Gadget-Free Sunday

Last weekend I read this article in the Globe and Mail and it really struck a chord with me. It's all about being distracted by our screens. So many times I find myself reaching for my phone when my kids are eating their breakfast or sneaking into the office to "check on something". Leo now assumes I'm in the office and yells: "Mommy where are you? Are you checking something??"

I think it's pretty sad and the article made me realize it.

The funny thing is that I shared the article with my friends on Facebook and half of them said it took them several tries to get through it because they were distracted with other things. I read it in the actual paper and I got distracted. I finished it over two days.

This past weekend I decided that we were going to have a gadget-free Sunday in the house. My husband isn't as bad as me, but he can still get really distracted with his phone. He has a business to run so I get his need to be on top of everything. He agreed only to check his phone in the morning and evening to make sure nothing was popping up for work (he has guys that work on the weekends sometimes). Oh and he wanted the iPad to play music which I agreed to... just as long there was no addition 'net surfing involved.

I've done this before with my iPhone of course, but I think part of its ease was that I had my trusty computer to fall back on. This time we were shutting it all off and I even put a calendar with family photos that I had made in the past on top of the computer to stop me if I tried to open it. It worked! I went to check the veggie box to see what I was getting this week and when I saw the family photos I told myself I didn't need to check and that it would be a surprise.

So that's it. I lasted the whole day without texting anyone, without checking Facebook, without reading a blog, without blogging! And it was great. We cleaned the house! We played outside! We did the groceries!

The reality is that I do all of those things on the weekend anyway, but it takes me twice, or three times as long to do it because I'm always stopping to "check something." This time we did it all without distraction... well I have two kids so they were distracting enough, but you know what I mean. We were present with them and with each other.

I highly recommend having a gadget-free Sunday. It's kind of the easiest day to do it. Pretend like it's the 1980s when no stores were open on Sunday. Remember those days?

What do you think? Could you go a day, or even a weekend without checking anything?