Every week, my family goes offline for the Sabbath. Not just 24 hours of doing nothing, but 25 hours of no technology. If it's on, it's on. If it's off, it's off. We've been successfully doing this for 20 years. It was a hard transition initially, as neither my partner nor I grew up in that type of religious home. However we opted into this level of observancy because it helped us feel free, gain control of some aspects of our life, and not be bound to the 24/7 cycle.
It's not always easy, and when there are holidays overlapping the Sabbath, making it 49 hours, that can sometimes be grating.
That said, we find fulfillment in long walks, community meals, board games, books, sitting around and lazing about, etc.
During these times, i do have amazing conversations (and arguments) with my family. And the space created for us is so rare these days. I can't imagine life with out our weekly ritual.
This is not intended to be snarky, but I’m curious to understand the boundaries of “no technology”.
Does it mean not using devices with screens and/or Internet connectivity or does it include avoiding things like refrigerators, washing machines, blenders, dishwashers, ovens, stoves, electric lights, doorbells, electric kettles, water heaters, fans, air conditioning, automobiles, and many more that are built with technology?
For the most part, we don't turn anything on or off. It stays in it's state. The water heater or furnace have their own systems they abide by, and given they aren't alive, they aren't required to abide by the rules of the Sabbath. This goes for any autonomous system: timers for lights, crock pots, utilities, servers, answering machines, faxes, etc. We don't cook food, so either everything has to be prepared in advance, or we eat cold stuff.
We also follow more strict rules that are beyond tech. Technology is just one thing we avoid (long story short is we are prohibited from making a fire, sparks generated but turning something on is conceivably a distant, but related spark, thus we avoid turning on things). We don't write (no pen/paper) and as adults we don't usually play with chalk, but our children are less contained by this nuance. We don't chop wood. We try to even avoid making plans for after the Sabbath during the Sabbath.
We don't drive cars, do normal work, run errands, do chores (sweeping, cleaning up, etc are fine, but some people hold that even doing dishes may violate their Sabbath, but to each their own).
>but turning something on is conceivably a distant, but related spark, thus we avoid turning on things).
Given the well-known Askhenazi propensity for hair splitting, shouldn't using FETs to turn electricity on/off be ok? There really is no spark in that case.
I remember reading about someone who lived in a new york (?) highrise shabbat observing neighbors. He would come home those days and find people clustered in the lobby who would patiently wait for him to call the elevator and quickly jump on with him. I don't know what would happen if they didn't live on the same floor...
In some sense, your are correct, it's not a 1:1, but I also take from the article the main point is to try and force yourself into a mode of seclusion that helps your process a new way of thinking. Front yourself from the trappings of routine, so to speak.
I'm not able, not interested, in doing nothing, but I'm interested in ways that help me look at the world differently, and in the case of the blog 's intent, i feel my approach has validity, albeit in a different way.
What I gathered from the post was that it was more of a challenge to see how OP would do without any sort of stimulation. I think that's the fundamental difference here, OP's experiment is an extreme, where you go to no stimulation at all, while the Sabbath is more of a shift in sources of stimulation. Still valuable, and a lot to gain from it, of course.
Edit: I guess I just don't understand this approach. GP is clearly in a different life situation (has a family) than the person who wrote the article. As this sort of task clearly isn't doable for everyone, why not discuss ways you can still achieve, or try to achieve, the same or similar goals based on your own situation? Does HN not foster constructive conversation, even if it's tangential to the original point?
You're right, I was too dismissive. I think GP's experience is valuable, just not what I was looking for in the comments at the time, and I made a brash comment about it.
You simply make sure you leave all the TVs throughout the house on different channels so you can watch what you want while not violating the rule upon some technicality.
Er, kind of? People like to say the public transit system can be considered a horizonal elevator if you want to take the concept far enough. But even so, the idea is still there.
Not OP, but grew up observant. What's meant there is that you choose to not change the state of the electronics. An light that's already on stays on the entire time - you don't turn it off. You end up with an extra set of intentionality - you have to decide during the week if you want lights during the evening in the winter on Friday nights (and if you do, how late should they be on as you're probably setting up a timer on a smart plug).
If it's an autonomous system, we usually don't have to mess around with it, ie furnace follows nests schedule, hot water heater cycles itself, timers that run all week for living room lights will keep doing their thing.
