I have worked in digital media for almost ten years. I have learnt to be available at short notice, keep up with the agenda and react to every notification as if an unanswered message might cause the collapse of modern civilisation.

Naturally, this lifestyle has spread well beyond work. I watch every Reel my friends send me, participate in approximately one million group chats, scroll Instagram for hours and binge-watch YouTube videos I never actively chose to see. For a long time, I considered this part of my personality. I was informed. I was connected. I knew which celebrity had been cancelled before breakfast.

Then I noticed how exhausted I had become.

At first, it appeared as a problem with concentration. I couldn't read a book or complete a work task without checking my inbox every ten minutes. Then I became irritated by the endless supply of short-form content: everyone explaining, reacting, unpacking and having a take, usually in under 45 seconds. Finally, I found myself trapped in a routine I seemed powerless to change. I would stay awake until 2 am scrolling, fall asleep with my phone beside me and wake up to the first work notification feeling drained and overwhelmed simultaneously. A beautiful way to begin the day.

I am clearly not alone. Millions of people live like this, despite the glossy “offline morning routines” delivered to us, with impressive irony, through our screens. I wanted to break the cycle, but I was often too depleted to resist one more microscopic dopamine reward from another Reddit story repackaged for TikTok.

Last year, I tried a digital-detox holiday, and it went quite well. But this year, I knew I needed something more radical. So I joined a week-long group retreat in the mountains. What I found wasn't simply peace for several days. The trip gave me a practical lesson in how to become less dependent on being permanently online.

And, unlike most things labelled a “reset”, it didn't require a supplement subscription.

1. Other people were part of the plan

Joining an organised group trip was essential because many of the decisions had already been made for me. There was somewhere to go, something to do and a rough structure to the day. I didn't have to sit in a beautiful location wondering how to optimise the experience.

During my previous digital detox, I felt unsettled for the first few days. My mind was suddenly free from scrolling, but there was nothing ready to replace it, so it did what an under-stimulated brain does best: it began spiralling. Without Instagram to investigate, it turned its attention to every questionable decision I had made since 2009.

This time, I had real people around me. Not all of them were close friends, which was part of the appeal. There were about ten guests, plus the team leaders, plus the staff at our guest house, so the social possibilities came in different intensities. I could make small talk, have a deep conversation or simply sit and listen without feeling obliged to perform. There were hikes, walks, meditation sessions, shared meals, games, sauna trips and long discussions about what we had experienced.

Research suggests that this substitution may be important. In a 2025 experiment, people who blocked mobile internet on their phones spent more time socialising face to face, exercising and being in nature. These changes appeared to help explain improvements in their well-being and attention. In other words, removing the phone may work partly because it makes room for activities that were quietly pushed out by it. The study, published in PNAS Nexus, found that more than 90 per cent of participants improved in at least one of the measured areas: mental health, subjective well-being or sustained attention.

Even the most committed introvert eventually remembers that humans are social beings. Apparently, being around other people without simultaneously checking what several hundred strangers are doing is good for us.

2. We moved, constantly

We were in the mountains, where our main activity was hiking. We went up and down for hours, stopping only to drink water or photograph scenery that looked suspiciously like a laptop wallpaper.

We also did short movement practices in the mornings. These weren't punishing training sessions designed to reveal our inner warrior. They were simply an opportunity to stretch, dance and remind the body that it had joints.

My body seemed delighted by this unusual development. Even when I woke up at 6 am hating the world and everyone in it, a little movement in the fresh air made the universe feel considerably less hostile by breakfast.

I already knew that stupid walks were good for stupid mental health. Everyone does. But there is a difference between knowing something because you watched a YouTube expert explain it and experiencing it in your own nervous system.

The evidence is reassuringly unglamorous. A systematic review of nature-based walking interventions found improvements in mood, optimism and mental well-being, alongside reductions in stress, anxiety and negative rumination. Walking in nature may also offer greater benefits for anxiety and rumination than walking in an urban environment.

There was another, more immediate advantage: I didn't feel compelled to check my phone because I was already occupied. It turns out that climbing a mountain is quite effective at holding your attention, particularly when the alternative is falling off it.

