Self Development
Off Grid Mindset — Stop Wasting Time Online And Reclaim 38,758 Hours Now
Reduce your screen time and improve your mood
Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it, you can never get it back. — Harvey Mackay
The average adult spends between 2 and 6 hours online each day.
I’m 37 years old today, and I have every intention of living to be at least 90 years old. From today onwards until the day I turn 90 years old, I have 19,379 days left.
Over the course of 19,379 days, spending 2 hours online each day would accumulate to a total of 38,758 hours spent online.
Now think about what else you could do with that time.
No internet access
When we first moved off the grid, getting internet access sorted for our property was a mission.
Conventional options were either impossible or ridiculously expensive. Starlink, for example, wasn’t possible due to the very high trees surrounding our property. There’s also no cellphone reception, so mobile internet wasn’t an option either.
This meant that for our first few weeks off the grid, we lived without internet or cellphone reception. We had some reception if we walked up a hill nearby, enough to send a Whatsapp message and stay in touch with our overseas family, but not enough to binge-watch YouTube videos or download podcasts.
What I initially thought would be a nightmare turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Sure, there were moments when I craved to know what my favourite YouTubers were doing or when I reached for my phone without thinking.
The overall effects were incredibly positive. In just a matter of days, I noticed the following things:
- My sleep improved
- I felt less stressed and anxious
- I was more productive
- I did more exercise — yes, I walked up that hill a lot
- I felt more creative and started writing again
- I hate to admit this one, but I was a nicer and friendlier person to those around me
The impact of limiting screen time
I’m not alone in noticing these positive effects when limiting screen time.
An article in Nature in 2022 discusses how people noticed an increase in well-being when reducing their use of screens. Participants in a study reduced their use to less than 7 hours per week. I’m unsure if that includes screen time for work purposes because, unfortunately, my job requires me to use a computer, so I’m looking at a screen for more than 7 hours per day.
As expected, participants in that study noticed better moods and better overall well-being.
The surprising finding, at least for me, is that reducing screen time lowered their stress hormones. For me, that shows that reducing your screen time makes you feel better, not just on a self-reported survey, but truly at a biological level.
Social Media
The study in Nature covered all sorts of screen time (including TV) and showed positive effects. However, the real issue lies not just with screen time but also with our use of Social Media.
It’s no secret that Social Media has an impact on our well-being.
Max Fisher, in his book The Chaos Machine, talks about the negative impact of Facebook and YouTube on people’s mental health. He goes on to talk about the effects when people take a break from social media: “The changes were dramatic. People who deleted Facebook became happier, more satisfied with their lives, and less anxious. The emotional change was equivalent to 25 to 40 percent of the effect of going to therapy — a stunning drop for a four-week break.”
He describes in his book how posts on social media compete for our attention and how the amount of posts we see each day has grown exponentially.
The book explains how the algorithm favours negativity because those are the posts that get the most engagement. That’s what scares me the most.
Once I reduced my screen time, I stopped feeling the ongoing need to check every post on social media, which, in turn, reduced my anxiety. Because I didn’t feel so stressed about “keeping up to date,” I was able to engage more fully with those around me.
There also appears to be a mechanism related to the use of social media before bed, which is what I used to do. I would go to bed and then endlessly scroll Reddit before falling asleep.
While for years I was told it was the blue light of the screen keeping me up, I have since read interesting research that sheds a different light. The study showed that it’s the interactive component of social media keeping your brain engaged. Thus, just watching a bit of TV before bed would be less harmful than actively scrolling Reddit and commenting on the different posts.
When I stopped doing that, the pressure lifted, and I was able to relax more in the evenings.
Enjoying interactions without the internet
My husband and I spent our evenings in front of the fire, talking and laughing. We read books and magazines, went for evening walks, and played games with our pet parrot, Croky. We taught him a new trick: he can now give high fives and does them… every single second of the day.
One evening, we spent an hour trying to come up with the names of different types of birds that lived in the bush around us. Normally, we would have googled them, and it would have been a five-minute conversation.
It took us an hour. Our memory isn’t that great, but that’s a different story.
Sometimes I miss those times when we were young and you had an actual conversation or discussion about something without immediately resorting to google to settle the argument.
It felt effortless and simple.
I don’t think I’ve laughed so much in years.
What I’ve learnt
Of all the things I have learnt since going off the grid, this is by far the most important lesson I want to share. It’s also the one I still struggle with the most.
But I’m committed to making it work and reducing my screen time. The quality time with my family (hubby and bird Croky) has been so valuable.
Here are some tips that have worked for me:
- Setting specific goals: Decide how much time you want to spend on screen time. Use the screen timers and tracking apps that come with your phone. Both Android and iPhone allow you to set timers for specific apps. Just don’t change the timer when you decide to spend more time on an app like I sometimes do.
- Forest App: I’m not sponsored in any way, this app just really helped me. When you want to stay off your phone, you set a timer in this app. During that time, you grow a little pixel tree in your forest. If you use your phone before the time runs out, your tree dies. For some reason, this really worked for me.
- Screen-free zones or times: Dedicate specific areas in your house or specific times in your day when screens are not allowed. For us, that’s the dinner table, for example. At dinner time, we spend time reflecting on our day, and screens are not allowed.
- Stop using your phone before bed: this is a big one for me. Because social media requires you to be interactive, it has been shown to increase arousal and impact our sleep more than any other type of internet use before sleep. So, pick up an ebook instead and put the phone down.
- Do a digital detox: Going cold turkey and not having any access to the internet was a real game changer for me. It showed me how I could be and just how much it impacted me not to use my phone as much. When I’m struggling and my phone use is increasing again, I can always tap back into that feeling to remind me of the effects of reducing my screen time.
- Find an accountability buddy: Share your screen time reduction goals with friends or family members and encourage each other to stay on track. Having someone to hold you accountable, in my case my husband, usually increases the chances of success.
Even if you only reduce your screen time by 1 or 2 hours each day, you will win so much time.
They say it takes 10,000 hours to develop a new skill to mastery.
I started writing again this year.
What are you going to do with the 38,758 hours you’ve just won back?
This story is part of a series on cultivating an off-grid mindset, without having to buy a cabin in the woods. You can read some background on how this series came to life here:
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