Planning to unplug for the night? This might help...

1) Clear the decks
Do not owe anybody any articles, features, columns, blog posts or anything that will require you to interact with a screen. You NEED to have ALL your work done and finished and handed in BEFORE unplugged night begins.

2) Activities
Plan an activity that will remove you from temptation's way. (Swedish class for me, followed by a drink with my co-pupils? That ought to do the trick.)

3) Pen and paper
If any idea occurs to you that really *must* be talked about online, scrawl it on with pen and paper for now. If it needs an image? Get thee away from Google Image Search and just *draw* the fucker on a bit of paper. You can even scan the thing in for a purely image-based blog post in the morning - not that accessible, but different.

4) Accentuate the positive
As a commenter on the last Unplugged post pointed out: focus on what you can do on Unplugged night, not what you can't. All the fun things I do that normally get tucked into tiny pockets of spare time (knitting, letter-writing, diary-writing - I tend to do all of these on the tube into work) can be done in comfortable luxury, in a cafe perhaps, or on a comfy sofa, not a horrid jiggly train. Added bonus - you won't get stared at like you do on public transport for daring to do something as OMGZ WAY OUT FREAKY (not) as knitting or writing (with an actual FOUNTAIN PEN - WTF IS THIS ANCIENT OBJECT).

5) Remember: It's not forever
This ain't like quitting smoking. It's ONE NIGHT. You can just go online again in the morning, immediately after waking, just like you normally do. You won't go cold turkey. You won't get DTs. Really important things are not normally conveyed by email anyway, right? Nobody emails going 'HELP I AM STUCK IN A WELL'. So relax; it's nothing permanent. It's just a couple of hours away from things with screens.
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There you go. Admittedly, I have not yet managed to have a successful unplugged night yet, haha, so we'll have to see if my preparation tips actually work. But you know what? I'm feeling good about this one. I think I might actually be able to pull this off....

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Labels: unplug, unplugged

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