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Day 1

The System: Preparing to Detach

The goal of purging from your digital life is to install the systems that will guide you away from phone distractions toward actions that will make you truly happy. Although technology offers limitless ways to grow in happiness, you must first fortify your will through discipline if you want to achieve the highest possible degree of joy. You will only arrive at this level by developing the ability to deny yourself, take up your cross (or, in this case, your phone), and follow Jesus.

Trust me on this. I’ve read all the self-help books, completed all the social media fasts, deleted all the apps (and then downloaded them again), I’ve even downsized from smartphone to non-smartphone for a time in an effort to curb my technology addictions. While all of those certainly had positive effects, it was in the beauty and mystery of the Catholic faith that my technology addictions were finally kept at bay. I didn’t need a twelve-step program or a digital detox retreat in the middle of the forest, miles away from a Wi-Fi signal. All I needed was the wisdom of Christendom which, for more than two thousand years, has taught us how to detach ourselves from worldly desires.

This book will systemically guide you through the wisdom of Mother Church. It will reveal to you what you are dealing with, what God wants from you, and what life can be like if you are willing to battle against the enemy of distraction and resist the temptation to use your phone in ways that do not advance sanctity.

As Christians, we’ve already been given countless lessons on how to detach ourselves from worldly desires. Every Gospel reading calls us to communion with Christ and not the worldly desires that tempt us; every Lent we sacrifice time, talent, and treasure as we await the joy of Easter; and every Advent we practice patience as we prepare our souls to receive the Christ Child on Christmas Day.

All of this “basic training” is built into our Christian lives. However, like a trained soldier going to war for the first time, we must dig ourselves a trench and hunker down. Before we can advance toward the goal of full detachment, we must learn to defend our interior castle by establishing a battle plan.

Here’s what I recommend.

Evaluate Your Daily Schedule

The first step in the purge process is to take a close look at how you spend your days. This may seem like a trivial — or perhaps overwhelming — step, but it is a deeply important one for you to truly benefit from these twenty-one days.

Our habits define who we are. The amount of time we dedicate to our activities shows how much we love and value those things. Time and habits go hand in hand. Many people have good habits that help them achieve the happiness and holiness they desire. They have a consistent prayer life, spend time with loved ones, and enjoy hobbies and work because they have allotted the appropriate amount of time to those particular activities.

However, for many of us, our time and habits aren’t always a perfect match. We tend to give more time to bad habits such as social media, gaming, online shopping, etc., than to the things that actually provide us with fulfillment. We see our holiness and our screen time like star-crossed lovers destined to be together at some point, but never knowing just how the two could coexist because we are unwilling to give up screen time in order to pursue God. Time and habits must first agree upon their final end, which is holiness, before they can be of any use to the other. So we must purge all that keeps the two from living a healthy relationship with each other.

The best way to achieve this harmony is to arrange your day based on your priorities. When family, friends, work, hobbies, and basic needs are given the proper amount of time needed to help you thrive, your habits become solidified into virtue and you are more able to love and be loved by others and by God. You become more closely connected to God, who provides you with clarity in your decision-making. Scheduling actually frees up time for yourself and others by eliminating everything that wastes your time. You then learn the value of every second of your day and are thus able to pray, work, rest, and enjoy life as it was meant to be enjoyed.

The Bible tells us that our God is a God “of peace” (1 Cor 14:33). As such we must organize our lives if we aspire to become one with him. Life is a gift from God, and you have the responsibility of living it to its fullest so that it will bear fruit for his kingdom. The first step is to carefully evaluate your daily schedule.

Creating a Daily Schedule

This may sound completely overwhelming — you have too many moving pieces in your day, there are too many unknown variables when you get up in the morning. Trust me, I know. At one point in my life I had four children five years old or younger, worked a full-time job, and somehow managed to find time to pursue a master’s degree. Was I able to keep a schedule then? Not successfully, but at least I had the intention to place each of those nonnegotiable parts of my life into something that resembled order. I encourage you to give some thought to what you would like your days to look like, insofar as you can control them. The next twenty-one days will bear much more fruit if you do.

On a piece of paper, sketch out your day and break it into specific blocks of time. There are three steps to prioritizing your daily schedule effectively.

First, figure out which tasks need to be included in your day and which extras you want to include. Your priority list will be made up of both what you want to do and what you need to do.

Then, decide how much time you need to complete your daily tasks for each of your priorities, starting with the things you need to do. Many things on your list will take set blocks of time to complete, such as work, exercise, etc. However, many other priorities, such as reading a book or spending time with friends, will work on a sliding scale. You will want to factor those times into your schedule so that they do not overlap with other priorities.

Last, place each priority in its proper order. Each of your tasks will occupy a certain amount of time, but they also hold a certain rank as compared to the others. For example, your physical health is a high priority, but it is not as high of a priority as God. So if you were to schedule your morning routine, you’d want to block out a sufficient amount of time for prayer before starting a physical workout. Granted it will likely take longer to complete the workout than it will to pray, but the fact that you chose to honor God with the first fruits of your day shows that he is the higher priority. It isn’t always about time; sometimes it is about rank.

Another example of how rank can beat out time is work versus family life. We dedicate many hours of our day to work and schooling, both necessary to ensure our family’s survival and education. But these can tend to overshadow the hours of family quality time. Adults come home from work exhausted, and children return home from school lethargic, which requires a “recovery time” of sorts that will help us unwind. This makes our total amount of minutes with our family dwindle. If we grab our phones to occupy our recovery time as a family, we lose out on quality conversation, physical affection, and resting action for our minds and bodies. In the end, we spend more hours in our day working and recovering than we do with our own family members.

The best way to combat this process is to intentionally give each priority the time it deserves based on the time we have, and its rank.