For lights, we leave bathroom lights on, but turn off lights and leave it that way. We go so far as to either have switch covers or tape to prevent accidental state changes.
If they’re talking about the Jewish observance of the sabbath, it’s my understanding that they’re not allowed to turn on an electronic (or mechanical?) device nor turn one off during the sabbath itself.
Obvious exceptions are made for such things as life-saving situations, the practice of medicine, etc.
There was a prop bet (proposition bet - basically all sorts of random wagers) between a couple of poker players on how long somebody could persist in a bathroom, in complete darkness, alone, with nothing else beside their typical living essentials. The bet was set for 30 days and $100,000. [1]
The person who accepted the wager and started living in his bathroom in absolute darkness ultimately won the bet. The guy betting against him kept trying to offer him deals to get out of it until they agreed on a payout of $62k after 20 days. There's 0 doubt he could have made it all 30.
Kind of interesting to compare and contrast the mindsets.
> Young was relieved. He had come to a gradual realization that he hadn’t given enough weight to the fact that Alati was there by choice. “So if you’re in solitary confinement in prison, that’s a scary situation. You don’t know if you’re going to get out ever,” he said. “Here, if he lasts, he gets 100k, but these guys in solitary confinement get nothing – they have to do that.”
> Kupers says that distinction – “remembering why he is there, that it is not permanent” – is crucial. “Prisoners in solitary confinement tell me they are afraid they will never be released and they will die in solitary.”
> Alati was ready to leave the bathroom. He put on eclipse sunglasses, which blocked out any light, to protect his eyes.
> How did he manage to do that considering how cruel solitary confinement in prisons are?
This is addressed in the article:
> Young was relieved. He had come to a gradual realization that he hadn’t given enough weight to the fact that Alati was there by choice. “So if you’re in solitary confinement in prison, that’s a scary situation. You don’t know if you’re going to get out ever,” he said. “Here, if he lasts, he gets 100k, but these guys in solitary confinement get nothing – they have to do that.”
> Kupers says that distinction – “remembering why he is there, that it is not permanent” – is crucial. “Prisoners in solitary confinement tell me they are afraid they will never be released and they will die in solitary.”
> Alati, after his own taste of isolation, agrees. “[Prisoners in solitary] are not given a bathtub with sugar scrubs, and essential oil and food, and a yoga mat. They’re not given that stuff, so if I didn’t have that stuff, and I wasn’t actually free and I wasn’t being paid, that’s why [it would be a] punishment.”
---
> And won’t such a prolonged time in darkness affect your eyes?
This is also addressed in the article:
> Alati was ready to leave the bathroom. He put on eclipse sunglasses, which blocked out any light, to protect his eyes. When he finally emerged, the noise and commotion was overwhelming.
I don't think they were trying to solve anything, per se. Rather it was an information-gathering experiment: "I wanted to see if I had the willpower to cut off all stimulation for an extended period of time." How bad is my addiction?
They conclude: "Either way, I’m glad I did it. I guess I’m not so hopelessly addicted to short term stimulation that I can’t deprive myself of it for a longish period of time."
And set up a plan for the next experiment: "I’m pretty tired of sitting in rooms doing nothing, so my next experiments will be more exciting. I promise."
Going from one extreme (everything allowed) to another (nothing allowed), to try to find some happy medium that makes them happy with themselves. No one was hurt, nothing bad happened, they're just playing around with the idea and reporting what happened.
> I think you missed the entire point of the article?
No. It is a frame challenge.
The blogpost says "I’m hopelessly addicted to little dopamine bursts provided by algorithmically optimized technology (in my case – Reddit, video games, phone messages, and having music or tv shows in the background),"
The solution to that is not to do nothing. If you have this problem you precisely should do something. Hiking is a good idea. Or sitting down with friends and just chatting, without any of those distractions. Or working on a project where you concentrate on your tools (preferably physical tools) for days on end to achieve some results.
> Camping/hiking/exploring outdoors is the exact opposite of doing nothing.
Camping/hiking/exploring outdoors is also the exact opposite of being "hopelessly addicted to little dopamine bursts provided by algorithmically optimized technology".
Precisely. Everyone is telling you that camping wouldn't be in the rules of the challenge, but the point is that the challenge seemed like an odd solution to the problem.
Obviously a person can just choose to challenge themselves with 24 hours of no stimulation, that's fine as a weird, maybe interesting experiment, and I'm glad the author wrote about it. It's just that the author seem to have a different reason in mind when he created the challenge.
