A while ago, I had an idea for a new life experiment:

What if, once per week, I would disconnect from the online world completely?

Having that thought with me for a while, it was time to act on it. But my intuition said it would be difficult to achieve this. At least right away.

So I asked myself, what would be the next best thing that gets me closer to my objective?

Having strong limits on internet and tech in my life for one day. And, bonus points, involve my family as well --- making the experiment much easier to adopt in the long run.

After a brief discussion and laying out ground rules, we achieved consensus and we began our experiment shortly after. Here are some of the characteristics:

• Sunday was chosen as the recurring day when we would practice this
• We would disconnect our phones from Wi-Fi and Mobile Data
• We were allowed to use devices or services such as Waze/Google Maps (with offline maps) to get around the city
• Talk with immediate family and let them know that if there's something that requires our attention, they should switch to giving a call instead of sending a message through one of the channels or social media accounts.
• There was no real or hard restriction in terms of briefly connecting the phones to the Internet. Sometimes this was required (opening the car gates requires internet access), sometimes it might be very useful (a quick recipe check, contact info for a store etc). We would observe each other and let the other one know in case he/she got distracted and forgot to disconnect.

Glad to report that the experiment was a success.

I was surprised initially to learn how easy it was to activate the experiment. Thought that it would have been a struggle. But in our case it was quick and painless.

It really helped that we knew that if we really had to, we could connect back on. The biggest win was the lack of notifications. Of course, you could block notification on your phone to achieve the same result. So this would be an alternative experiment. The true power was when you picked up the phone randomly and maybe even without giving it much thought you would open up a random app. And only then you would realize there is no internet connection so it's not working. And it was a gentle reminder that hey, the experiment is up and running, go enjoy life.

The combination of lack of notifications + the inability to mindlessly scroll allowed us to be more relaxed, more present. I took this opportunity to catch up on some of the books on my reading list.

And, for the days when this experiment was active, they actually seemed longer in a way. It's amazing how much time we actually spend on these little devices without us realizing.

Sometimes, just looking at the Screen Time stats and seeing a bunch of numbers is not enough. Feeling the change makes a difference.

In the end, I can say that we will try to turn this experiment into a habit.

If you are reading this by any chance, and are curious about some things, write a comment.