Bootstrap

Tech’s Best Feature: The Off Switch

Blog / Produced by The High Calling
Default image

Technology helps our work blossom with its myriad resources for connection and creativity. However, it also has a dark side. What can free us can also imprison us--a fact that filmmaker, mother, and author Tiffany Shlain knows all too well.

Tired of being consumed by the demands of devices which made them available 24/7, Shlain and her husband decided their family would take a weekly technology Sabbath. And like Robert Frost's "Road Less Traveled," it has made all the difference.

"Our Saturdays now feel like mini-vacations," she writes, "...slow living that we savor like fine wine. We garden with our kids, play board games, ride our bikes and cook and I write in my journal. I can have a thought without being able to immediately start implementing it. I feel more grounded and balanced. We try to be as unavailable as possible, except to each other and our children. I feel like a better mother, wife and person."

Read more from Shlain in her recent essay on Harvard's Business Review blog.

Image by Kurichan. Used with permission. Sourced via Flickr.

typeof window.refTagger.tag === 'function') { setTimeout(function(){ window.refTagger.tag(); }, 100); } }; g.onerror = function(){ var cdn = d.createElement(t); cdn.async = true; cdn.src = "https://api.reftagger.com/v2/RefTagger.js"; s.parentNode.insertBefore(cdn, s); }; s.parentNode.insertBefore(g, s); }(document, "script")); // Legacy optIn function for backward compatibility window.optIn = window.optIn || function() {}; // Legacy window onload for display transition (modular functionality loads from src/js/modules/) window.onload = function(){ $('.hideDisplay').addClass('showDisplay'); }