My ‘No-Tech’ Day
I’m over half way through my summer break right now, and it seems to have flown by incredibly quickly. I’ve been busy updating my Teaching Ideas site, planning and getting things ready for the new academic year at school, and doing numerous other jobs that are on my ‘To Do’ list. As well as that, I’ve been spending a considerable proportion of my time every day checking email, along with my delicious network, Google Reader, Twitter, Plurk (and other) accounts whenever I get chance so that I don’t miss anything online. Laptops and mobiles nowadays are great for giving you quick access to these online services whenever you want them, but that makes it almost impossible to switch off…
I know that if ever I have a few spare minutes, I’ll grab my iPhone and check my email / Google Reader / Twitter accounts to see what’s new! I think I might be addicted. 
So, after three weeks of busy holiday days with lots of computer time, I realised on Saturday that I haven’t really had a day off yet… a day where I don’t think about my websites or school work. In fact, I don’t remember the last time I had a day when I didn’t go online. Following that realisation, I decided to have a ‘No Tech Day’ yesterday… a day without any technology (or as close to that as I could achieve). No computers, no mobile internet, no games consoles, no TV. How do I feel after it? Completely refreshed!
My other half also joined in, and we both admitted that we really wanted to check our email accounts at one point! So what did we achieve instead?
- We both read quite a bit. Helen spends lots of her spare time reading, but I’m always frustrated by how little time I have to read books, so this was a real treat. I really enjoyed reading a children’s book by Michael Morpurgo, and also managed to read about 100 pages of a fantastic Dave Gorman book.
- We also took our new dog to the beach for the first time and had a really enjoyable walk.
- We made chocolate brownies and spent the rest of the day feeling sick after eating most of them!
- We also played board and card games together… something we haven’t really done since Christmas.
So, what did I miss yesterday? To be honest, not a great deal. There were 35 emails in Mail and 107 items in Google Reader this morning, and nothing was urgent… the only thing that raised a smile was Doug’s post about the Twitter Fantasy League where I spotted that I am currently 6th. I’m always last in our school’s Fantasy League!
Image: ‘on and on and on and on…‘
