Put down the technolgoy, it's time for a digital detox.

Last Saturday I didn’t turn my laptop on.

No checking my blog stats first thing in the morning, no Facebook updates, no Pinterest, no checking work or personal emails.

Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

I cleaned the house in the morning, went to the hairdressers (I’m blonde again just in time for my trip to New York) and went for sunset drinks at a gorgeous new bar on the edge of the Brisbane river. Then it was off to dinner and home by 10 pm.

Still the laptop stayed off.

It felt pretty good actually.

I figure one of two thoughts are flying through your head right now. If you don’t work online, you’re probably thinking I’m slightly crazy and need to get out more (you might have a valid point there by the way).

If you do work online you might be thinking, ‘I need to do that more often’ or be asking yourself, ‘When was the last time I did that?’

The truth is before last Saturday, I can’t remember the last time I didn’t turn on my laptop every day.

I realize to a non-blogger this might sound a bit extreme.

But let me put it another way when was the last time you didn’t use your mobile phone all day?

Leaving it somewhere by accident and not being able to use it, doesn’t count by the way.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, working from home makes it much easier to quickly turn on the laptop and start working.

Being single and not having children certainly makes a difference as well. I don’t have any constraints on my weekend time, except for the ones I impose on myself, so I can work or play whenever I want.

I have been observing other bloggers and business owners lately.

I’ll give you an example. This Monday was a public holiday in Brisbane. As someone self-employed and ramping up her business, I rarely take public holidays off at the moment. Don’t get me wrong, I do take some of them just not all of them.

When I first started working for myself, I wondered if other people either starting out or already established did the same.

I began to notice how many people with their own business were still working on Facebook and Twitter on public holidays. Granted many of their tweets and updates were automated but I noticed a lot were not. They were talking to each other and to my knowledge, I don’t think there is an automated system for this sort of conversation yet (if there is, by all means, let me know).

Technology has become such a big part of our lives (which as a blogger I am happy about) that sometimes we need to make a conscious decision to step away from it, even if it is only for a short time.

The interesting part is on the day I didn’t check my results, some of them did incredibly well. One of the stats I was following tripled during my day offline, while another quadrupled.

I’m starting to think I should take a full day off more often!

With my blogging conference in New York fast approaching, I don’t anticipate many days where I won’t be working on my laptop leading up to the event.

Take that back, I do have a birthday coming up this month and I might just take the whole day off.  Then again, I could just quickly check my blog before heading off to brunch…

No matter how much you love working on the Internet and love blogging, there are times when you need to step away from it.

Put down the technology and have a digital detox, even if it’s just for one day. You deserve it.

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