24 Hours Away from the Crackberry

This is a guest post from my good friend Graham Hunt who lives in Valencia, Spain.

24 hours without email!

I set myself a goal. Don't look at emails or the net for a whole day. 24 hours without looking at any mails that come through and avoiding the internet and possibly most important not tweeting about it. Could I do it?

First you need to understand the background to this. My name is Graham and I am an activityholic as I have said elsewhere. I am in the UK and didn't check out whether I would have Spanish data roaming rates that are not totally exorbitant on my visit. Therefore I thought I would set myself this almost impossible goal and actually follow how often I had the temptation to check the mails. Anyway here is the story.

7pm Sunday Evening. After watching the Liverpool match on Veetle and making sure that everyone's impressions were the same as mine on Twitter, that is just as important as the match of course, I turned the Mac off and decided this is where I would start.

9.30pm. Went to bed early with a stinking cold not brought on by the withdrawal symptoms I must add but hastened by the recognition that i couldn't check mails or surf the internet to avoid all temptation to get onto the gmail system.

4am Woken by wife asking what time it was. This involved turning on my phone as I just don't do watches and haven't done for three years now. Temptation just to have a quick peek at the internet, tweet a bit to my mates in Australia and answer a few mails overcome.

6am. I have this problem that when I sleep in different beds I get a bad back which is quite painful. Three beds in three nights is taking its toll. Woken by stabbing pains in my back an hour before alarm is due to go off. Change beds as I find that in our hotel bed I am surrounded by two small children, mine I hasten to add. Again I resist the temptation.

7am Alarm goes off but I don't really notice too much as I am already up and wondering whether to check my emails before remembering the challenge.

8.30am Start travelling to our destination. Idea is arrive at 12.30 after a lovely trip through dappled sunshine at a leisurely 70 mph. Reality turns out to be somewhat different.

Anytime between 8.30am and 4pm. You can more or less guarantee that I am either in a traffic jam looking out at the drizzle, have just left a traffic jam while looking at the pouring rain or can see a traffic jam and ugly black clouds ahead. The temptation while sitting in the fast lane doing zero miles per hour to sneak a peek at a few emails, tweet about the fact that I am in a traffic jam or surf the net is overwhelming but like the hero I am I manage to resist, the nicotine patch of radio five live in the background keeping me in touch with the trivialities of the day. Nevertheless my thoughts are constantly interrupted by the question of whether my destination will have wifi. Stopping for a coffee and actually having one with caffeine, I generally don't, to try and keep me awake in the traffic jams I notice that Costa Coffee has free wifi. Am I tempted? You bet!! Again i resist going out to the car to get the laptop

I get through to the 24 hour cut off period and decide to carry on for a bit. How long can I go on for?

27 Hours!

I actually managed to get to 10pm before I cracked, actually it was 10.04pm and I was watching the Beatles playing a concert, yes I was in an alternative reality by this time. That is around 27 hours without checking my mail.

Did the world stop? No.

Did I miss anything important? I don't know.

I have still only checked my main mail account the other nine accounts can wait. The business ones are still to be checked and tomorrow morning is the first time I will actually be going through my mails seriously and actually answering them. Sacrilege of all sacrileges, twitter can wait... However has it acted as a lesson for me? You bet. Buy a dongle so I can never be so long without contact again!!!

I am kidding of course. Outsourcing of my mail accounts coming up I think. What's the longest you've gone?

Graham Hunt is an activityholic currently juggling five projects, two businesses, three blogs, fifty five domains, three children, a full time wife and two losing football teams. Just as well he lives in Spain and gets to do what he wants on the spare seconds he has on the odd day here and there.

Graham blogs about designing a life to avoid the above.

(Oh and he runs www.valencia-property.com for his main business and writes in www.entrepreneursolo.com and www.houses-for-sale-in-spain.net )

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