I have recently survived 2 whole weeks without using my computer! I had a great time doing stuff outside, while my laptop lay untouched. I would like to share a few lessons I learnt from this time spent without my computer, and also from what happened when I first opened my computer.

1. Let’s take the whole day off!

An old fireplace in Kaikoura

Many people have promoted technology free days such as “take a vacation from email!“, “enjoy a Twitter free day!”, and “don’t touch your computer this weekend!”. Even governments endorse national video-game free weeks for youths.

Although these may sound like impossible propositions for some, actually letting go of you social media life, email inbox, or RSS feeder for a day or more means that you can relax and do other tasks. Enjoy some free time. Do useful things! Gardening! Reading!

The benefits of letting go of my email, rss feeds, and my whole computer for half a month for me was the freeing up of a large percentage of time each week.
I did a little bit of landscaping on our lifestyle block, which was enjoyable as I had been meaning to for a long time.
I read a few books on my reading list; The Man in the Iron Mask (part of The Vicomte de Bragelonne) , Uncle Tom’s cabin, and Oliver Twist.

2. I enjoyed a much healthier week than usual; here is why.

It is a fact that the type of light emitted by LCD and CRT monitors are of the type that excite and stimulate the brain. The restless flickering light even of a laptop screen pushes the brain almost to hyperactivity. Because of this, health professionals recommend that people should stop using their computers right before bedtime.

The hyperactive brain does not help you go to sleep! So therapists tell people complaining of a hard time getting asleep to shut down their computers at least two hours before bedtime, and read a book instead.

So because I did not use my computer for two weeks straight, I was able to sleep better, and wake up energised in the morning.

When I first opened my computer:

3. I had hundreds of posts to read on my RSS feed reader.

It would take me a full day to read all those blog posts that other people wrote. And I don’t have a day to read blogs. Not even half a day.  So, instead of systematically reading through each post on expanded view, I changed the view on my RSS feed reader (Google Reader) to list view.

Then I scanned the title of each post, and clicked on the titles that sound interesting to read the post.

This taught me a new lesson. Titles and headlines matter! Most importantly online, titles have to be brief, and yet a good overview of what that particular blog post is about.

For example, if I write a post on my photoblog with pictures from a summer holiday, I should title it something like “Photos from the holiday in Paihia” rather than “I love Paihia”; because the first title is more descriptive of the type on content I wrote.

People who like the idea of seeing some photos from Paihia will be able to see from the title in their feed reader that the post has photos of Paihia.

The same people who want to see photos of Paihia who see “I love Paihia” may not click on it because they don’t know that the post has photos of Paihia in it.

The importance of titles stay true even in Google Search results. If someone searches on google.com for  ”bike shops in Christchurch”, and sees a page in the results with a title of “McLeans island mountain bike tracks”,
even if that page contains information on bike shops in Christchurch, they probably won’t click on the page because they think the  title tells them that the page is all about mountain biking on McLeans.

So I will pay a lot more attention to blog post titles I write from now on. You can, too.

Thanks for reading this! I hope you have a great Christmas!