How To Do a Digital Detox

Plus, 10 tips to help you get started.

A few years ago, Laura Mae Martin, Google’s productivity advisor, issued a challenge to her colleagues: For one night a week, completely unplug — no phones, no iPads, no computers, just a good ol’ fashioned analog evening.

Martin instituted a Tuesday night tech ban in her own household and found that with her phone silenced, freed from digital distractions, her social interactions felt richer and more fulfilling — and she was more energized throughout the rest of the week. Her fellow Googlers reported a similar effect.

There’s a growing body of evidence that suggests our smartphones may be interfering with our sleep, our relationships, our sense of self-esteem, and our creativity. But going cold turkey isn’t realistic for most of us, nor is it advised that we all throw our phones into the sea. What most experts recommend is becoming more mindful of how often we’re checking Instagram and cutting back; Martin’s “No Tech Tuesdays” are a good place to start.

In the following excerpt from Martin’s new book, Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing, the productivity pro shares how she pulled off this digital detox, how “No Tech Tuesdays” became an annual tradition at Google, and 10 tips to help you get started.

If you’ve heard of FOMO, you know it means: the fear of missing out. But increasingly popular recently is JOMO: the joy of missing out. The idea is that sometimes we are actually even happier when we miss that email, text, podcast, or plans we didn’t really want to follow through on. In a blog post on the Psychology Today website, Kristen Fuller, M.D., wrote that “JOMO allows us to be who we are in the present moment, which is the secret to finding happiness. When you free up that competitive and anxious space in your brain, you have so much more time, energy, and emotion to conquer your true priorities.”

As mentioned throughout this book, the quiet mind is where the magic happens. It’s where new ideas are created, old ideas are restructured, energy points are gained, and information is absorbed and processed. All our noisy devices have intruded on much of that quiet time. Hundreds of years ago, humans would accomplish daylong journeys on horseback with nothing to distract them besides views of nature, the open air, and the company of others. Today, we can barely get through a dinner with a friend without picking up our phone.

I truly believe that the journey to a more intentional, productive life starts with an examination of your relationship with technology. Are you giving yourself an hour of mental silence a day? Or are you cramming every down moment with a quick check of social media or the news? Are you waking up to your day, or waking up to your email? Are you spending time with your own kids only to catch yourself watching a social media video of someone else’s kids? Technology is certainly helpful and bridges so many gaps in our lives, but it’s important to take a look at how it can work for you instead of against you.

The Challenge

I’m not one for radical New Year’s resolutions (I believe small changes over time are more effective), but a while back, my husband and I decided we would start the new year by making a small change: Try to put away devices between dinner and bedtime one night a week. We started our own No-Tech Tuesday Night, where we’d find activities outside of technology like board games, puzzles, spending time outdoors, or new creative hobbies.

Because the exercise required minimal commitment, was easy to keep up with, and ended up being fun and relaxing, we stuck with it for an entire year. Those Tuesdays ended up being some of our favorite nights. Technology is so beneficial in helping us work, bringing us together with others, and facilitating ways to accomplish more. But even for computers running in uptime, rebooting and powering down occasionally are crucial to long-term operational success. The same is true of our Uptime — one night a week powering down without devices reboots our brains, gives us more energy points, and sets us up for long-term productivity success. By practicing the JOMO ideology just one night a week, you make room for richer in-person connections, deeper reflection during alone time, better sleep, and a more refreshed morning the following day.

My own success with this weekly tradition made me want to lead a similar effort with others at Google. I took some of my own advice from the last few chapters. I knew that if I wanted to start a movement it needed to begin with:

A small change: Hardly anyone wants a total overhaul, like turning in their smartphone for a flip phone. I had to Swiss-cheese it and decided to focus on a manageable and achievable goal, like turning off the phone for a few hours.

A when:then routine: “Pick one night a week” is so much less powerful than No-Tech Tuesday. It’s catchy; it gives direction, rhythm, and structure. When it’s Tuesday, then I do something other than tech that evening. I chose Tuesday night, mostly because Tech and Tuesday both start with a T!

A natural start: The middle of July might feel random to start an initiative like this, but the
beginning of the year could feel more natural. People are usually evaluating their productivity and willing to make a bigger change since it’s the start of something new. I decided the challenge would begin in January.

These insights led me to start the annual No-Tech Tuesday Night challenge at Google: On Tuesdays in January and February (or one other night of the week of your choosing), give up digital devices and screens just from dinner to bedtime. For the last five years, over 2,500 people have accepted the challenge annually, and the results have been amazing.

