What a forced Digital Detox taught me

When the invitation came to my inbox, it felt as if a gust of fresh air came along with it.

I was supposed to co-host a leadership summit in Lavassa, a township built in a valley with surrounding green mountains, 200 km outside Mumbai, India.

Little did I know that Lavassa would give me an experience of my life.

We were doing this summit for a large B2B company which is an industry leader in its space. The participants were not directly working with each other but knew each other due to this leadership program.

Offsites are fun.

People are relaxed and look forward to the break. It is challenging for the hosts to hold the attention given the sights and smells outside are always beckoning.

Plus this was monsoon time in India. The land promised to be very green, and rains bring out the best in people.

Starting early morning, the ride into the hills was a visual delight. The final stretch tested my spine as we merrily bumped up and down a broken road. The beauty outside sufficiently distracted me from the pain of the broken road.

The camp was managed by an ex-Army Colonel, and everyone stayed in tents.

We dropped our bags, and I took out my phone to message home that I had reached.

I stopped in my tracks.

The notification on my phone said “No network”

Panic!

I scrambled around looking for a signal, no avail.

When I reached the conference room, the dominant conversation was ‘no signal.’

We were doing this summit in the middle of the week, so there were concerns about lost business and opportunities.

The day had started with mild panic, what did the evening have for us?

Treasure Hunt

That afternoon, an impromptu treasure hunt started. Everyone went hunting for the mobile signal. We were sweeping the terrain with phones in the air looking for the elusive signal.

Suddenly, one would cry out “I got it, I got it” then everyone would clamber on whatever perch or rock the signal had come. Often, only he would have got it, leaving the others to continue the treasure hunt.

By evening when we met socially, the conversation starter was where someone had found it and whose network was still not working.

But I also noticed something else unusual.

Suddenly the group was one.

Everyone was united by the common struggle.

At night, I continued my treasure hunt and found a high enough place to get a ‘single bar’ of the network which was like gold.

Hurriedly I called out others who were still sweeping the air.

We all huddled on that perch. I sensed the relief as each finally reached their dear ones at home to inform they were fine.

Those who could not reach their homes, we lent our phones so that they could call at home.

It’s not like we had gone to a war zone. Quite the contrary.

The place was beautiful, peaceful, quiet.

But the ubiquity of the mobile in our lives, meant that everyone was used to reaching out to their homes on call, and this sudden disruption meant there was concern about safety.

Which made me realize how technology has in some ways increased our fears.

But was it always like this?

Long long time ago when there were no phones

In my younger days, one would travel for 3–4 days in train. The only time the family would know you were fine was when one sent a letter after the destination was reached.

In 80s, Phones were an extreme luxury in India. Across cities, you could not just pick up the phone and talk. You had to book a call.

The universal medium of communication was hand written letters. Months would pass before you knew about your near and dear ones.

My father used to tell a story about his parents. Once my father had not written to his mother in a long time. Concerned she took up the issue with my grandfather. My grandfather said “If there is bad news, we will come to know very fast. No news means he is fine.”

No news was good news.

Today, No news creates fear. We need the constant connection with others to know everything is fine.

Why has fear become so entrenched in our lives?

The rapid pace of change has somewhere drifted us from our moorings.

Digital disruption sometimes brings us closer

The next day, the team had bonded very fast. They played volleyball in the rains in the morning and evening. Some people created hotspots for others to connect their phones.

Since the internet was non-existent, everyone focused on the here and now. There were no complaints about it as it was just not there.

Everyone made the most of the company available. We had a boisterous evening and night without the distractions of notifications pinging on phones.

Many stories were shared and connected with over the bonfire we had.

By the third day, people who knew each other, barely by name on the first day, had become buddies.

Phones were used to capture all the joyful moments especially since we had a lot of long walks together.

Is technology making us self centered?

I don’t want to sound like a Luddite, but the phone and its omnipresence means that a lot of us are lost in the digital world.

At the offsite, the absence of even a basic phone call or SMS meant people looked up and saw the human next to him and connected.

Nokia had the tag line “Connecting people.”

I believe smartphones have “disconnected people.”

With wifi now present even in planes, the possibility of conversations is further removed.

We have to take extra effort to stay connected with people.

Research has shown having meaningful conversations with another human being, and social connectedness is critical to happiness.

“Digital Detox” is as much about carving time for connecting with others as much it is about freeing time for oneself.

Whether we as hosts succeeded in giving them the concepts we had planned or not, the place with its ‘no network’ experience managed to bond people deeply.

And that for me, was the biggest success of the summit.

What about You?

Do you have a story to share about Digital detox? Please share it in the comments.

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