I Tried a Digital Detox...and My Family Thought I’d Been Abducted

I was Inspired by Tiffany Shlain’s book 24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week and her interview Take Control of the Devices That Have Taken Control of You.

So, I decided to embark on a bold, modern experiment: taking one day a week completely off from screens.

No phone. No email. No zoom. No apps. No scrolling. Just me, nature (okay, and laundry), and the distant memory of how we all used to function in 1995.

Friends, I made it a month.

It turns out giving up your phone for a day is like giving up an internal organ: “I’m going to take Saturdays off from using my kidney.” Our devices are so wrapped into how we live, they aren’t just distractions.I had multiple family members interrupt their days to come find me because people were trying to reach me. At one point, I walked into a store to buy a carpet. They said, “We’ll email you the link to complete your order.” With resignation, I drove home to retrieve my phone and interrupted its downtime. Because I'm not giving up 40% off. 

Eventually, I called time on my full-day digital detox.

BUT—it wasn’t all in vain.

I’ve taken the spirit of the practice and made it work for my reality. Now, I keep alerts off by default (especially news), check messages intentionally, and no longer let my phone treat me like an air traffic controller on espresso.

The result? More focus. Less stress. And an occasional missed sale.

Sometimes, the win isn’t in doing the thing perfectly. It’s in trying it, tweaking it, and finding what works for you.

Try this: Choose one app that interrupts your day the most. Turn off its notifications for a week. That’s it. Just a week.

Notice what changes—and what doesn’t.

(Spoiler: the world will still turn.)