Almost all the feedback I hear is that it’s hard at first — but worth it in the end. Over the past five years, key feedback themes include comments that participants:

Are surprised by the number of times they go to pick up and check their phone
Can’t believe how much more time they seem to have that evening
Sleep much better at night
Have richer human connections that wouldn’t have happened when technology was present
Are encouraged by how much teammates/managers/colleagues/friends were not only supportive but joined in
Find themselves much more energetic the next day
Finally find time for creative hobbies
See that by putting aside a problem they need to work on for one night, it actually results in better solutions the following day
Realize that their families, especially children, love it
Plan to incorporate it long term or expand on the challenge

I was overjoyed, but not surprised, to find that those participating in the challenge reported that it had made a difference in their overall stress, well-being, and performance, and that the majority of them planned to continue it. Some participants have been doing the challenge for five years and have kept up with every single Tuesday night since the first year I held it.

While the quantitative feedback speaks volumes, the qualitative feedback says even more. Some of my favorite quotes:

After four weeks in, I finally understood what the author of Winnie the Pooh meant by “Doing nothing often leads to the very best of something.”

My sleep improved, I got great ideas and inspiration, and I feel amazing. Tuesday is my new favorite day! 🙂

This challenge also provided an opportunity for self-reflection. It made me realize how much time I spend on my devices and how easy it is to get caught up in the never-ending cycle of scrolling, refreshing, and checking notifications.

I was working on a work problem I was trying to solve when the alarm went off to start No Tech Tuesday evening. Normally I would have spent hours poring over the problem trying to solve it, but I unplugged instead. I woke up Wednesday morning and thought of the best solution — I’m convinced it was because I let my brain rest.

Unexpectedly, my kids love it. I realized the main reason they are on their devices in the evenings is because I’m on mine. I sat and did a puzzle with my 13-year-old son and we had a meaningful conversation, which can be rare these days.

Ten Tips for Digital Detox

Maybe a full tech-free evening still feels like too much commitment to you. That’s okay. You can Swiss-cheese it even further and just find small habits throughout your week or day to feel some of these deeper connections and moments of clarity. Here are ten of my favorite tips for taking small steps for digital detox:

Put your phone to bed, ideally at least an hour before your bedtime. Stick to it and set an alarm to remember to put your phone away, maybe on its charger.
Give your phone a bedroom outside of your bedroom. Put it on loud if you need to hear it for emergencies. If you can’t put it outside your room, at least put it across the room so you have to make an extra effort to retrieve it.
Try to do one thing before picking your phone up in the morning. Make your coffee, take your shower, or get dressed before you touch your phone.
Find short windows of time to leave your phone behind. Leave it behind while you go on a short walk, while you put your kids to bed, or while you eat lunch. Whatever you can do to give your brain clear moments to give the other things you need to think about time to “seep in” to your brain.
The crowding-out method: Tell yourself you have to do something for 15 minutes before engaging with tech in the evenings. For example, tell yourself on weeknights, before you watch TV, that you have to knit for 15 minutes. Keep it short enough that it feels easy to stick with.
Turn your background image on your phone or computer to something neutral, such as a picture of grass or a solid white background. Why? Because it’s boring to pick up an empty blue screen. There’s less of a jolt of happiness to experience versus when you see that cute picture of your dog. Going further, you can set your phone to grayscale, which also reduces the temptation to pick it up.
Trade phones with your spouse/partner/roommate while you watch TV or eat dinner. Have you ever checked someone else’s social media or email? It’s boring.
Delete social media and news apps on your phone and only view them on your computer. Making them slightly less accessible will prevent you from using them out of habit, and having to scroll with your mouse instead of your thumb makes them less enticing. Alternatively, you can set a schedule on your mobile device of when you’re able to access them or impose time limits.
Use the currency method: Earn a minute of screen time for every minute spent outside (our pediatrician insists on this for kids in her book!). Tell yourself you need to be outside for an hour first to earn an hour of TV.
Consider some of these other things to help reduce your dependence on your phone: Get an old-fashioned alarm clock, use a home phone, or get a lockbox for your phone that unlocks only with a timer for the phone’s “bedtime.”

Digital detoxing — even just that one evening each week — creates the mental space we need to thrive in our work and in our lives and to connect socially and emotionally with our colleagues, our families, and ourselves. It lifts the brain fog and provides a much-needed reboot, preventing burnout and fostering Uptime. You may find that once you’ve taken these small steps, you can make bigger moves away from devices in even more dramatic ways throughout the week and that when you are using your devices, you’re using them in a better, more intentional way. Even the smallest change can make a big difference. Another one of those small changes you can make is starting your morning in a different way to control the direction of your day.

Excerpted with permission from the book Uptime: A Practical Guide to Personal Productivity and Wellbeing by Laura Mae Martin. Copyright 2024 by Laura Mae Martin. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.