Gap year @40 — What I learnt from my 21 day phone deprivation experiment?
I am on a gap year in 2021 to explore how I want to spend my 40s and craft my Life 2.0.
In Life 1.0, I worked in the corporate world for ~17 years before starting my gap year from Jan 2021. In my last update, I shared my learnings from doing nothing for the first two weeks of the gap year, my realisation to have presence (versus productivity) as the foundation for life 2.0 and three experiments I kicked off to gain presence.
https://medium.com/curious/gap-year-40-what-i-learnt-by-doing-nothing-for-first-2-weeks-d48549b0cf88
This update is about my learnings from 21 days of the phone deprivation experiment.
What was the experiment design?
I initially planned to have no phone for one week. But then I realised that I want to stay connected for any family emergencies. Instead of testing something I will not replicate in real life, I decided to convert my smartphone into a basic feature phone for a week (only calls/ SMS). I planned to do it for a week. But intrigued by my initial learnings, I decided to do it for 21 days (with some changes after 1st week).
Day zero night time. Time for the experiment set up.