Each person handles priorities differently, which is why I am not providing any single be-all and end-all schedule to imitate. Rather, I recommend that your daily routine reflect your priorities in both time and rank. If time spent in a lower priority must overshadow a higher one, may their ranks never be confused. For example, if you spend several hours a day at the gym, may those hours never become more important than the hours you have with your loved ones. Your daily schedule should account for this in some tangible way.

Limit Screen Time

There are two ways in which we use technology: (1) to efficiently consume and produce content and (2) to waste time.

There are also two realms in which we find ourselves using that technology: (1) at work or school and (2) for personal use.

In a perfect world we would use technology at work, school, and for personal use to efficiently consume and produce content. However, studies have shown that since the dawn of the smartphone we’ve spent much of our digital lives wasting time.

According a Pew Research Center Internet and Technology report, “Some 94% of smartphone owners carry their phone with them frequently and 82% say they never or rarely turn their phones off … with 59% reporting they use apps on their phones at least several times a day and 27% saying they use them ‘continuously.’”¹

This data, when coupled with the results from a study published on Forbes.com that claims 89 percent of people “admit wasting time at work every day,”² raises the question, what exactly are we doing with our devices?

According to the mentioned Pew Research Center report, “About half of cellphone owners say that when they are in public, they use their phones for no particular reason — just for something to do — either frequently (18%) or occasionally (32%). By age, the differences are noteworthy: 76% of cell owners ages 18 to 29 use their phone at least occasionally in public for no particular reason, just for something to do.”³ In other words, half of the time that people are in public, at work, or studying, they are wasting time on their phones.

Your goal is to change that paradigm by limiting screen time to only efficient consumption and production for the next twenty-one days. I’ll teach you how to do that as the retreat progresses.

Monitor Device Use

The final step toward detaching physically from the temptations of your phone is to download a monitoring app. Monitoring apps measure phone usage and report back to you how often you unlock your phone, what percentage of time you dedicate to which apps, and can even limit access to apps you choose.

When I first downloaded my monitoring app, I guessed that I was on my phone for thirty to forty-five minutes each day. Within the first six hours of downloading it, I had accumulated two and a half hours of phone use. I was flabbergasted at my underestimation.

We tend to rationalize destructive behaviors, especially when they are easy to hide from others. We carry our addictive behaviors with us every time we place our phone in our pockets. We think no one needs to know how often we act on our digital cravings, not even ourselves. We lie about our perceptions of our use of cellphones and underestimate their gravity, but a monitoring app places a mirror in front of us that shows the objective truth behind our addictive acts. They give us an objective number, and that number says a lot about who we are.

Visit detachedlife.com to see the latest and greatest monitoring apps for your phone. There you will find detailed instructions on how to download them (regardless of your make and model) and how to best use them during this time of retreat and beyond.

Sacrifice for Someone, or Something, Else

Our Catholic faith has a unique practice called “redemptive suffering.” We believe that our sacrifices can affect the souls of those around us. We, like Jesus, can help strengthen those in need through the spiritual merits that our physical sufferings can achieve. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen referred to this principle as a “spiritual blood transfusion” that brings others closer to their sanctification through our death to self.

During this twenty-one-day retreat, you will be sacrificing your addictive phone habits. This process will likely be difficult and uncomfortable, which is a form of suffering. To maximize the spiritual benefits of such a sacrifice, ask God to use the merits of your suffering to strengthen the soul of someone who is in desperate need of healing, whether spiritual or physical.

Saint Paul tells us, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church” (Col 1:24). Offer the next twenty-one days for the needs of your loved ones, the needs of the Church, or the needs of the souls in purgatory. Perhaps you have a friend or someone in particular who has a special need for spiritual assistance. Keep this intention close, and let it motivate you to persevere to the end. If you do, not only will you benefit from the process of detachment, but your sacrifices will also aid the one for whom you are offering your sufferings.

Today’s tasks (creating a schedule, installing a monitoring app, and beginning to offer up your sacrifice) were designed to create a systematic foundation for your day. More importantly, they are steps on a pathway to holiness. Too often we live in a state of disorder because we try to move forward without a road map to follow. We do things willy-nilly based on the mood of the moment, and we end up frustrated that we never accomplish our goals. We become victims to fleeting passions and, as a result, become less passionate about the things that really matter in life.

If you take the time to order your life based on your priorities, you will find that life will feel more fulfilled. That’s why this first day is focused on helping you establish a system that will set you up for success in detaching yourself from your tech. Think of it like the skeleton of your journey, a firm foundation on which everything else can have stability.

Tomorrow, we’ll put some meat on those bones.

Reflect

• For whom are you offering the sacrifices of this retreat?

• Why are you doing this for them?

• How many minutes of total time do you think you spend on your phone daily?

• What do you want to get out of this retreat?

Pray

Father, you who know us so perfectly desire that we know you perfectly. Allow my heart and mind to be free from all that keeps me from knowing, loving, and serving you perfectly. Together with the Blessed Mother, all of the angels and saints, and those who struggled to overcome temptations of all kinds, bind me to your Son through the cross which I choose to bear as I make this retreat. May I endure this suffering with the help of your spiritual guidance. I offer these next few weeks for _________________. Amen.

¹ “Americans’ Views on Mobile Etiquette, Chapter 1: Always on Connectivity,” Pew Research Center, August 26, 2015, http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/08/26/chapter-1-always-on-connectivity/.

² “Wasting Time at Work: The Epidemic Continues,” Forbes.com, July 31, 2015, https://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylsnappconner/2015/07/31/wasting-time-at-work-the-epidemic-continues/#2a13d3c61d94.

³ “Americans’ Views on Mobile Etiquette, Chapter 2: Phone Use in Public Area,” August 26, 2015, http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/08/26/chapter-2-phone-use-in-public-areas/.