On occasion, being oblivious has its rewards.
For many of us, we are connected souls whose careers and/or happiness are satiated by a medium easily accessible by devices that a single hand almost autonomously clutches.
If you're like me, you may attempt the occasional self-imposed disconnect -- putting the smartphone or tablet in another room, shutting it off or even leaving it at home. You may even try something like a few of my friends tried when they committed to the Unplugged Project's "24 Hours Unplugged", designed to be a group accountability activity. But like Kary Delaria admitted after her failed attempt at "24 Hours Unplugged", disconnecting intentionally is difficult.
I admittedly love my smartphone and iPad and they do their jobs well. They are a portal to information anywhere, anytime -- something for which my personality is ravenous (my DVR is full of documentaries on obscure events in history, scentific peculiarities, and other shows which help my wife fall asleep quickly). When I bought my orignial Droid, I left the store after purchasing it and realized that I had never even tested the phone functionality. I bought it because it connected me and I find uses for these tools everyday.
Disconnecting me from the world of information and social connectivity is no easy task. The phone is almost always on my hip. It contains a set of predefined ringtones and dings that easily differentiate between texts, tweets, Facebook messages and email. I can communicate through all of these means with friends and family, but also stay connected to work email when away from the office.
Most of us don't have a masochistic desire to check work email while away from the office spending time with family, but rather many of us feel that if we don't, some calamity of epic proportions will occur and the only way that anyone will notify us of said calamity is via work email. There's an assumption that no one would even remotely think to pick up the phone in a crisis and call the very same smartphone if immediate involvement was needed. Email is "fire and forget", yet we have conditioned ourselves to feel obligated to check on the "firing" to see if the munitions are important.
"Sweet Oblivious Antidote"
But a wonderous combination of events occurred over my recent vacation that opened my eyes to a possible solution for throttling "weisure time" that afflicts many of us on vacation.
Early in my vacation last week, I happened upon the rare opportunity to be involved in watching endangered sea turtles being hatched and released on the Gulf Coast. A volunteer, who lives in the neighborhood in which we were staying, was tending to a nest on the beach and mentioned that a nest nearby was due to hatch any night, usually between 9pm and 1am. After talking for a bit, he said if I'd give him my number, he'd call me if they started to hatch and we could come watch. Perfect.
That night, I put my smartphone by my bed and plugged in the charger. As I did, a tweet came in and a notification sounded. That was followed by an email notification. I realized that I really needed to shut all of my "notifications" off, all but for the ringer of the phone otherwise the cacaphony would keep us awake all night. A few settings changes and none of my email accounts, Twitter, Facebook or texts would cause a visual or audible notification on the phone from that point forward. I read all of the emails, tweets and messages that had come in and all of my "new message" icons disappeared.
And I went to bed.
The call didn't come in that night.
The next day, we did the usual beach and pool activities. No indication of impending turtle hatching then either.
And for several days, this same routine continued as I waited for a possible call.
Somewhere around the fourth day of our trip, it hit me -- I had not checked my work email for 4 days. I wasn't getting email. A brief panic ensued before I realized that I wasn't being notified that I even had email, and therefore I hadn't been diving into my inbox.
There was no envelope icon on the windowshade of my Droid.
No balloon indicating I had a text.
No Seesmic owl looking at me.
I had willingly made myself oblivious and it was wonderful and as it should be on vacation. I was not feeling compelled to communicate and this was the defining difference.
In this accidental experiment, I realized that carrying a smartphone around might be more about the ability to react to the world. It's about trying to not miss out on an event, conversation or situation from which me and my phone are currently removed.
Sure, I could've turned the phone off completely. But in doing so, I would have easily recognized that the channel was closed. But by turning off notifications, I simply fooled myself into thinking that the channel was still open, but that no one needed me.
It was a mind game accidentally played.
My Challenge to You
Try becoming "digitally oblivious" sometime. Take your phone with you on vacation, but turn off every notification for any service you have. Just because you become oblivious doesn't mean that you've left society. The difference is that you're not at its whim and it can be amazingly gratifying.
And next time? Maybe for the next "24 Hours Unplugged", we shoot for "24 Hours Oblivious" and see how we do.
(Photo by Robert S. Donovan)
