30 hours offline. Every week. Since 2023.
Every Saturday evening, I switch off my phone.
I turn it back on Monday morning.
I’ve been doing this every week since 2023.
No emails. No WhatsApp. No social media. No news. No Google.
For approximately 30 hours, I am simply unreachable.
And yes, life continues without me.
This is perhaps one of the first things Digital Detox taught me.
What began as a decision to protect one day of my week has become one of the most fascinating experiments of my life – an experiment in attention, availability, waiting and, ultimately, our experience of time.
It started with one Sunday
The decision wasn’t part of a carefully designed experiment.
It came from being furious.
In 2023, I was hiking in the Pyrenees with my husband and friends. We had reached the top of the mountain when I made the terrible mistake of checking my email.
There was a message from an important client about a project that needed to be presented quickly.
And that was enough.
My holiday changed direction.
While everyone else continued enjoying it, I found myself in front of my computer, working.
I was furious. Not really with the client, but with the fact that I had allowed work to enter a moment that had absolutely nothing to do with work.
So I made a decision.
From now on, Sunday would be mine.
On Saturday evening, the phone went off.
On Monday morning, it came back on.
I thought I was simply creating a boundary between work and my personal life.
I had no idea what I was about to discover.
What happens when you switch off?
At first, I thought Digital Detox was mainly about technology.
I don’t anymore.
What interests me now is what our devices have made possible: permanent availability, immediate information, continuous stimulation and increasingly rapid responses.
When those possibilities disappear for 30 hours, I notice things that are much harder to see during the rest of the week.
Waiting.
Boredom.
Longer conversations.
More sustained attention.
Thoughts that aren’t interrupted halfway through.
The possibility of not knowing something until later.
And time that doesn’t immediately need to be filled.
This is why, after all these years, I still switch off every Saturday evening.
I use technology all week. I appreciate everything it allows me to do.
But once a week, I also want to experience what happens when continuous connection stops.
This is where Digital Detox meets The New Time Culture™
My weekly Digital Detox eventually opened questions much larger than the practice itself.
When did permanent availability become normal?
Why has waiting become so difficult?
Why do we fill so many empty moments?
Why does receiving a message so easily create the feeling that we should answer it immediately?
And perhaps the biggest question:
If technology allows us to do almost everything immediately, does that mean everything should happen immediately?
These questions became part of the larger inquiry I am developing through The New Time Culture™.
Digital Detox is therefore not simply something from my past that led me here.
It is still one of the ways I experience and explore a different culture of time.
Find your own format
The distinction is important.
My Digital Detox lasts approximately 30 hours.
Yours might be an evening, a morning, a few hours or simply a regular moment when you decide to be offline.
There is no formula I want to prescribe.
What interests me is what happens when we deliberately interrupt continuous connection.
What do you notice?
What feels different?
What do you miss?
What do you suddenly pay attention to?
And what happens to your experience of time?
The interesting part begins when the screen goes dark.
Experience Digital Detox
Digital Detox can also become a shared experience.
I bring this exploration into talks, conversations and selected experiences for individuals, groups and organizations interested in attention, digital availability and our contemporary experience of time.
The purpose is not to teach people how to use their phones or to reject technology.
It is an opportunity to step outside continuous connection for a while, observe what happens and begin a conversation about what we might want to do differently when we reconnect.
