If you want to be away for a few days and don’t want to worry people, it may help to inform them beforehand that you want to experience the digital detox benefits to overall health and well-being!
I have been doing a digital detox these days, and I am happy with the benefits I get from reducing my internet use.
I worked on a stressful client project, and it required me to be at my computer for over ten hours a day. So, I craved being away from any technology.
After the project, I slept a lot and figured out ways to make my life exciting despite the lack of dopamine boost I was getting from the internet.
I just read Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport, so I thought it might be a good idea to try doing a digital detox.
So, I did. And these are the digital detox benefits to overall health and well-being:
- You can think about the things that matter.
- You finish more tasks because your brain functions more effectively.
- You feel calm because no one expects too much from you.
- You become more connected to yourself.
- You save more electricity because you charge less.
Let’s begin.
5 Digital Detox Benefits to Overall Health and Well-Being
You don’t need to be 100% offline to experience the benefits of a digital detox.
My devices are still connected to the internet, but I uninstalled apps that were distracting and became more intentional when it comes to using my devices.
I use my phone for personal communication, my tablet mostly for creative tasks and entertainment, and my laptop for work.
I also prioritize walking and working out because I work from home, and I need exposure to sunlight to avoid being depressed.
I was undersleeping and oversleeping in the last few months, and it made me sluggish. That was a terrible feeling. I couldn’t accomplish anything.
Harvard Health Publishing says that too much sleep can make people tired because it ruins our body’s natural rhythm.
Many things changed when I stepped away from the online world, including my heart. I realized that I was just forcing love, and that I looked desperate.
It was a trauma bond, and I figured I should see it as it is.
So, doing a digital detox has lots of benefits, but it will be difficult to start if you are used to spending hours scrolling through social media or browsing random websites out of boredom.
I quit social media long ago, so I didn’t struggle at the beginning. I use Facebook Messenger because that is where my family communicates, but that’s it.
I can’t be 100% offline even for a few days because I work with people across the world, and we communicate online. You don’t need to be 100% offline, too.
You can simply remove the distraction sites from your life: the ones that keep you up at night and make you unproductive at work.
Ready to do a digital detox? Here are the digital detox benefits to overall health (including financial health) and well-being!
1. You can think about the things that matter.
I did a lot of thinking because I had time for it. I re-evaluated my life and asked myself a question: “What do I really want to do?”
I was trying to post consistently, and I forgot what my goal was.
Publishing consistently is my goal, but that is not my ultimate goal. If I want to live the life that I want in my 30s, I should be working on my income streams.
I should be building businesses and creating content that I can monetize later on.
According to Forbes, content creation is now a legitimate job, and many children aspire to be one.
I also looked at the current state of my emotional life. I am 27 years old. Do I want to get married? Because if I want that, I should be in the dating scene now.
But I don’t see myself getting married.
I told my mom about that, and she didn’t like the idea of me adopting a child. She wanted me to open myself to the possibility of meeting someone.
Well, I don’t know.
2. You finish more tasks because your brain functions more effectively.
One of the digital detox benefits is that you don’t get bored because you are not always in front of the screen.
I attempted to build a business project in the past, but it was just a few months ago that I really became motivated to put products on the market.
Physical products at a physical store. The products are handmade, so the business balances my digital projects.
Looking for new clients every after I quit them or they quit me is tiring.
I am grateful for freelancing because I am learning from what my clients are doing, but freelancing is not my long-term plan.
I do many things because I am working on different projects at once, alone.
However, I found that I am more likely to accomplish tasks if I write down my to-dos in a notebook or a notepad, so that is what I do.
According to Hubgets, writing down our thoughts and the things we want to accomplish makes us remember them more because writing activates something in our brain.
I read in a book I can’t remember — because I read a lot — that the brain is capable of handling continuous work, if you do a variety of tasks.
Boredom is what stresses our brains, so incorporate offline hours into your daily routine. That improves your productivity.
3. You feel calm because no one expects too much from you.
Keep in mind that I am single. I have been since 2010.
If you go offline and still feel like people expect too much from you, it could be because you want to please them or they are dependent on you.
One of the digital detox benefits as a single person is that I feel calm. My offline environment is more peaceful than the online world.
I live more slowly and quietly when I am offline because only a few people have access to me.
Make Use Of says that spending so much time on social media leads to poor mental health and unrealistic expectations.
When I was on social media, I was allowing other people, mostly social media users I didn’t even know in real life, to live in my brain rent-free.
Scrolling non-stop is entertaining, but seeing no changes on your to-do list at the end of the day is depressing.
What -ing would you prefer?
4. You become more connected to yourself.
As mentioned earlier, I was able to ask myself important questions.
I am in my late 20s. People my age or those who are younger than me are getting married and building their own families, if not taking further studies.
From other people’s perspectives, I seem content and have no plans of advancing or taking my life to the next level.
From my perspective, though, I think I have become advanced psychologically.
I have spent the last few years of my life understanding myself, and I wrote about them on this blog. Many people haven’t done that.
Do you know who you are? Are you doing what you really want to do?
In 2018, Harvard Business Review found that 95% of people think they are self-aware, but only 10 to 15% actually are.
*exhales* I am not done with formal education. I have one last goal: to finish a Master’s Degree in Sociology.
I want to do that before I go all-in on my emotional pursuits.
I was thinking about my Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science, and I didn’t want it to go to waste. So, I decided to start a sociopolitical blog.
When I was planning that, I realized the majority of what I do, including writing on A Lover in Disguise, is in the field of social sciences.
So, I decided to actually be in that field. If I start more projects in the future, it will be in that field.
5. You save more electricity because you charge less.
If you don’t use your devices, the battery charge will last a few days. I was charging my phone once a day, same with my tablet because I charge it even at 50%.
But there were times I hadn’t used my laptop for weeks, and I survived!
DataCamp says anything that you do in the digital world may have an environmental impact.
Back then, I was the one paying the electricity, the internet, and the water bills. My offline days helped decrease my expenses.
Now, I barely contribute financially to the household, but I do a digital detox from time to time to help them save money.
I haven’t moved out. I will move out when I get married, if I get married.
Last Words
Almost everything is done online now, and it is good to remember how simple life was before the internet boomed.
During the first days of my digital detox, I remembered how I lived before I became a remote worker and the owner of several projects.
I didn’t know that it was possible to work with people from other countries without leaving my country, and to make a living writing.
Enjoyed reading the digital detox benefits to mental health?
If you enjoyed reading about the digital detox benefits to one’s well-being, here is a video of me talking about my experience with digital detox:
