Unplug Yourself This Holiday Season

The holiday season is a great time to devote yourself to some good old fashioned rest and relaxation. That means taking time off work (if you can), spending time with the family (if you’ve got one), and shunning the outside world’s incessant pleas for your attention (totally possible!). The key is detaching yourself from our 21st century slave-drivers: devices.

We at Big Think have written a ton on this subject over the past few years. It’s become a sort of cultural phenomenon, this dream to achieve technological freedom. Here are some articles to help you get started:

The Value of Unplugging and Doing One Thing at a Time

Don’t Unplug From the Web. Learn to Plug in Better

Customizing Your Tech to Reduce Your Stress

Germany Ponders Anti-Stress Law Limiting Out-of-Office Contact

Too Plugged In? Tools to Improve Your Life.

The team over at Fast Company has some keen advice for those ambitious folks seeking to unplug for the next two weeks. Some of the strategies can be simply put: plan ahead, give your associates prior warning, etc. Others are more extreme. One example is to set a filter on your inbox so that everything deletes. Everyone who sends a message gets a response explaining your e-mail sabbatical and a message reading, “if this is really an emergency, here’s my mom’s phone number. Call her.”

Take a look at the video on the Fast Company website (linked again below) and let us know what your strategies are for unplugging.