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Rumpus Book ClubA Month Without Internet
Two years before I founded The Rumpus.net I spent a month offline. I published the result in Poets and Writers but since it’s not available online we’re publishing it here as a Rumpus Reprint.
I was in Gaza when the Israeli soldiers were snatched from their posts. I was in New Orleans three days after Katrina smashed the levees to bits and the city flooded. But of all of my various adventures, people have been most curious about my recent decision to go offline for a month. I set up an auto-responder telling people who e-mailed me that I wouldn’t be online for a month, but that they could call me or send me a letter. I provided both a phone number and a mailing address. I bought an old word processor and left my fancy laptop with a friend.
“How will you exist?” my roommate asked. “You’ll have no idea what’s going on. You won’t be able to find anything.”
He was right about not being able finding anything. I rode through the hills west of San Francisco’s Mission District on my bicycle one cold night looking for a party. Normally I would have printed a map after searching online for the address. Or when I realized I was lost, I would have called a friend and asked him to google the address for me. Instead I went home.
“What is it like?” some asked, “I bet it’s relaxing,” they followed with immediately, venturing a guess. “I wish I could do that,” others said wistfully, as if it was simply not possible for them. Still others thought I was a fool; they seemed to actually resent me for it. “Don’t ask me what time the movie’s playing Mr. No-Internet.” They refused to call when they found out I wouldn’t be using e-mail. “I’ll talk to you next month, when you’re normal again.”
Some of these same people would try to control and define my project for me. One officemate burst open my door shouting, “Aha!”
“Don’t do that again,” I said.
Another asked with disdain, “Shouldn’t you be using a typewriter?” An old girlfriend told me that if I was using a cell phone my efforts didn’t count. Another friend, when playing a video on his computer, would cover the screen with his hand anytime I walked into the room. “You can’t see this,” he’d say.
“It’s really up to me to define the rules of my experiment,” I said, but none of them agreed. It was as if I had violated an oath we’d all taken and was being punished for it.
So what did I do during my month offline? “You must be getting so much done!” was the refrain I heard constantly. That wasn’t exactly true, not initially. My first week offline was mostly spent in a state of withdrawal. I suffered from bouts of extreme boredom. I realized I hadn’t been bored in years because I’d gotten in the habit of never giving myself the chance.
But slowly I began to find other activities to fill my time. During weeks two and three I watched the first three seasons of The Wire (I might have done this anyway). I subscribed to the New York Times and spent almost two hours every morning reading it cover to cover. It was only in the fourth week that things started coming together. I wasn’t just breaking the Internet habit, I was breaking the habits I had learned on the Internet: the addiction to continual bursts of small information.
I started reading a lot more books, which is good for me since I’m a person who writes books. And I read more challenging books. I would read and write all morning, take a lunch break, and then write until evening. I could feel my attention span lengthening. I would think about problems until I figured them out.
When I ask people why they need to be online, they inevitably focus on the stream coming toward them, the information they receive passively from e-mail lists and messages from friends and associates that contain crucial information.
But it turns out that you don’t miss much being offline. If something important and newsworthy occurs you can find out from the newspaper or even the Daily Show with John Stewart. While I was offline, those who really wanted to get in touch with me did through other means. In fact, when I got back online the most surprising thing was how little I had missed. I had 370 e-mails but most of them didn’t say anything.
In not using the Internet, the most significant effect had nothing to do with people getting in touch with me; it had to do with my needing to reach others. As editor of an anthology, I needed to solicit submissions. It was much more efficient for me to do so via e-mail, rather than to track down everyone’s postal address, print out letters, stuff envelopes, pay for postage, and head to the post office. I was hosting a fundraiser and needed to promote it. How does anyone even do that anymore without e-mail? These things had to wait until my experiment was over.
It was relatively easy to be offline when I knew I’d be back after a month. Anything I needed to do online I wrote in the back of my notebook to do once I returned. But here’s the thing: When I did return I knocked off that list in little more than a day. It took me a day to check a month’s worth of e-mail and complete a month worth of online tasks. Some things, though, couldn’t wait until my experiment had ended.
During that time, my phone was stolen. It would have cost me $10 to replace it by buying one on Craigslist, but instead I had to venture to a store and purchase a new one. Another example: I have to sublet my apartment for a month, which would be difficult to accomplish without the Web bulletin board that I use and would have cost me about $1,000 to leave vacant. I’d prefer to have these tools available to me.
And, of course, research. The Internet is crucial for research.
Lots of people have asked me for recommendations based on my month offline. The first thing I tell them is if they don’t feel the Internet is taking too much of their time and that it functions primarily as a tool, if they don’t feel irritable when they’re away from their computer for too long, then why change? But it’s obvious a lot of people don’t feel they’re in control of the time they spend on their computers.
I made some decisions for my own Internet usage when I got back online. The first thing I did was take down my blog and replace it with an advertisement for my books. Why did I think I needed a blog? I resolved to stay away from MySpace and LiveJournal. I don’t go online on the weekends. Also, I don’t use the Internet while I’m at home. I leave my computer in my office (I brought the computer I bought for word processing home with me). Since I’m most creative in the mornings I’ve decided no Internet until after lunch. That basically leaves my potential online time as 1 PM to 5 PM during weekdays. But that’s still way more than I need. Most people don’t need to be online four hours a day; most e-mails don’t need an immediate response.
I suggest this as a routine for people who must spend their day in front of a computer want and who want accomplish more: Divide your day into online and offline. Studies have consistently shown that people with more screens open get less done. Multi-tasking slows down productivity. You think you need to read your colleague’s memo in the morning but most likely you don’t.
As long as you read your e-mail and respond once every twenty-four hours nobody is likely to notice. Dedicate at least half your day to handling non-Internet tasks exclusively. Write a list of things you need to do when you do get online so your Internet time will be more productive.
If the main thing I was doing in my life was writing a novel, I would resolve not to be online at all. I know people that have moved “off the grid,” to rural areas to escape any distractions to their work. But the reality is you don’t need to go anywhere, you just need a computer without a wifi hookup. The urge to screw around is always strongest when the work’s not going well. And if you work at a computer screwing around is only a click away. But when the work’s not going well is exactly the time to turn the Internet off.
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