It's a little bit like the commonly-referenced XY problem in programming. Someone thinks that they really need to do Y in order to solve X, without having stepped back and confirm that Y really is necessary to solving x.
Three days after the challenge, how is the author going up be different? Most likely they're never going to do that again. But a week-long "experiment" with getting outdoors more often might have turned into lasting change.
He didn't say he's trying to solve that. You're reading in things he did not say. You're trying to shoehorn whatever your solution is to that particular problem. (and I love camping / hiking / etc). That's a completely different question than "Can I go 24 hours without any external stimulation".
I completely agree with you, but you quoted the blog post and left out the most important part of the author's sentence:
> I wanted to see if I had the willpower to cut off all stimulation for an extended period of time.
To be fair to you though, that part of the sentence was preceded with the part you quoted, making it natural to assume that the author believes the solution to his problem of being addicted to what he says he's addicted to is to have zero stimulation. That doesn't mean my assumption is correct though, and it seems even less so given the plain language I quoted above.
They weren't doing nothing. They admit they were thinking about random shit, like work, or making a list of things to do.
If you want to clear your mind of thoughts and any action, go camping in freezing weather and relish in the fact that you are literally too cold to think about anything but sitting in your tent trying to stay warm by shivering and not being able to think about anything but the moment to moment seconds of living, where every single moment of existence is nothing but digging into a little hole in yourself and staying warm there.
I assure you, no words games, no boredom, no trying to recite the presidents in order, nothing. Just pure ID.
No no. I know what you mean but it is the opposite of the exercise. It is a high stim environment. I've experienced that pure mind blankness (in the same circumstances - freezing cold) and I get it but it's not this.
Amusingly there was a time when I did nothing but sit at home and brood and it was when life sucked and I was depressed (in the colloquial sense). The thing was that it wasn't peaceful. It was just misery folding in on itself.
But I've also had the other kind of solitude and isolation and I like it. So I get what he's going for.
> I wanted to see if I had the willpower to cut off all stimulation for an extended period of time.
I think they're crazy, but they're pretty specific about what they were trying to achieve. Personally, I'd much rather spend my time doing what you describe than putting myself into solitary confinement they way they did.
Just got back from a two day trip to the mountains to do exactly this. My son (14) and I went fishing and the lodge we stayed at has zero cell service and zero internet. There is a pay phone that takes real quarters so we could call my wife and let her know we arrived safe. We slept in, cooked our own meals, fished for a few hours, read books for a few hours, hiked through the woods for a few hours, and repeated the next day.
I did a few days at a Catholic/Jesuit retreat center about a year ago, and part of it was an intentional unplugging from not just technology and work/family responsibilities, but _also_ the ability for me to fill my brain with the kinds of planning and prep work that consumes me when I'm in tourist mode or on an active vacation. Actually having to sit in your thoughts and think about things without distraction is a pretty important thing to periodically do.
But I also love taking my kids camping, hiking, biking, etc, and that's also a good break from the internet, but I think my point is just that they're not the same and there's totally room for both.
Thats a different activity, car camping where aborts and doing other things are easy to do. Really I guess the problem is that most people considering glamping "camping" vs "go 20 miles into the woods and set up camp for a few days" Of course car camping doesn't allow you to disconnect, its easy to run away if you need to.
The camping Im talking about is the type where you cannot do anything without requiring significant effort to abort.
Its like being on a thru-hike. Once you are several days away from humanity, there really isn't anything to think about but continuing to walk, one step at a time.
I was about to be mean about how this was basically a waste of time, but as I read the results I was reminded of how my Quaker school would sit in utter silence for for 30 minutes every Thursday. This "quiet reflection" was seen to open our heads to all the thoughts we run from, or never have time for, and it seems OP experienced this with his slightly extra 24hr version.
Whilst I think 24hr is a ridiculous amount of life to waste doing nothing, I think I'd now agree that the Quaker's were onto something when they simply stopped once a week to think about life.
Maybe this is splitting hairs over definitions, but I don't think getting lost in trains of thought (like OP) or the "quiet reflection" that you did is doing nothing.
When I think of doing nothing, I think of doing nothing. No catching up on thoughts we don't have time for, no chasing ideas, just nothing. It's really hard for a few minutes, let alone 30, let alone 24h!
