Maybe you’ve heard of Bill Gates “Think Weeks” where he takes one week, two times a year, and escape by himself to a secret clapboard cabin somewhere in a cedar forest in the Pacific Northwest and spending the week reading papers written by Microsoft employees pitching new innovations or potential investments. They also just include a lot of reading, a lot of thinking, and a lot of alone time. Work done during those “think weeks” eventually led to Internet Explorer in 1995, while another prompted Gates to come up with the plans for Microsoft’s Tablet PC.
I wanted to try something similar during the one week Christmas time until New Year (24th Dec 2019 - 1st Jan 2020), so I just thought to focus more on side projects like The Five Minute Journal, reading more books and experimenting with stuff like 2h No Screen Time Before Bed. Instead of going somewhere in a cedar forest I just thought it’s enough to just completely not check messages on messaging apps. That means even using no batching once a day to reply to someone. I just call this week the
No Messaging App Week
So during that week I was not distracted by thinking about that I needed to respond to someone or to think about an answer or think about to just write someone because I wanted to tell something. The time felt great and I felt more focused than usual. Will definitely do this again.