3. The digital cut wasn't negotiable

I hadn't understood quite how remote our destination would be. Before arriving, I thought: perhaps I will spend less time on Instagram. Then our guides explained that there was no mobile reception, but there would be Wi-Fi. Fine, I thought. Perhaps there will be fewer chats.

When we reached the guest house, however, we discovered that the Wi-Fi was largely theoretical. An occasional push notification could squeeze through, but the connection wasn't strong enough to open an app. It was the digital equivalent of someone shouting your name from the other side of a mountain and then disappearing.

For the first day or two, this was unsettling. Then came one of the rarest feelings in modern life: surrender.

I was on the trip. I couldn't be reached, even if somebody wanted me. What could I do about it? Nothing. So why continue worrying? I put my phone on aeroplane mode and didn't switch it back until we returned to the city.

Research on digital detoxes is more nuanced than wellness culture sometimes suggests. A 2025 meta-analysis found that simply abstaining from social media didn't consistently improve positive mood, negative mood or life satisfaction. The review in Scientific Reports suggests that deleting Instagram for a week isn't a universal cure, particularly if the empty space isn't replaced by anything meaningful.

My experience fits that distinction. It wasn't only an absence of Wi-Fi. It was the combination of being unreachable, following a structured routine, moving outdoors and spending time with other people. The phone disappeared into a life that was already full.

I was worried that my colleagues would be frustrated. Somehow, they managed everything without me. The people who missed me — I had warned my closest friends in advance — were perfectly fine when I answered several days later.

The world had continued. This felt both humbling and deeply restful.

The problem with most retreats is that you eventually return to your actual life, where the mountains have been replaced by email and somebody urgently needs a document that has been sitting in their inbox for three weeks.

I didn't want the effect to disappear immediately, so I introduced several small rules.

1. I switched off unnecessary notifications

Work chats returned, as did important Gmail alerts. But did I really need to know immediately that a friend had sent me another piece of neuroslop on Instagram? I didn't.

Notifications don't merely provide information; they repeatedly ask the brain to redirect its attention. Even when we don't respond, the interruption can make it harder to stay focused on the task in front of us. This is partly why the mobile-internet experiment found measurable improvements in sustained attention after only two weeks offline.

So I turned off the sounds, badges and banners that weren't genuinely useful. The neuroslop remains available. I simply encounter it at a time of my choosing.

2. I started walking without earphones

No music (I am not alone!). No podcasts. No audiobooks. Just the city as it is: busy in the centre, calmer in the park and occasionally featuring a stranger conducting a very personal phone call at full volume.

If I genuinely want to listen to something, I will. This isn't a monastery. But I am trying to become less compulsively multifunctional. A walk can simply be a walk. It doesn't need to improve my knowledge, advance my career and complete a true-crime series at the same time.

I know that the world’s most effective managers may find this horrifying. I am learning to live with their disappointment.

3. I take time before answering

If something isn't urgent, I no longer feel obliged to enter the conversation immediately. My energy is my most valuable resource, and I don't have to hand it over whenever somebody requests access to it.

The world can survive if I don't respond within 15 minutes. In fact, communication often becomes better when I wait until I have the time and attention to answer properly.

And when I am physically with someone, that person takes priority over whatever is happening inside my phone. I still make time for the people I love who live far away. The difference is that I now decide when and how to give them my attention. The phone is a tool again, rather than the slightly tyrannical manager of my social life.

I no longer feel like throwing my phone away and moving to the mountains to become a hermit. This is partly because mountain life involves waking up early, and I am not prepared to romanticise it beyond reason.

But one week without control over the Wi-Fi helped me regain some control over my own life.

A full-escape holiday won't transform everybody, and the science doesn't support treating digital detoxes as a universal mental-health cure. But a meaningful break can interrupt automatic habits long enough for us to see them clearly. It can show us what fills the space when the scrolling stops: movement, boredom, conversation, silence, attention and the surprisingly manageable fact that not everything requires an immediate response.

That was the real restoration. I didn't simply rest from work. I rested from the feeling that I should always be available, informed, entertained and reacting.

The phone came back with me. The urgency didn't.