Part of this is that I think of quiet reflection as healthy, if not necessary, and thus, it is something.
I think discussing this sort of thing one needs to be clear on the definition, so it's not splitting hairs. But with your definition, doesn't it devolve into a philosophical matter of whether it's even possible anyway? Could you ever know you were doing nothing, for as soon as you pondered it you wouldn't be?
The blog post's title says "The 24 Hour “Do Nothing” Challenge", but further into the article I think the actual challenge is made crystal clear:
> I wanted to see if I had the willpower to cut off all stimulation for an extended period of time.
That's quite a bit different than doing nothing.
I think the idea of doing nothing, or even trying to cut off all stimulation is, using your term, repulsive, because it's just so unnatural, and nearly impossible. The darkness of a dark room itself is a kind of stimulation, as much as the absence of sound or social interaction might be.
As natural humans sitting in the dark at night, we'd be totally engaged and on hight alert the instant that the familiar sounds of the night stopped, because that might signal danger. To the human brain, nearly everything has meaning, and often does so when there's no actual stimulus in the first place (for better or for worse).
I think it's pretty normal to not do anything for a while. I tend to do so by sleeping in on the weekends but not necessarily sleeping, just letting the mind wander.
I can imagine some people get restless the second they're conscious though and pick up their phone first thing, those may need to make more of a conscious decision to do nothing if they think their behaviour is problematic. It's not my place to judge whether it is though, I've spent big chunks of my life in 'frivolous' activities like playing video games and have zero regrets.
Sounds like prison, but the result was interesting. When I was laid off, and decided to take a month before looking. There were a lot of "life housekeeping" tasks that I decided to do. Looking back I'd recommend to anybody looking to change jobs to try your best to take some time between them, it gives you a different perspective on life when you don't have to worry about a job. It's like a short early retirement. I think you would need a minimum of 3 weeks to really realize the effect.
Something else about those tasks they mentioned, this is how I procrastinate. When I'm really disengaged with something I really don't want to do, I end up mopping the floors, doing laundry, or some other mundane task I don't like doing. Only to feel bad about the procrastination later. When you're intentionally taking time away from something that consumes so much of your life like work, priorities rearrange pretty quickly. I stopped drinking as much on weekends, and my sleep schedule adjusted in a way where I was waking up much earlier because I wasn't staying up all night trying to squeeze as much "free time" before work the next day.
I took off 6 weeks between jobs recently. It was my first time switching jobs after 13 years with one employer, and the longest time I've spent not working or in school in my life. My goal was to get bored: do everything I could and then run out of things to do. I failed! I had so much more I wanted to do before my 6 weeks were up.
I tried that; first I toyed with the idea of taking a 6 or 12 month sabattical, but then life happened and I couldn't afford to lose the income for that long. Then I settled on a month between jobs, but the new job was desperate so we agreed on me going there one day a week.
But the one day workweeks were still nice; I got a big lego set as a going away gift from my previous employer so I spent a lot of time on that.
I have the same tendency to fixate on small, relatively unimportant tasks when faced with unrewarding difficult work. The technique I’ve used to channel this to my benefit is to “take a break” from such work by accomplishing mundane tasks, which tends to help me feel more overly productive about a work session.
That's why you have the other job lined up and the start date signed. It's the hang time while you're swinging between branches, it's not jumping off a tree to nowhere and thinking that'll be relaxing.
Have you heard of Vipassana meditation? They do something similar, but you are allowed to eat. It isn't for 1 day though, but for 10. Link here - https://www.dhamma.org/en/
I'd definitely recommend doing a 1 day retreat before diving into something longer - some people suffer psychotic breaks and other challenging meditation experiences.
I've been to a ten-day retreat, reportedly days 3/4 are the most common ones for something to happen. The organisation linked by GP actually doesn't accept applications for the one-day retreats unless you've previously completed a ten-day one with them.
I am a daily meditator and I recently tried to just disconnect for 1 hour per day, 24 hours would be torture for me. Like with most addictions I think it is better to taper off slowly than going cold turkey and then right back to where you left off.
You see this with new years resolutions where people go balls to the wall with something and then just end up where they started because you can't just put years of mind-conditioning down overnight. It's better to make incremental small changes.
Many of us have achieved this unintentionally when we have fallen ill.
I have also done this many days (mid-20s), when saddled with crippling depression.
