Five Tips to Manage Technology For a More Relaxing (Spring Break) Vacation

It's the time of year when many people take a week off for a spring break. Perhaps to a warmer location, a ski trip to the mountains, or just a staycation. Minnetonka students will be on break at the end of the month. Regardless of what you may do, consider disconnecting and possibly going off the grid completely to make your time off even more relaxing. If you have kids, help them to do so as well. Consider the following:

1. Decrease or fast completely from social media for the week. Rather than spending time monitoring what others are doing on their vacation or posting about what you are doing, just enjoy your own time. If this is too hard for you (or your kids), try smaller amounts of time away from social media- perhaps limit time to a couple check-ins per day. While you're at it, talk about FOMO.
   
   
2. Take a break from--or at least not continually monitor--work email. Most likely less than 20% of the email you receive needs your attention anyway. Personal email can wait, too, if not a week at least not more than a couple glances/week. Consider breaks from texting and Snapchat, too, perhaps using Do Not Disturb to create free times and help your kids experience this, too.
   
   
3. Turn off notifications and interruptions on your phone. Remember that each buzz or beep distracts you from relaxing and being present with those around you. Turn off the badge app icons displaying missed messages and alerts (the red circle with the white number in the top right corner of each app). These are designed to get your attention and cause you to open the app to see what you're missing--FOMO again.
   
   
4. Don't check the news. Lately on vacations I've eliminated my reading of the news and avoided apps/sites with headlines. Rather than being discouraged by what's happening, I've found it freeing to not be in the know. Try it. Encourage kids to do this, too, whether it is news, Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat.
   
   
5. Spend time with friends and family in conversation without technology in use. Set aside time to play games. Show your kids ways to have fun without needing micro entertainment, apps and video games filling their downtime. If you don't normally keep tech away from meal times, a vacation in a new location is a great place to introduce this practice.

Hopefully these tips will help you better enjoy an upcoming vacation or time off. If you can't get completely off the grid, hopefully you can at least decrease the time you spend on it so you can enjoy a vacation more. Of course, you can do all of these at other times, too, such as an evening or a weekend. It's often easier to implement changes in small increments, but getting a vacation away from devices can be a great catalyst for change. Let me know if you try any of these tips or have your own, too.

Read more about this topic through these related posts: 

• Tech Free Family Dinners Focused on Gratitude
• Family Fun Day- Making Quality Time for Relationships
• Easy New Year's Resolution: Add 40 Vacation Days to 2019 by Cutting Back on Social Media
• Update: Seven Month (220 Day) Facebook Fast = 18 Hours of Additional Time
• 86+ Day Facebook Fast: You're either busy living or busy dying
• Five Ways to Raise Digitally Balanced JOMO (Joy of Missing Out) Kids ina FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) World
• Family Fun Day- Making Quality Time for Relationships
• New Year's Resolution: 3 Ways to Cut Back on Digital Distractions
• Apple Screen Time a Huge Win for Everyone, Including Parents!
• Technology & Relationships- 15 minute interview
• Crazy Busy: You Are Letting the Screen Strangle Your Soul
• My First Apple Watch: Solution to Distraction?
• 10 Days Without Email
• Be Where Your Feet Are: #RealTime with Those Around You
• One to Watch: Center for Humane Technology- Realign Technology with Humanity's Best Interest
• K-12 School Years: The Opportune Time to Learn Digital Balance
• The Difference Between Educational & Entertainment Screen Time
• The Digital Media Diet: Differing Types of Entertainment Screen Time
• Twitch 101 for Parents & Educators: Watching A Stream of Gamers & More IRL
• What Story Are Your Kids Living Out in Fortnite? The Importance of Avoiding Violent Video Games
• Over 1/2 of Parents Keep Digital Devices Out of Kids' Bedrooms Overnight
• Apple iPad/iPhone Guided Access & Restrictions Available for Teachers & Parents
• #DeviceFreeDinner: Will Ferrell PSAs on Common Sense Media
• Curbi: Great Option for Filtering and Monitoring an iPhone/iPad/iPod
• What's in a Name? Digital Health & Wellness vs. Digital Citizenship 
• The Teenage Brain +Dementia of the Preoccupied
• Raising Digitally Balanced Kids: Cybersafety Resources
• Just 3 Taps to See Your Total Time of Phone/iPad App Use per Day/Week
• 3 Ways to Cut Back on Digital Distractions
• Parenting in the Digital Age: Finding a Healthy Balance Part 1
• Parenting in the Digital Age: Finding a Healthy Balance, Part 2
• If My Parents Only Knew: My NBC KARE 11 Interview About Kids, Tech & Parenting
• 10 Parenting Tips For a Tech Healthy Summer with Kids
• Best Age for a Kid to Get a Cellphone with Internet Access 
• Techcognition in an Attention Economy
• Tip #7 for a Tech Healthy Summer: Spend Time Off the Grid
• Over 1/2 of Parents Keep Digital Devices Out of Kids' Bedrooms Overnight
• Happy Sweet 16! Now You Can Snapchat. (34% of Parents Don't Allow It Until High School.)
• Quick & Easy Cell Phone Web Filtering for Kids (*and limitations)
• Parenting with Purpose in the Digital Age... It's Complicated
• Parenting in the Digital Age Part 2: How Much Should Parents Snoop?
• District Digital Citizenship Committee: Tonka Schools Campaign to Raise Awareness of Cyber Safety at Home
• What's in a Name? Digital Health & Wellness vs. Digital Citizenship 
• Top Tips for Tech Healthy Kids: Raising Digitally Balanced Kids
• Digital Mentors Needed: Distracted Parents Disengaged With Children
• Single Tasking to Combat Self-Induced Distraction and Infomania

10 Days Without Email- Only 20% Matters

In my continued efforts to cut back on digital distractions (see my 2015 New Year's Resolution and other past related posts), I recently had the opportunity to step away from my work email. I was on vacation for six work days, so I turned off work email on my devices and didn't open it until this morning. It's a simple as going to your settings for email as pictured and turning off the specific email account(s). I know some people even do this on the weekends. I haven't yet. I think turning off email and alerts on weekends/holidays would be a nice added feature in a future operating system.

In the past I've wondered how much email is truly important and needs my attention. This brief hiatus actually gave me the opportunity to tally up my inbox and discover that 20% of my emails really required my attention (31/157=19.7%). Below are the details.

If teachers and students were in school right now I realize that these numbers would look different. Also, my colleagues knew I was gone and didn't send me messages. I know I'd have more emails that mattered and required action/attention if I had run these numbers in September instead of the end of June. But I also know I would have received even more sales spam, newsletters, and would have been cc'd on many more messages. So perhaps the overall totals would all increase but the percent that truly matter wouldn't change much.  

As I look to ways to decrease distractions, I'm thinking of unsubscribing to even more newsletters and bloggers. I want to stay on top of some things and be aware of news and events, but each time these hit my inbox they become a potential distraction. I'm also considering setting up email-free times to focus because I know that even reading the subject line of a message takes away my attention from the tasks at hand. Knowing now that only 20% of the emails I receive really matter will help make this easier to do.

*Spam numbers listed only include emails that made it to my inbox. A review of our school's spam filter shows that I 
received an average of ten additional messages per day over the last week, bringing my total to an additional 100 emails if I were to include those.