I wrote a little while ago about how I never give up anything food-related for Lent anymore. Still, it's a good practice to make some kind of Lenten sacrifice. The one I chose this past Lent may seem a little wussy, though, since it was just a part-time sacrifice: I gave up using the computer, especially the web browser, between 8 AM and 4 PM.
(Mostly. There were a couple of times where I had to check Google Maps or print a school worksheet I'd forgotten to do ahead of time, and once or twice in the rocking chair with the nursing baby, I simply gave in to temptation and peeked at something or other. Nobody's perfect.)
"8 AM to 4 PM?" you may be thinking. "Heck, I'd have had NO trouble giving up chocolate between 8 AM and 4 PM. You call that a sacrifice?"
Well, it was, because 8 AM to 4 PM is, roughly, my school day.
And I had gotten pretty used to wandering over to the computer when I found myself with a spare minute while the kids were working on something. I'd just check Facebook, and the spare minute would stretch into five or ten, and the children would notice my distraction and flee.
I had also gotten used to surfing the web while eating my lunch, getting my "necessary mental break" from the day and from the kids, which freed up the kids to scarf down the tastiest part of their lunch and run downstairs to start a movie.
Basically, between 8 AM and 4 PM I didn't really have any good reasons to use the Internet most of the time, unless I had planned poorly. On the other hand, I couldn't really just disappear from the Internet entirely. It would seem uncharitable not to return anyone's emails for 40 days, or to have to deal with a mountain of an inbox on Easter Monday morning.
This isn't the first time I've tried to limit my own Internet access to develop a little more self-discipline and harvest more time in my day. But it is the first time I've set the limits by the clock: simple and direct, no Internet between 8 and 4. Always in the past I've set them much more amorphously — things like "no Internet after the kids wake up" (was that one kid, or all three?) or "no more than 2 hours a day" (who is keeping track?) or "only while I'm eating lunch" (hoo boy was that a mistake — like I need another incentive to get second helpings?!?)
And what I discovered was that it worked wonders. The clock limit meant that I wasn't "entitled" to the Internet access time — if there was something else I needed to do or chose to do, and missed my chance, well, I missed my chance. I couldn't get my "deserved" time later when I ought to be busy with something else.
And I suddenly had So. Much. More. Time. We got school done with little fuss most days. The only downside was that I tended to binge on it between 7 AM and 8 AM, and thus miss the coffee time with my husband, and again in the evening. So I think it will require a little bit of tweaking (for example, I probably should do a midday email check, and I should probably structure the schedule so as not to incentivize spouse-ignoring). But I may make this a new tradition: daily blackout hours.
I guess I'll start by blacking out 7:30-12:30, 1-4, and 6-10:30. Will let you know how it goes…
Hey! That means I've got to stop right n
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