Unless you're on the verge of dying, with no one you know around you, don't you at least check your phone once or fall "asleep" with the TV on while sick? Or have some other person who checks in on you in one way or another?
I spent many hot summer nights staring at a ceiling for ~8 hours because I couldn't sleep. Or laying in bed due to migraines. The only thing I would do was get up to use the bathroom.
When I caught H1N1, I was too sick to leave my room for several days and no one was around for ~10 hours at a time.
Those of us with regular migraines are experienced with the "no external stimulation" rule. Checking a phone or hearing someone open the door to check on you just brings a fresh wave of pain. Unfortunately the pain even in quiet times is usually too distracting to get any good thinking done. Sleeping too much makes the headache worse, and anything you eat is unlikely to stay down. The boredom of a migraine day is unlike anything else I've experienced.
When I was much younger and a bit stupider I spent a weekend in jail for neglecting to fix a broken side view mirror on my car. That turned into a "failure to appear before the court," which put me in in jail for a weekend.
What the author of the article describes is almost the same thing, but worse. At least in jail people were chatty and friendly (I know, right?). But there were times when you'd be in a cell by yourself for 6+ hours and that was not fun at all.
I don't recommend that the OP do it the way I did it.
A weekend in jail for an equipment violation, or for the failure to appear? Either way, that’s absurd and really is emblematic of how inefficient the American justice system is.
The weekend in jail was officially for the failure to appear.
I'd been pulled over because my vehicle's registration was expired. The officer didn't issue a ticket for that and just gave me a warning. But the car was also missing a front bumper and had no mirrors. I was issued a "fix-it" ticket for the lack of mirrors. The instructions in the citation for how to resolve the issue were crystal clear and provided a more than generous amount of time to do it.
It would have been very easy to avoid ending up in jail, but me, being a freshly 18 year old kid with undiagnosed (at the time) ADHD just didn't get around to resolving the issue. I could have gone to any auto parts store and spent $20 on a single cheap generic mirror, gone to any police station with my "fix-it" ticket and shown that I'd fixed the issue, paid the $5.00 fee, and been done. But I didn't. I just forgot about it.
When you do that, it's considered to be the same as ignoring court orders. A warrant was issued for my arrest. I was pulled over on a Friday night and spent the weekend waiting for my turn to explain to a judge on the following Monday morning why I ignored the citation.
The initial citation and path to compliance was totally reasonable - maybe too reasonable considering it allowed me to continue driving around with no mirrors in one of the most car-dense metropolises in the world. I could have done the right thing and it wouldn't have gone on any record, or reported to my insurance company, or risked losing my license. Zero consequences except a safer car.
I don't disagree that there are obvious flaws with the American justice system, but this example ranks very low on that list in my opinion.
For what it's worth, the experience of spending a weekend in "adult" jail as an 18 year old changed my life in positive ways. I had lived my life not knowing I had ADHD, and this event was a catalyst in helping get diagnosed. That diagnosis helped make sense of the common refrain of "why are you failing your classes - you have so much potential", and helped me understand I wasn't stupid. Just different.
I don't like to imagine how different my life would be today had I not had that experience and subsequent diagnosis.
Having had a lot of "slow" time (much like the 24 hours described in the post) through my countryside childhood, I don't find it all that difficult to "do nothing" for stints like this.
If I were to replicate the same experiment, I suspect that my issue would not be lack of willpower to abstain from "junk food" stimulation, but rather dealing with the nagging voice in the back of my head constantly reminding me that I'm fettering away the precious little time I have truly to myself — weekends and holidays are the only time when I have the privilege of pouring my full self into the things that I want to work on, rather than the lions' share going toward my job. I can't see "nothing" time becoming a part of my schedule without at least a four-day workweek, and it'd probably work best if I were to shift from full-time to part-time or move to contracting/consulting where I set my own hours.
I've had a lot of luck with achieving some of the clarity of mind the writer mentions by simply habitually writing down ideas and preferring working to make these ideas reality in my spare time over scrolling through reddit and the like. Doing that has freed up mental bandwidth to a degree far greater than I ever thought it could.
I would have slept the entire time. The writer allowed sleeping but didn't sleep "extra" because they weren't tired. I have no such limitations! I'm sure I couldn't sleep 16 hours a day for a week, but I think I could easily squeeze 12-16 hours of sleep into a single 24 hour period.
