If you are reading this series in sequence, as it comes out, then today is Sunday. If it’s not, you’ll have to bear with me a little, because this post is all about Saturday. You could probably get by if you just thought back to the last Saturday you can remember. Hopefully it was less than 8 days ago.
So, what DID you do on Saturday?
If you were like most IT professionals, you probably spent some of the time on work stuff. You checked email a few times, maybe started working on a design, did some research.
Or you worked on your own projects. Even thought you could categorize it as “fun”, it still put you in contact with technology in a way that was extremely similar to what you do at work.
It’s took me almost 20 years, but I finally realized that rarely does this help me get ahead. Mostly it makes me feel crushed, rushed, and stretched to the limit.
Not too long ago, for reasons outside the scope of this blog, I started disconnecting for one day every week. Totally unplugging. If it had an on-off switch, it didn’t get touched. That went for lights, cars, phones, game consoles, and computers. Not just me, but my whole family. From Friday night until Saturday night, we went off the grid.
Unsurprisingly, doing this did not drive us to the brink of madness.
We invested in some board games. We frequented the library and grabbed a ton of books. We read out loud to each other. We learned to juggle. We had long meals around the table with lots of conversation. We went for walks. We visited friends. We took mid-day naps. We discovered parks and trails and parts of our neighborhood we didn’t realize existed. We thought big thoughts and dreamed big dreams.
So I’m going to challenge you: Look ahead to next Saturday. Maybe you simply can’t disconnect for the whole day. Maybe you can do it for a few hours. But maybe you can. Maybe you can’t do it every week. But maybe you can.
You’ll never know unless you try, unless you attempt to alter the status quo.
The point is, change is something we usually must do IN REACTION TO something around us. But we also can choose to change.
And maybe the act of choosing is the first part of the change that gives us back a piece of ourselves we didn’t even realize was missing.