24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week

The good news is that we can do a lot to change our behavior. Yes, the outside forces of the world will constantly tempt us to be animals, with sexy billboards, violent media, sugar everywhere, and new tech toys, but we have the agency to say no. The more we resist, the more we can strengthen the “resistance” part of the brain.

Søren Kierkegaard put it: “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”

“soft skills”—cooperation, collaboration, intuition, empathy, storytelling, connection, creativity, gratitude, and the desire to nurture—all

You become skilled at any work—carpentry, music, or gardening—by practicing. Tech Shabbat gives you the opportunity to practice whatever it is you want to get better at, even if it’s just being.

“The Productivity of Working Hours” showed that the relationship between productivity and hours worked is nonlinear, with productivity actually decreasing over fifty work hours per week.

the Shabbat rituals. I have always loved the line from author Stephen R. Covey, “I think the most significant work we’ll do in our whole life, in our whole world is done within the four walls of our home.”

One recent study revealed that children ages eight to twelve spend three times as much time on screens as they do playing outside. Adults, meanwhile, are in nature fewer than five hours a week.

While we’re asleep, our brains actually shrink in a process called “synaptic homeostasis.”

thinking about pulling out cell phones as contagious, like yawning. If one person takes their phone out, everyone else does, too. And even when the phone is facedown and off, its very presence distracts everyone around. It’s today’s version of being affected by secondhand smoke.

When Ken is teaching at UC Berkeley, he asks his students who insist on taking notes on their laptops (which can be less effective for comprehension than taking notes by hand) to sit in a separate area. He knows that even if you don’t bring a laptop to class, if the person in front of you does, you’ll retain less of the lecture.