I'm a little inspired to try this for a couple of hours and see what things my brain wants to think about!
As another person with ADHD, doing something like this but on a way smaller scale, incrementally with longer period of times (I'm up to something like 20 minutes after years of doing this... Started with doing just 1 minute per time) helps me cope when I'm forced to do nothing, like waiting, which I absolutely hate doing.
See it as an exercise, where you'll become stronger over time.
Had you lived 150-200 years ago you'd be exposed to a lot less artificial stimuli than you are now, and that in itself wouldn't have made your life torturous minute-to-minute.
AIUI, one of the hallmarks of ADHD is the constant need for mental stimulation.
Anecdotally, it feels to me like my mind is always moving at the same relative speed, and my biggest struggle is maintaining an acceptable level of stimulation.
Too much, and I become overstimulated and become ineffective: I either jump from focus to focus too quickly to accomplish anything, or I get stuck in "ADHD paralysis" where my mind basically locks up trying to sort through all the inbound data.
Too little, and I get to the point where the feeling of boredom itself becomes overwhelming. That very quickly leads to depression, anxiety, or both.
It's interesting that you say that. I would definitely relate to needing stimulation, although it tends to be lowest common denominator stuff: scrolling, reading headlines, etc... even stuff like eating.
There is a certain type of software development that will really stimulate me, sometimes even overly so, but it's not clear if it slows me down. I think because I'm happier, I'm less prone to noticing.
I often feel paralyzed, and wouldn't say I hate boredom so much; mostly because you can't fail, and my mind wanders. I don't think it's good for me, and can probably lead to, and co-mingle with depression.
It's interesting. I haven't taken the time to read the article. My experience with ADHD is far different. I find myself often doing nothing, although I suppose I often stare at a screen or listen to music.
Doing nothing always sounds great, because there's never work in doing nothing. Even watching TV requires active concentration, who is this, what's their motive, etc. If I start cooking, there will be tons of cleaning. Video games require active participation, plus the same problem as movies.
That said, I can't say I'm too happy doing absolutely nothing. I don't find the time to think / reflect helpful, because I'm constantly doing so.
I am neurotypical (or at least I think I am), and it sounds like literal torture. Like the author intentionally decided to cut off everything just ... because. I get letting the mind wander, but I am not built to be isolated for that long. I'm glad they learned something, but such rigid rules are the stuff of psychologists to test the boundaries of human ability, not a fun experiment.
I agree. All signs point to me not having ADHD, but I've had jobs in the past where there was so much downtime I dreaded coming in to work every day. I'd much rather be doing work I dislike than nothing at all.
I'm not sure where this comes from, but I've been this way as long as I can remember.
I have ADHD, and this sounds somewhat pleasant. I have an almost overwhelming amount of internal stimulus and being able to indulge it for 24 hours could be nice.
This could be an interesting way to measure your true basal metabolic rate. A bathtub, an Arduino and some temperature sensors would get you a number much better than one of those online calculators.
I like the notion of this idea but 24 hours is ridiculous. It just reminds me of times of being so depressed that I didn’t want to do anything.
I feel like there’s a somewhat of a vilification of doing something for fun. Whether it’s video games, television, Reddit etc. We’re trained socially we need to be productive. We need to either be improving ourselves (mentally or physically) or making money.
I’d argue though that these “dopamine hits” aren’t a bad thing if you’re reasonably successful in the rest of your life. People deserve time to veg out.
I haven’t done 24 hours with intention but only accident. But I do believe the brain’s neuroplasticity can show you different sides to yourself if you consciously tried these experiments more gradually.
We have both a fast and slow thinking mode based on the challenges, experiences, and changes in our daily environment. It’s not until we actually experience the slow thinking side that we believe it could work for us as we’re too used to the fast one.
So, he demonstrated that he has the ability to forego (or, since we're being ultra pedantic in this thread, minimize) external stimulation. That's a neat result. What I would like to know is whether he would modify the experiment and make it a practice. It sounded like there were benefits for him: are they worth the expense?
Everyone should take some time to do nothing. Even just 30 minutes a week helps. Just sit and think. Or go for a walk, don't bring your phone or anything. Don't go anywhere or talk to anyone, just walk and let your mind wander. You'll be suprised.
