This article comes at the perfect time; I've been thinking a lot about digital boundaries lately, especially as a teacher always connected. Your point about returning from a class right at 8pm and then being unreachable for such long stretches is realy insightful; I wonder how you navigated the practical side of that, like last-minute changes or unexpected messages?
It depends, but if something unexpectedly changes after 8pm, it usually won’t make much of a difference if I see it at 7.30am. But I did adjust the rules a bit for myself throughout, to make the experience a bit gentler, instead of having the hard cut-off so early in the evening.
I ended up trying this challenge, and really loved "no screen time". Challenges were sort of different for me, where if I for instance had a plan to meet up with someone past 8pm, I'd need to "figure out the plan" by 7:59pm and then just.. hope they showed up.. (worst case, I had my phone on me although I really stayed fairly strict in not using it). The other difficulty was communicating *changes* in plans once it was past 8pm, especially with my spouse. We ended up compromising that I could keep the ascetic "no screens past 8pm" thing but that if my plans deviated from what I had communicated earlier, then I would tell her, and only do that on my phone. That's worked pretty well!
This article comes at the perfect time; I've been thinking a lot about digital boundaries lately, especially as a teacher always connected. Your point about returning from a class right at 8pm and then being unreachable for such long stretches is realy insightful; I wonder how you navigated the practical side of that, like last-minute changes or unexpected messages?
It depends, but if something unexpectedly changes after 8pm, it usually won’t make much of a difference if I see it at 7.30am. But I did adjust the rules a bit for myself throughout, to make the experience a bit gentler, instead of having the hard cut-off so early in the evening.
I ended up trying this challenge, and really loved "no screen time". Challenges were sort of different for me, where if I for instance had a plan to meet up with someone past 8pm, I'd need to "figure out the plan" by 7:59pm and then just.. hope they showed up.. (worst case, I had my phone on me although I really stayed fairly strict in not using it). The other difficulty was communicating *changes* in plans once it was past 8pm, especially with my spouse. We ended up compromising that I could keep the ascetic "no screens past 8pm" thing but that if my plans deviated from what I had communicated earlier, then I would tell her, and only do that on my phone. That's worked pretty well!