The Official Guide to Tech Rest

I have this visceral, recurring memory from the early pandemic where I would wake up, make coffee, look at Instagram, and then just kind of black out until 3 or 4 pm. I truly have no recollection of what happened on those days, but I think I was looking at my phone all day, with a few emails here and there.

I think we can all agree that shit got wild in 2020. For about 3 years, if felt like space and time collapsed into each other, and ironically the only thing I really remember from 2021 was that I started this company called Spacetime.

Whenever I would “lose” one of those days, I would always feel a deep pit in my stomach. I absolutely wished I’d spent the time differently, but the day was already gone, so what could even be done?

I can see now that I was completely in a freeze response.

That’s what happens to a lot of us when life feels out of control. You may not even know you’re in a freeze, because it can feel like you’re just “unmotivated” and need to “get it together.” You may think you have a procrastination problem — but procrastination is merely what happens when our bodies get flooded by feelings of discomfort, uncertainty, and ambiguity.

Whatever the reason for the freeze, one thing is clear — it feels bad after a while and it’s hard to get yourself unstuck. And what’s worse is that scrolling your phone seems like a great soothing mechanism when you’re in a freeze. It’s entertaining, it actually does make you feel like you’re doing something, but eventually it feels really bad, like realizing you ate way too much.

I was attached to my screens, and I was using them to numb and disconnect when things felt hard, unclear, and uncomfortable. Once I realized that’s what I was doing, I wanted to make a different choice, but I wasn’t sure how to make a change that would last.

A simple Google search about a “screen time problem” will turn up almost exclusively results for how to navigate this with children. That’s great, because it’s something we need to know, and yet it’s not addressing the bigger issue — we all have to learn how live with something that is designed to be addictive.

Unfortunately getting off my screens wasn’t as much of a willpower problem as I wanted to believe.

It almost seems easier to claim it as a “me problem” than to accept that I am going to have to learn to live with something I’ll have a complicated relationship with. Sure, willpower always plays a role in the decision to choose something else, but chronic technology use overstimulates us, which often puts us in a freeze response… and so we keep scrolling.

At its most basic level, you will have to swap your screen time for something else. This is the part where willpower plays a role — what would you rather be spending your time doing?

It’s widely recognized that the most effective strategy for behavior change is not to drop the behavior cold-turkey; you have to replace the behavior with something else. This is how I came up with Tech Rest.

What is Tech Rest?

Tech Rest is intentional technology downtime, and can take a lot of forms. At the heart of each iteration is the intention to lower the amount of technology stimulation. It can be simple, like hiding your phone for an hour so you can focus, or it can take a more ambitious form such as deleting social media apps off your phone for a weekend. It its core, Tech Rest recognizes that we need to live with technology, but its relentless stimulation disrupts the ability to think and create clearly.

The goal of any Tech Rest is to feel more clear and calm — in mind, body, spirit, creativity, connection with others, the natural world; whatever your intention for it, clearer and calmer is always the goal. From my perspective, we have a lot of big things we need to change in this world, and we’re not going to do it by being overstimulated on our phones.

I did my first Tech Rest weekend in 2022. My screen time was around 7-8 hours a day, and I was constantly wondering where the time went and why I felt so scattered and unmotivated — long story short, my phone use was a problem and I was giving myself the ick.

I decided to take a Tech Rest from Friday night to Sunday night one weekend, and I never looked back. I actually just turned my phone off (yes — fully off!) around 8pm and powered it back up around 11am the next morning. I could not believe how clear headed I felt, how unbothered I was, and how amazing the whole thing felt. But, I also had to get back to the real world where I did need to be plugged in, so I began thinking of new ways I could use this idea.

For my next tech rest adventure, I prepared a bit more— I deleted social media apps off my phone for two days, went to the library, had some crafts on deck, and a low stimulation movie to watch on Saturday night. I didn’t need it to be some extreme pioneer woman experiment, but my goal was to cultivate a vibe that felt more like 2012 than 2022.

I could not believe how much more slowly the time passed when I was off my phone.

It was shocking, and I did have to fight off a self-critical voice that wanted to make me feel bad about my screen time. At the risk of sounding hyperbolic, that weekend changed my life. It put the power back in my hands and reminded me that I don’t need to feel like I’m a victim of my phone.

Tech Rest is an essential part of my wellbeing now. It’s right up there with getting enough exercise and eating my vegetables. Too much time on screens magnifies my anxiety, depression, and ADHD symptoms, but Tech Rest was the first thing that really made me see it all more clearly and showed me how much overstimulation plays a role.

It’s become much easier to integrate Tech Rest throughout the week too. Some days I’ll be on screens a lot or I might be feeling particularly anxious, and these are clues that I might need some Tech Rest to reconnect with myself and recalibrate my nervous system. Usually I’ll just take my social media apps off my phone for the rest of the night, and it usually does the trick.

Here are 3 ways to experiment with Tech Rest:

Next Steps

After a few years of engaging with this practice, I see my relationship with technology very differently. In fact, I never thought about it as something I had any control over at all. Now, Tech Rest is a mode I can switch into when I’m feeling overwhelmed, overstimulated, tired, or anxious, and I know I’ll feel refreshed on the other side.

The impact that Tech Rest has had on my creativity, productivity, motivation, and overall mental health is undeniable, and I hope you give it a try.