For me, this is what camping is about. Not Glamping. Music? Sure. Books? Heck yes! But connectivity? No. Connecting with nature? Yes. Staring into the sky or lake for hours? Yes. So transformative and refreshing.
I don't think I could do this for a full 24 hours, but I do try to take time everyday to disconnect and sit down and write or doodle on paper. Usually it's just throw away stuff but it is relaxing to me.
Sabbath is more like a special case of this. The purpose of Sabbath was a built-in day of rest for people working essentially. The impetus was of course to use that time for religious reflection. However, at least in Christianity (and I believe Judaism) there's no need to be completely disconnected from any form of stimulus. You attend church, mingle among your congregation, read, enjoy time with family, etc. The author is practicing something more akin to the forced asceticism seen in eastern religions.
Though you bring up a good point. Religion aside, I wonder what would happen to society if it was somehow compulsory to avoid technology for a day. I've found my life to be much more fulfilling avoiding computers these days. But perhaps that the ADHD talking. I am particularly vulnerable to the swaths of distractions available on a modern computer to the point that when I need to get work done I physically disconnect the ethernet cable from my PC unless I absolutely need it.
That would be a very different experience. I record myself pretty often and it changes the experience in the moment because you have this direct line to the future. For example, you can list off 100 things that need to get done. Without microphone or pen and paper, you can only take forward what you remember.
The whole discourse around dopamine fasting is a cross misunderstanding of how brain chemistry works. It is at best a worthless framing and at worst a counter productive meme.
Not really. Dopamine starving is something I've always done. I'm not sure about the science behind it, but it works wonders for me. All pleasure has a law of diminishing returns, you need some sort of build-up of dopamine in your brain for it to work properly again, otherwise you chase higher yielding dopamine activity (because of tolerance) and that's unhealthy.
I've often found myself doom-scrolling, snacking too much, or vaping more than I should be. I've also found myself eating the same comfort food with no pleasure attached to it, it was just mindless snacking and my dopamine 'buildup' was diminished.
This just sounds like a very terrible idea. Very likely that your problems have grown, and you've lost 24h of your exactly once life. If you need a mental break, go for a long walk. It's really that simple. Don't waste a day of your life doing literally nothing.
I think the benefits of idle time are not well appreciated. A period of focused work followed by a period of absolute lack of stimulation is often how the best ideas form, in my experience. When you aren't focused on something your brain is still working, it just frees up resources to consider problems outside the conscious part of your mind. I suspect epiphanies are not random - It feels to me like they are the result of intentional unfocusing.
I could not agree more! I'm surprised at the resistance people have to this idea. I do my best thinking during idle downtime like showering, long drives, or aimlessly walking with my dog. I've always felt like ideas needed to percolate somewhere deep down in my mind, far away from the conscious parts, so that they could burst to the surface fully-formed when my mind had the resources to receive them. I think sitting in a room alone with my thoughts for 24h sounds fun! May give it a try.
> My goal was to do nothing for 24 hours. Like everyone in the modern world, I’m hopelessly addicted to little dopamine bursts provided by algorithmically optimized technology (in my case – Reddit, video games, phone messages, and having music or tv shows in the background), so I wanted to see if I had the willpower to cut off all stimulation for an extended period of time.
Actual science tends to be quite slow though. It is not always practical to wait for robust science to happen before taking any action, especially individual action. Unless, of course, existing actual science refutes the bro science. In this case I’m not sure it does though?
Oh I agree with this. I always read the casual use of the term “dopamine” as simply “happy chemicals”. If we ignore the technical terminology confusion, is the bro science about the human behavioral control system (which uses happy chemicals to steer behavior) still refuted in some way? Genuinely interested.
I don't think it necessarily is sloppy thinking though. To me it's more like - layman reasoning based on everyday experience without formal studies or detailed knowledge of past work. The lack of formal studies means it lacks rigor and shouldn't be treated as factual, but if the area of study is otherwise a vacuum it can be better than nothing. I think the real big issue with it is that its lack of rigor makes it easy to use it to manipulate people, and it's hard to tell whether a given instance is based on good faith or not.
It's not always easy, and when there are holidays overlapping the Sabbath, making it 49 hours, that can sometimes be grating.
That said, we find fulfillment in long walks, community meals, board games, books, sitting around and lazing about, etc.
During these times, i do have amazing conversations (and arguments) with my family. And the space created for us is so rare these days. I can't imagine life with out our weekly ritual.