Three and a half days ago I set out to completely disconnect from the internet and my devices. It was an impulsive decision that I made after finishing a book called “The Way of the Superior Man” by David Deida. In one of the last chapters, he described the two ways of “bringing you right to your masculine edge of power”. The first of which is to set myself a difficult challenge (I already had the anatomy book I kept not working on), so I decided on the second way which is austerity.
The withdrawal
The first two hours I cleaned my room, did the dishes, the laundry, cooked. After all that the sun was still up and I still had the entire day ahead of me.
So I played my electric guitar without plugging it in (because my pc was off), rolled my water bottle around and watched it for 5 minutes, talked to myself out loud because there was no podcast to fill the silence. I went to the gym and the supermarket without music. I tracked time using the clock on my headphones case.
Eventually the boredom got unbearable enough and I sat down to work on the book. I didn’t feel motivated, it was just the least boring thing available.
Boredom is a solved problem
Think about it, you have a 24/7 emergency boredom preventer in your pocket. Every time you’re commuting, waiting in line, or just don’t know what to do, pull it out. The algorithm will serve you the most engaging content tailored to your interests. And when you wake up from the trance it’s already past your bedtime. Congratulations, you survived another day.
Without that option I couldn’t interrupt the train of thought in my head. It felt like reading through a never ending email inbox, where every unread email is a thought I never finished thinking or a situation I haven’t resolved.
It felt like I lived three days in the span of one.
The result
In 3 days I sketched out around 28 pages. I did not expect that from me, because the week before I only made 5. After making each page I’d get tired, walk around the house aimlessly, find nothing to do and then come back and do one more page. I never actually forced myself to do anything, it was just the most interesting thing to do at the time.
I’m using the internet right now to publish this, and used my phone a couple times during those 3 days, so the experiment isn’t perfectly clean. The intention was never to make it perfect, it was to see how I behave without indulging in mindless consumption.
I’m not going to tell you to try this, but I’m seriously considering making it a recurring thing each weekend.
