End User: Shut It Down on Saturday (If You Can)

This Saturday (May 3) is the second annual Shutdown Day, which encourages everyone to turn off their computers and electronic gadgets for an entire day. According to the Shutdown Day site, the purpose of this exercise is to spread "awareness about the pitfalls and dangers that lie in the excessive use of television, computers, and computing equipment like game boxes, cell phones, music players, online social websites, etc. that impinge on social space and interaction amongst our communities."

I definitely can see in my own home how my son's eyes light up any time I pull out a laptop or my phone or camera (or camera-phone) and then distracts him from everything else in the room, and that it might not be all that bad to take a day's holiday from the gadgetry. So I'll be turning off my computers, my Apple TV, our iPods and their associated speaker docks, and the HDTV. I'll also use my iPhone only for making necessary calls (no texting and no checking in on the Chelsea and Man United football scores... that will indeed be a sacrifice). And instead I'll focus on doing some yard work, playing Legos with my toddler, and heading out to IKEA.

Luckily, this is taking place on a Saturday, so I'm pretty confident of my sucess. But if it were a weekday, this whole notion would be a non-starter as my entire work as a freelancer revolves around my gadgety tools. So what about you: can you shut it down for a day this weekend? (Hat tip to Web Worker Daily.)

[Addendum] Well, it turns out that I can't shut it down. My wife thought it would be the soccer scores that would break my resolve, but it was the overwhelming temptation to use my iPhone's camera to capture furniture possibilities during my morning IKEA visit. But I did well for most of the rest of the day until, after a long day with the toddler and work on her own laptop (she didn't join in my fervor for Shutdown Day), my wife made a stern request that we turn on the Apple TV.

Did I learn anything from this ultimately failed exercise? It seems that I possess OCD-like urges to turn to my iPhone or laptop to check on every little whim that crosses my thoughts--from the day's weather to adding a book to my Amazon wishlist to checking my Twitter feed. And it was a good thing to tamp down those urges just a titch and focus on the blocks and Legos that were much more important to my son. But there's no denying that some of my gadgets--my iPhone in particular--are very useful tools that make life in this modern world easier and more productive.

So going forward, I'm going to be more conscious about dialing my urges to fiddle with my gadgets just for the sake of them being there and try to be more in the moment. Though with the Euro 2008 championships coming up, that's gonna take some willpower...

--Agen G.N. Schmitz