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Communication Breakdown
An old entry that I slept on like 250 times… I have a confession: technology does not bring out the best in me. That may seem like a big DUH given the nature of this blog, but I guess what I mean is...
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While you were out
A commenter and friend suggested that I blog about what I’ve noticed or experienced as a result from actively curbing the role of gadgets in my life. It’s a subject that I’ve thought about many times...
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Out of Office
I see a lot of crazy things. People with two cell phones stacked on top of one another. Parents amidst the maelstrom of their child’s glee at a bouncy house place, yet lost in their smartphones. All of...
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Give it a day
A couple of months ago, I thought about challenging others to disconnect and googled “unplugging day.” To my delight, I discovered that someone else had not only thought of it, but put it into motion...
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Reading between the lines
Yesterday, I attended a fiction author’s panel called New Fiction Confab. I’m not a huge reader, but it was a client event and I was intrigued nonetheless. Writers Walter Kirn, Peter Orner, Ben Marcus,...
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Keep it in your pants
Here’s a good rule of thumb: when you are in public and you have the urge to take out your phone and look at it, consider first if you would watch a miniature TV complete with earpiece. Driving? Briss?...
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Facing facts
In a blog post around this time last year entitled Unlike, I detailed the reasons why Excessive Facebook use is bad—for me anyway. Now it is time for me to find ways and places to really push away from...
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2 Years In and No Looking Back
On September 1, 2010, I started The Off Switch blog to help me understand, chronicle, and share my quest to control the digital distractions in my life. As the intervening posts explain, I have made...
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A mini dilemma
Like a recovering alcoholic, I’m ever-mindful of technology and the impulse to rush in to new gadgets or services. For a number of reasons, it would be all too easy to fall off The Off Switch Wagon and...
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A platitude adjustment
Between Hurricane Sandy and the shootings at Sandy Hook, I’ve seen hundreds of memes, Facebook posts, web vigils, and news segments about the human loss—and the digital things I am meant to “share”....
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An iPhone Contract From a Mom to a 13-Year-Old
This post is primarily an entry on Huffington Post from writer/blogger Janell Burley Hofmann (www.janellburleyhofmann.com) titled “To My 13-Year-Old, An iPhone Contract From Your Mom, With Love.” Her...
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Oh, the humanity!
Has anyone noticed how ungrateful we’ve become in the past 5-7 years? As a collective modern civilization, we’ve become relatively bratty about a lot of things we have grown accustomed to eating,...
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The Pause Button
I’ve got a confession to make: I fuck this up a good bit. By which I mean that while I set these tech parameters and goals for myself, they can be elusive. Try as I may, I slip out of good habits and...
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Mind the Gap
The night before I flew to New York City on a business trip last week, I went out to celebrate a friend’s birthday at a new, upscale restaurant with communal dining tables. When the couple seated next...
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Courtoisie
You can say a lot of things about the French. But for me, it all comes down to the fact that they’ve got something specific in mind (both personally and culturally) and they don’t give a shit if that...
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The fortitude of denial
What’s the price you pay for connectivity? Or “convenience” or “productivity”? That’s a question I ask myself all the time. It can’t be nothing, right? If we’re walking around, sitting around, standing...
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Less is more
I am not is a state of Zen. Nor am I in a place of optimal productivity. But I’ve found a modicum of balance—and as a business owner with a wife and young kid… that seems like a big deal to me. When I...
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What I Learned on Summer Vacation
A couple of weeks ago, my wife and five year old pushed off for a good-old-fashioned, week-long, family road trip vacation. True to form, I didn’t check work email and generally checked out. Here are...
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Three Years On
Three years ago, I posted my first entry here at The Off Switch as I endeavored to take back my autonomy from technology. In the many posts and years since, I’ve discovered a lot about myself. In most...
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Even less is even more
A few months back, I wrote a post called Less is More about the general state of my relationship to technology things, and how I was contemplating getting a laptop. The idea was that I would eliminate...
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