my time! I told the producer that I had a prior commitment and could start on Tuesday, I scheduled the lunch date for later in the week, and I delegated the errands to my husband and daughter. Giving myself the gift of an entire day to rest, reflect, and reorient was well worth the sacrifices!