The story of a guy who stopped using gadgets after 8 pm for a week – Source TOI
Rohan Verma, a self-confessed techno-holic, was getting desperate to break his before bed time habit of vagrant browsing on his tablet and mobile phone. He works at an MNC for an 8 to 5 shift, a routine that requires him to get up latest by 6 in the morning. Needing at least a 7 hour sleep, he should ideally be asleep by 11 PM. That seldom happened but then he decided to change his life for the better. He decided to stay off gadgets after 8 PM every night for a week and see if that works for him. He shares his journey with us.
Today is the first day of my challenge. The clock strikes 8 and I put my phone on flight mode. I turn off everything, including my fitbit, and put them aside. I have my dinner around half past 8. Surprisingly, I am in bed at 10, about to doze off.
I wake up to a long list of messages and a few missed calls. I had a better sleep last night and the long list of messages make me feel good. Today, when I reach home, I am looking forward for the clock to strike 8. When it does, I was in the middle of a chat. Somehow, I wind it up by 8:10 and turn my phone off. A similar routine follows.
A new thing that’s happening for two days now is that I am having my dinner with my family, instead of alone in my room while watching something on my tab. That feels good. I came back around 11:30 with friends and am about to doze off.
I turn everything off by 8. I have dinner and go for a walk for the first time without music in my ears. I can hear the katydids and crickets chirping. This feels great. I come home feeling very relaxed only to doze off.
Today evening I have an office party to attend. It is past 8. I am not sure that if I am not the one clicking the photos then will it count as the use of a gadget or not. But I make sure that I turn my data off and do not respond to any other call. I reach home around 1 and sleep.
It’s an off day and I go out to a friend’s place. We have fun the entire day. I reach home by 8. I wonder why I didn’t tell my friends about it. I guess this is exactly what the problem with us is: We are not taking the technological handicap seriously. I take dinner and sleep.
I stay home the entire day, stuffed in my bed. I spend the day reading a book, hardly looking at my phone twice or thrice the entire day. It is evening and I go for a bush walk. Relaxed by the natural sounds, I come home, have dinner and doze off.
Conclusion : Monday felt the best day of my life since a long time. I had been sleeping well. I didn’t need my gadgets around all the time. I had a sense of accomplishment and now I knew that life actually felt better with lesser use of technology. Now, it’s not a thumb rule that I will not use my gadgets after 8 PM but I will use them as less as possible, almost negligibly at night. Life gets simpler this way.
