It’s a simple idea.

Set aside one day a week when the computer doesn’t get switched on. A day when email doesn’t get checked, when Facebook doesn’t get updated, and when tweets are not twittered. No firing up the desktop for game playing either.

It doesn’t need to be the same day every week. You may have to trim things according to needs and deadlines. You may only be able to manage one day a fortnight.

The idea is to go off-line and let the brain rest. Or, if not rest, then allow it to change gear. Rather than constantly responding to incoming messages and data just let them pile up. They’ll still be there tomorrow.

You can also de-stress. And before you comment here saying you find it stressful NOT being in constant touch with cyberspace, think again. You know that simply isn’t true.

Remember, the online world will go on turning without you.

Spend the time reading books, chatting to friends, playing sport, enjoying the sunshine or baking muffins instead.

That way, when you get back online, you’ll be refreshed. It’s like a mini holiday. It may sound like a cliché, but I definitely work better when I’ve taken a day-long break from my computer.

Not original

The digital sabbath is not an original idea. In fact, if you are of a religious persuasion, it came at the end of the first recorded week. The Biblical creation story says God rested on the seventh day.

Ancient Jews worked for six days then strictly observed the Shabbat when lots of everyday things simply were not allowed to happen. They knew this was mentally, and physically healthy.

I actually first heard about the idea of a digital sabbath in an online forum many years ago – sadly I don’t recall who or where the original idea comes from.

Some problems

Of course, it’s much harder to take even one day’s rest from the digital world if you are a hard core digiphile with a web browsing smartphone, an ebook reader or if you use the computer as an entertainment hub for music and video. And you may have a job, or some other responsibilities that make going offline difficult.

Nevertheless, I suggest you do what you can to give it a try and reconnect once a week with the analogue world.

I’m not perfect

I’d like to be able to report I manage to take a full day away from my computer every week. The truth is, I don’t always manage it. In fact, although I try to schedule a full day off each week, I generally only get a couple of full-blown digital sabbaths each month.

This is something I intend to work on.

Take a break - image by Meredit Farmer via Flickr

As someone who started their working life in the Northern Hemisphere, one of the hardest adjustments to make is that because Christmas coincides with summer, antipodeans take all their holiday in one big helping. Or at least they did until the late 1980s.

When I first arrived in Wellington, New Zealand I found the summer break hard to cope with. In those days the city more or less closed down between Christmas Eve and Waitangi day (February 6). For roughly six weeks it was nigh on impossible to buy a cooked lunch, get one’s teeth fixed or car repaired. Trains and buses ran reduced timetables. It was even harder to get anyone to make a business decision. Woe betide anyone who didn’t get their budgets signed-off before December 24^th.

Australia, at least Sydney and Melbourne, weren’t so comprehensively sleepy over summer, but you’d still have difficulty getting in touch with people between Christmas and Australia day. I suspect, but don’t know for sure that regional Australia was as shuttered as New Zealand. We’ll avoid the temptation for wisecracks about Canberra.

Although the politicians somehow still manage to score extended summer breaks, these days Wellington and Auckland start buzzing (albeit at a slightly reduced pace) a few days after Christmas while Sydney and Melbourne barely pause at all. I know from experience that many employees, particularly in retail jobs, are pressured to work longer hours at this time of year.

Yet even now many companies and departments close down for two or three weeks. Some newspapers stop publishing, TV channels run reduced schedules and some businesses offer reduced services. It might not be the four, five or six week shut down enjoyed by earlier generations, but there’s a distinct feeling the city is depopulated and the resorts are crowded.

Most Northern Europeans take no more than a week or so around Christmas. In England, people generally work until December 24^th and are back at their desks by January 2^nd, or maybe the following day if the public holiday falls on a weekend. Scots get an extra day’s holiday for Hogmanay.

Poms typically get a couple of weeks off in their summer along with a healthy swag of public holidays (“Bank Holidays”) throughout the year. Generally they have enough leave days left over to take a third small break. The French still have a tradition of taking a month in mid-year. During August Parisians leave town en masse as invading hoards of plaid-clad American tourists invade.

On the whole Poms work roughly as many days as Australians and, thanks to recent law changes, New Zealanders. Other Northern European countries work fewer days. Interestingly these other nations tend to have higher worker productivity rates.

In my view, the antipodean habit of having one long annual break over Christmas is not as useful or as productive as the Northern European tradition of taking a short mid-Winter Christmas break and a relatively short summer break. I also suspect that the one long Christmas break is easier lost to a demanding job than the two breaks enjoyed by Europeans.

Speaking from a personal, rather than a researched point of view, the good thing about Europe’s two or three break system is that it enables one to keep fresher. I’ve found that working 11 months then resting for one month is much harder than working a few months en bloc and taking shorter breaks. This is particularly true if your work involves creative thinking – and let’s face it, most Knowledge Workers need to think creatively.

I’d like to see New Zealand embrace Matariki, the Maori winter solstice, as a short mid-winter holiday. It would also be a good excuse for an additional public holiday – New Zealanders go for too long without a break at that time of year. I’m sure Australia can think up a suitable excuse for a similar festival.

With all the talk of 24 times 7 operations, Knowledge Workers are finding it increasingly hard to take any leave at all. That’s simply not wise. It hurts your effectiveness. You might not be able to get away from your desk for a whole fortnight at once, but you should endeavour to escape for two or three weeklong breaks during the course of the year. You’ll be more productive for it.