How a digital detox changed my productivity

How something so small in life can truly change so much.

When I was told to give up some aspect of the digital world for five days in one of my graduate courses at Quinnipiac University, I had some ideas to what I could give up but something like this, I have never done before. I thought about how I could give up watching shows and movies on streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu and HBO Max. As someone who loves to watch various shows on all of those platforms, I knew that is what I could do. I never would have thought how in doing that, my view of time and how I would go about my days would change and how my productivity would be greatly enhanced.

Without those streaming platforms I found myself spending more time with my friends and parents and it made me feel like I was able to do other things to be more productive. As someone who always tries to do homework and assignments well in advance of the due date, I was able to get work done quicker and make more prioritization in my head of other things I needed to get done.

I knew I would still want to have the apps downloaded on my iPhone and Mac but only to track the screen time and see how many times I would go on them and I was able to avoid them all in the five days which did surprise me. I knew it would be hard but understanding and realizing that I could replace them with other things that I normally do did not come as a challenge. As a very busy person, it was pretty easy to find other things to do with my time and not spend it watching TV shows or movies.

I feel like I always need to be doing something but when I do have free time it would be watching TV shows or movies so I feel as though yes, I could have picked something harder, but I think this was a good pick for me as it made me more productive and I was able to learn how to utilize and understand time better.